PCM Volume 1 - Issue 7: Financial Services in Modern Times

Exciting thought leader stories about happenings in the payments world | + Insight into In-house recruiting

P CM YOUR GATEWAY TO THE WORLD OF PAYMENTS

Vol 1. Issue 7 Dec. 2015

Finacial Services in

Modern Times

Welcome to the 7th issue!

You are reading the seventh issue of the Payments & Cards Magazine. In order to keep our clients, associates, subscribers and all payments professionals in the loop, we have decided to create a monthly magazine, now already in its seventh issue.

The seventh issue features events in the Payments industry, thought leader articles, top jobs and more! The magazine is currently expanding its scope and will cover topics such as, Q&A, product/ service reviews, statistics & facts, educational articles and other great content in the following editions!

The magazine is also a good way for you to keep in touch with what is happening in the Payments world as well as like minded professionals. If you haven’t checked in with us lately, we think you will be surprised and excited about all the wonderful things happening in the industry.We hope to hear from you soon, and we welcome your feedback!

Throughout each issue, there will be descriptions and lists of events within the Payments industry happening this month, as well as announcements and latest developments & partnerships. If you are a thought leader and would like to be featured or present your thoughts, please get in touch.

On the other hand, as a business, the magazine offers you various advertising possibilities. Want to learn more? Just contact us!

If you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please address them to the editors: Amir Abdin - Duc Dang -

amir@paymentsandcardsnetwork.com duc@paymentsandcardsnetwork.com

The Payments & Cards Network team wishes you good reading!

002

Contents thoughtleaders

spotlight

14

3 8

14

10

STORIES 4 Thought Leaders: Unlocking Wallet Payments in Sub-Sahara

14

Spotlight: Paystand

8

17

Hot Jobs

18

Events

Jide Akindele continues the series about the development of the mobile payments industry in a promising part of Africa.

Thought Leaders: 10 things to do to keep your customer satisfied Nick Fox presents key actions to keep your business’ customers engaged and loyal.

10 Thought Leaders: E-commerce in Europe

Yves Lalieu discusses the new e-commerce environment in Europe and its accompanying challenges.

12

We talked to the makers of the payment-as-aservice platform.

Looking for a new role and exciting challenges?

Check out our latest job opportunities!

Here we showcase the most exciting upcoming events in the payment industry.

Thought Leaders: A day in the life of an in-house recruiter Magaret Buj gives us a deep insight behind the scenes of tasks and challenges as an in-house recruiter at Yieldify.

003

By Jide Akindele

Thought Leaders Corner

November 30, 2015

global business This is the third edition of Jide Akindele’s series focusing on the developments in the payment market in Sub-Sahara Africa

Š SES S.A

Unlocking Mobile Wallet Payments

W

in Sub-Sahara Africa

ith the ubiquity of mobile phones across Sub-Sahara Africa, it is apparent that many lives have improved on the communication level. More and more people across the continent are gaining access to the internet additionally enriching themselves with information from across the globe. According to a recent GSMA report as at December 2014, Sub-Saharan Africa has 146 million registered wallet accounts of which 61.9 million are active accounts.

The growth of mobile wallet payments is fuelled by the limitations of other payment methods and the accessibility to majority of the SubSaharan population.

004

The Keys to unlocking adoptability Interoperability: In the West African region most of the Mobile wallet rollouts have been closed looped, with continuous fighting for dominance amongst providers, the up take has not been as dynamic as predicted considering the total population. Lessons from East Africa particularly Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda show that there is a clear advantage in interoperability, and that this is a recipe for growth and stimulation of mobile wallet payments across the region. There is more value in being able transact through other providers as illustrated in (Figure 1). Results have been far reaching in the 4 countries that have stepped up to the plate, transaction volumes have risen and continue to grow.

Loyalty incentives: Incentives drive repeat purchases and recommendations, if mobile wallet users know that they are bound for some kind of incentive for being loyal users, then it is bound to fuel continuous use of the wallet medium. Many non-adopters currently do not see the full advantage of using a mobile wallet over cash or other mediums, as they cannot see any price differentiation, therefore, a compelling proposition must be in place to stimulate usage.

Consumer behaviour data: “Big data not just transactions” should be seen as a great opportunity to get direct access to consumer’s behaviour, this in itself is a gold mine. The SubSahara region has been plagued with minimal accurate consumer data. Such rich data would help forecasters provide meaningful analytics, for local and international investors and other business decision makers. Big data as a strategy would stimulate future growth of both B2B and B2C activities.

Consumer education: a lot of consumers within the Sub-Sahara African region still prefer cash purchases face to face and take away what they have paid for, due to concerns of security.

However, this is also the case with merchants concerned with fraud and its impact on cost of sales. Consumer education and assurances that mobile wallet payments are a secure payment channel, would most likely allay fears. In the case of merchants, fraud reduction is highly reduced especially issues surrounding “charge backs” and “not present” M-commerce online purchases which is a steady growth area in Sub-Sahara Africa.

Competitive low fee structure: This is high on the agenda for many existing or would be merchants looking for alternative payments. A high fee or complicated structure would be seen as a barrier to entry, therefore, minimising the chances for rapid growth. The same applies to consumers, it has been stated that some users cannot afford the cost of maintaining a bank account due to cost. The strategy for mobile wallets providers should always be to reach volumes at low costs as a means to incentivise the growth of wallet uptake.

Content availability: Content is king! If consumers have a variety of services and products to purchase with their wallets, growth adoption will follow. As it stands P2P, Airtime Top-up, bulk pay and Bill pay dominates the volume of transactions to date. M-commerce is set to follow, with the introduction of a lot more variety of services. As recent as November 2015, a large well known Middle Eastern airline tied up with a mobile wallet provider in Kenya, enabling acceptance of mobile payments for flights. This is indeed exciting news, other major service providers around the globe should set to follow, due to relative ease and cost effectiveness of such services for both the providers and consumers.

Conclusion There are several keys required to unlock mobile wallet adoption in Sub-Sahara Africa, not a single key. Despite the current successes witnessed in the region, a good strategic mix will ensure that adoption growth would continue in an upward trend. In short the ecosystem must look into the pressure points of the consumers in order to get their continuous attention and loyalty.

005

MMIT, Mobile Media Info Tech, is a mobile payment processor with a mission to revolutionize the mobile payment process.

MMIT focuses on the Sub-Sahara Africa market and partners with financial institutions and international merchants to provide value added services to mobile wallet providers and users. Please visit MMIT at www.mmitonline.com.

Jide Akindele, Founder, MMIT Jide is a visionary entrepreneur with a deep and wide knowledge of technologies based in the mobile money and payment transaction space.

Mr. Akindele has held various

directorship positions for companies in West Africa and has worked in USA, Nigeria and the UK since 2007.

eCommerce Africa Confex

commerce

WATCH OUR VIDEO

Africa

Follow @eCommerceConfex and @KineticEventsSA on Twitter for daily updates and news feeds.

17 & 18 FEBRUARY 2016 | THE CTICC, CAPE TOWN WWW.ECOMMERCE-AFRICA.COM

Advisory Panel

Sponsors,Exhibitors & Partners RAPHAEL AFAEDOR

EMILIAN POPA

VINNY LINGHAM

JOE OKLEBERRY

SIMDUL SHAGAYA

CAREN GENTHNER-KAPPESZ

DiGAME

Co-Founder, Jumia/CEO & Co-Founder, Supermart

Principle, Digital Growth Africa & Middle East

Co-Founder and CEO, Gyft

Internet Strategist, Naspers

Founder and CEO, Konga Online Shopping

CEO, MIH/ Naspers

An award winning and celebrated businessman in Africa, Raphael heads up the biggest online retail platform in Nigeria, Supermart and has taken the African business scene by storm. His previous work with one of the biggest online companies, Jumnia, launched him to success, and cultivated his passion for Africa and its development.

Emilian’s passion for eCommerce and online trends shines through when he speaks. He describes himself as an eCommerce and global entrepreneur and has headed up some of the biggest companies in South Africa, as well as the rest of the world including Rocket Internet, Groupon and Zando among others. He is currently living between South Africa and the Middle East with his investment initiatives.

Most will instantly recognise Vinny straight from the small screen and his position on South Africa’s Dragons Den, and others will know him as the co-founder of some of the biggest initiatives in online tech in South Africa: Clicks2Customers, Gyft and Silicon Cape Initiative. He has since moved to the actual Silcon Valley and is rubbing shoulders with big names like Richard Branson among others.

It has been said that anything that this man shares will be deep and thought provoking.

Joe used to be Mary Meeker’s right hand man, and was part of the team that took LinkedIn and MailRu public. Described as the most experienced man in internet in Africa, his skills and expertise are in high demand and he was pounced on by Naspers to hold a position here in Cape Town.

Sim is the Founder and Executive Chairman of DealDey Limited. He has over 13 years experience in New Media & Investment Banking and worked with leaders such as MicroStrategy, Lucent Technologies and Real Networks. Sim also served as the Africa lead for Google.

He graduated from George Washington University, Dartmouth College & holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Former CEO of Kalahari. com, Caren was relocated to Cape Town from Berlin, with prior roles including a nine year stint at eBay as general manager for shopping.com Germany, and as a director and GM for eBay Express Germany. Caren has also worked as COO at brands4friends, an eBay subsidiary in Germany.

The eCommerce Africa Confex gathers 1500+ Exhibition Visitors, 70+ Sponsors & Exhibitors, 500+ Conference Delegates and 90+ Guest speakers.

Connecting the regions’ leading merchants; major retailers; brands; developers; designers and eCommerce experts, the summit is focused on exchanging inspired and innovative ideas, discussing emerging trends and making lasting connections.

Organisers, Kinetic, have secured some of the best global solution providers who are ready to provide the African continent with great products and services at the most exclusive and by far the largest Commerce gathering on the African continent.

To get involved with the show, fast track your sales or even network with industry leaders; Click here to get your free expo pass OR Register for a full delegate pass at 15% discount.

For general enquiries and/or information about sponsorship, contact marcia@kineticevents.net

Trends merchant services market F

10 things you should do to keep your customer satisfied

ighting for new business is a priority for many organisations.

But keeping your existing customers can actually be more rewarding and cost your business far less. Existing clients are the bread and butter of any business. But how often are they taken for granted and virtually ignored - apart from making sure they pay on time - until they decide to take their business elsewhere. Follow these steps to make sure your customers remain engaged and loyal: 1. Customers are special – never treat them as if they are commodities While it may be true, your clients never want to think they are simply a means to your ends. Remember your customers are people first and foremost and should always be treated with respect and consideration. This notion should directly influence how you communicate and work with them.

every day or even every week, but do make an effort to talk with one of your best customers every day; it does not have to be about business. Everyone likes to be made to feel special and you can go a long way to developing a deep relationship with a just little effort each day 3. Be willing to go beyond the call of duty Aim to over deliver. Try to do a little more than they expect and delight them by your commitment to their business. It is hard to put a value on that dedication, but many customers will appreciate your willingness to go the extra mile – and remember this when contracts need renewing.

4. Honesty is the best policy There are going to be times when you don’t understand why something has gone wrong. Be up front about it. Your customers will respect the fact you can be open with them. But make sure you are already working the problem, and you have a solution. Honesty is important, but competence is even more so.

5. Offer a loyalty scheme Loyalty schemes don’t need to be formal structures and processes; they can exist within your head. Make sure your customer knows you appreciate their loyalty; make them aware that they are close to some incentive or special that isn’t available to all your customers.

2. Check-in with clients regularly People like to be reassured that all is well and that you are accessible. You don’t need to talk to every customer

Axcess your partners for payments

008

6. Take some time to get to know your best clients During the sales process you may have gone out of your way to cultivate a new client. Don’t waste the sweet talk you shared earlier. Think of each customer as your partner; what are their interests and how do they matter to them. Do they have a favourite team and does it really hurt when they lose? Using this knowledge can make a real difference to how they feel about you and your business.

7. Think in terms of ‘lifetime value’ Never think of a client in terms of their last job or payment. Think of them in terms of their value over a lifetime.

What might their business be worth to you over an extended time? Appreciate them as an investment that can keep on giving. Look after your investments and they will look after you.your customer

knows you appreciate their loyalty; make them aware that they are close to some incentive or special that isn’t available to all your customers.

8. Make the link between your business and your customer Keep your clients in mind when your business reaches a milestone: an important date, a new employee, an award or new client. Make sure your existing customers know that it is only due to their support that your business is where it is and you could not have done it without them.

9. When things go wrong be ready to put them right – quickly!

Invariably, things go wrong. When this happens be quick to solve the problem and keep your client informed. This highlights that you are on top of any issue and they are special in being

kept advised. Think about having some incentive available as a recompense – even if a fault was not your own – customers will be more willing to forgive and forget if you make even a small gesture towards them.

10. Treat your customer as you would like to be treated yourself You would be cross if something you expected from a supplier was late or didn’t work. So, put yourself in their shoes when you deal within your organisation and make sure everyone appreciates how important it is to get the job done correctly. Managing customers isn’t just about sweet talk; make sure everyone understands how important your customer is to everyone in your organisation!

About Axcess Merchant Services Axcess work with a wide range of banking partners that allow them to provide businesses like yours with exactly the right banking partner, tailored for your individual needs. Based in the UK, and working across a wide range of vertical markets, the Axcess team has an enviable reputation for providing reliable and effective payment solutions for discerning business owners.

by

Nick Fox Managing Director, Axcess Merchant Services

Nick is the Managing Director of Axcess Merchant Services, and a highly regarded salesman and team motivator. He has made a specialism out of turning impersonal institutions into responsive business partners. Nick knows how important it is to treat each new contact as if they were the most important person in the world!

009

E-commerce

By Yves Lalieu

November 30, 2015

© pixabay

e-commerce in Europe, new environment, new challenges We are at the verge of major changes in the European payment market, e-commerce has reached maturity and mobile commerce and payment is now possible. However there is still a long way to go to have a smooth payment experience. If the Uber In App payment can be seen as a model for convenience, it still limited as it does not accept the local debit cards.

In the coming months two major regulations will shake up the European e-commerce environment •

As of 9 December all transactions will have the same interchange regardless if it’s a proximity or e-commerce transactions.

•

The PSD2 will allow third parties to have access the bank account.

The new interchange will drive issuers to review their e-commerce security as the e-commerce fraud rate may be a killer in regards of the 20 or 30 basis points interchange. On the PSD 2 side third parties will now be allowed to access the bank

010

account. This is a great opportunity for new disruptive fintech companies, even if the customer “strong” authentication and the resulting liability are still vague and need to be clarified urgently.

The European patchwork Unfortunately we all know that a borderless e-commerce is a dream and that the European reality is much more complex: different languages, different regulations and a payment environment still deeply influenced by the legacy of the domestic schemes.

Credit cards and PayPal may commonly used the same way throughout Europe, however if you want to maximise your turnover you must offer debit payment, and that’s where you will discover the European payment patchwork.

Convenience versus security, solving the big dilemma We have two main models around Europe for e-commerce the “High Convenience Model” using low security product like MasterCard or Visa, and the “Secure Model” using high security

product like Maestro or various domestic brands.

The Secure model is always using 3D Secure (or equivalent technology like Ideal) to stop fraud. Unfortunately at the expense of convenience and sometime transactions conversions.

The problem is a Cornelian dilemma if you are offering convenience you will be hit by fraud and if you want to secure the transactions you will not maximise your sales.

•

Merchants experiencing very little fraud (because they are excellent in managing it or they are in a vertical not fraud prone) can continue without 3D Secure

•

Merchants having low fraud can use Dynamic 3D Secure

•

Merchants who cannot demonstrate their ability to manage fraud must use 3D Secure.

Working this way would reduce fraud cost to an acceptable minimum for all payment stakeholders and deliver the required convenience for In App payment. And this is feasible for all products Visa, MasterCard, Maestro all domestic brands, SEPA Credit Transfer or “Ideal like” solution.

Yves Lalieu

Founder of Transfeo Yves Lalieu has worked 20 years at MasterCard. In charge of Maestro product management he has

introduced Maestro on e-commerce.

Working with merchants leaders in their industry he has developed innovative solution like Dynamic 3D Secure or PINless solutions in the proximity environment (Parking, Vending, etc…)

As we can see solutions exist to bring e and m payment to the next level in Europe, and we can easily picture what will be the future of digital payment. The remaining question is who will build this future in the new payment environment banks or FinTech?

About Transfeo Yves has created Transfeo Consulting to help all stakeholders to optimize their payments solutions. Transfeo philosophy is to focus on customer experience and merchants needs to deliver added value to the whole payment chain. Transfeo has a strong experience of the merchant needs built with leader in their industry.

011

A day in the life of an in-house recruiter Margaret Buj is a Head of Recruitment at Yieldify and Interview Coach. She has 11 years of international recruitment experience and in the last 9 years she’s helped hundreds of professionals across the globe get jobs and promotions they really wanted.

Margaret Buj

Head of Recruitment at Yieldify & Interview Coach There are 2 things I will see every day – an inbox full of applications and emails from candidates and managers (there are days I receive about 250 emails).

In any given day, I will meet with line managers to discuss specific roles or candidates, I will source and interview candidates, negotiate salaries and make offers. I’d also respond to up to 10 recruitment agencies who contact us daily – these approaches never stop but we operate a direct sourcing model and only use a few select agencies for hard to fill engineering roles.

I also find events to attend to expand my network or as a team, we’d brainstorm ideas for e.g. improving candidate experience or getting more quality candidates for specific roles.

We get a lot of applications every day but some roles are quite niche and I only get good candidates by finding them and approaching on LinkedIn or by employee referrals. You’d think all

candidates who read a job description would pay attention to the minimum qualifications before clicking the ‘Apply Now’ button. This is definitely not always the case and we receive lots of applications of candidates who have zero or hardly any relevant experience for a specific position.

I do use LinkedIn to conduct searches - I not only find specific people with a certain skill set, but I ask other people in my network who they know. Of course employee referrals are a great source, too. As I speak to candidates, we can quickly ascertain whether what Yieldify has to offer to them will fit their needs.

It is a two-way street. Yes, in these economic times candidates may be more flexible, but we want to hire smart, motivated, talented people from top 20 universities, who want to work for us.

I might have to talk to 10 or even more people to find one or two really good people who will work within our culture – it is a very fast paced environment and we’ve grown from 2 to 155 people in 2.5 years, so change is the only constant here. Once I have completed a phone interview and we both feel comfortable we should move ahead, we arrange interviews with the hiring manager and a few others within the business.

Typically, the candidate will meet the hiring manager and a couple of other managers or peers and on some occasions, there will be a presentation or a case study involved. In an ideal world, the candidate is a perfect fit and the hiring process runs as smooth as silk. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world so many times, even after the final interview, you need to start the process from scratch – sometimes a candidate will drop out of the process for personal reasons or they will accept another offer.

Why do I do it? For one, helping people progress in their career is a wholly satisfying experience. Secondly, helping Yieldify grow by finding the best and brightest brings a sense of personal satisfaction. Being able to directly impact a company’s success by ensuring the right people are in place is an opportunity few other careers offer.

The challenge of reworking your strategy and game plan in an ever-changing environment means that I rarely have the same work day twice. When I talk to some of our new hires who love working for us and are doing a great job, I do feel a sense of satisfaction that I played a key role in getting of them to work for us.

Yieldify believes that marketers want to convert visitors, easily. We are specialists at creating more conversions in the lower funnel using our Exit-Intent Technology. Yieldify’s technology simplifies the marketers’ ability to predict and adapt to visitor intent across all devices.

012

Spotlight Think you have what it takes to start a business in a super-hot market?

PCM takes a close look at some of the most innovative and promising startup companies in the payment industry.

Using Your

“WE BELIEVE IT’S A NOBLE GOAL TO HELP CHANGE HAPPEN”

M

any different financial services have made big gains over the last years.

Oftentimes those are mainly focused on business-to-consumer transactions. However, there is also another immense market for payments in the business-to-business (B2B) world. To this day, B2B payments are known to be inefficient and expensive.

Paying invoices or moving funds across borders can be very costly for businesses and is full of uncertainties.

We speak with Jeremy Almond, cofounder and CEO of Paystand, a next generation payment & eCommerce checkout system enabling businesses to handle their payments in a more efficient manner and at lower costs.

Where did your idea for Paystand originate?

At a very high level Paystand uses modern Internet technology to transform B2B payments. Today in the U.S. about half of all payments are still done via paper cheque.

In my particular background I have spent a long time working with business technology companies. And I’ve seen them try ‘crazy things’ to get away from

014

Jeremy Almond, co-founder & CEO, Paystand

paper cheques. They would sometimes build some complicated business processes on top of ACH or move over to credit cards, which can get really expensive. For example, when sending a big invoice of $50.000 you might be charged 3% just to get paid. On the consumer side there is a lot of great innovation going on with payments but there really isn’t something yet that looks like the modern Internet on the business side. Something that is basically nearly instant, very low cost, cross border and also completely open. All the principles you know the Internet to be. That’s where the idea for Paystand came from. We started building the software in 2013, therefore, we are still a pretty young company. But, we feel really blessed since we’ve been growing very fast and serving different companies from small businesses to very large enterprises.

We just hope we can grow the business for us as well as our customers. Our goal is to make business payments adapt to the Internet and modernize the process.

How would you company culture?

define

your

For us as a tech company, our culture is very much focused on innovation, openness and fairness. All of those

things are partly what the Internet stands for. Bringing these values both to our team and our customers is a very important task. We are very customer centric and for that reason we also made our business model very transparent.

Since we think the industry needs transparency all of our team members live and breath that attitude as well.

When thinking about innovation and openness, our team members are very passionate about what they do. We think that improving financial services, which are at the heart of our economic system, is a meaningful purpose. Our team members with years of experience coming from either tech companies or financial services backgrounds came to this start-up because we think we can actually improve the system.

What differentiates Paystand from other payment gateways in the B2B payments arena?

Basically our product is centered around a model we call payment-asa-service platform. This concept adds value for the business on top of seeing payments only as a utility. To be more specific, we mainly do three things that separate us from other payment gateways.

First, we have a fairly flexible platform that enables a business with their own existing business process to layer us into their website, their invoice or their enterprise mobile application while still maintaining full control of their customer experience. When looking at companies such as PayPal or Square, these consumer facing companies seem to move their business into one specific flow. We can go behind the scenes because we don’t think it’s our customer but the business’ customer.

Thus, we treat this relationship very honorably. Secondly, we have this very broad technology platform that uses different payment rails. When working with us, businesses have the option to use an electronic cash or an electronic cheque system that are both very unique and proprietary to Paystand. Additionally, we also allow choice. Customers who want to use a card for certain customers can do so.

They can use Paystand to have a single point of reporting and a single point of settlement. In case businesses want to use a traditional card system for some other customers for convenience purposes they can do that as well.

Furthermore, if businesses want to work with more innovative things around digital cheques, bank to bank transfers or electronic cash, Paystand offers that option for their customers too. Paystand provides the platform, which offers many different pipes and the business can choose which specific ones they want to use. In the end we provide them with all the tools which they can use to their advantage.

The third and perhaps most interesting thing Paystand is known for is that its entire business model is different from common players in payment industry. We don’t make our profit from transaction fees. Instead we are a software company providing software licenses and businesses can use Paystand as much as they want.

Basically we give you 0 per cent network fees that you can benefit from. If you use our eCheque or eCash network, there is no transaction percentage fees. This is much more efficient for businesses when they need to move large amounts of money. Even if businesses want to use the old system the costs are still going to be dramatically lower since we give people wholesale rates.

What are the key hurdles to grow your business?

We believe to our core that payments will go completely digital on the business side. It’s going to take quite some time though. We started Paystand as a long-term company, one that can make an impact by methodically serving our customers.

Looking at hurdles, today we are currently only operating in the U.S.. We want to serve these customers well and make sure Paystand has delivered the best customer experience and solution possible. From a broader perspective to grow, Paystand obviously wants to operate on a global scale. For that we must work with the regulators in various different countries with different sets of rules related to moving money in a

safe, compliant and secure manner. We take the customer’s trust very carefully and see that as a privilege and honor to serve them in the best way.

What opportunities do you see in the payments industry?

Looking at the opportunity in the industry, we’ve been very early proponents of blockchain. If you look a year or two ago that was very much the bleeding edge. Now we are starting to see other financial services whether they are banks, exchanges or remittance focused companies starting to realize that blockchain is transformative technology. If considered thoughtfully, we think the technology of blockchain ledger is world changing. It does solve real financial problems but it will take time to bleed out into the different part of the system. When it does though it will make the system more efficient.

We are really excited about that. To name a few, for example settlement is very slow today on the traditional rails and in the U.S. ACH is very slow as well. Another example is cross border transactions today are very hard to execute and they are expensive. With the blockchain technology we think a number of financial services can be more efficient than a lot of the existing legacy infrastructures. So we want to apply the new technology in such ways to enable businesses to pay each other, so that their financial systems can settle to each other and ultimately make the system more open and more efficient.

However, finding the appropriate

A snapshot of the Paystand team located in the Silicon Valley office.

015

balance between the secure and insecure elements will take some time for some financial companies. But we pay a lot of attention to building trust and security measures to drive this innovation.

Are you currently working on any exciting projects within Paystand?

Over the next twelve months, we will start selectively thinking about what other countries can we serve outside the U.S. Being able to provide and operate something that works well in other countries is important to us.

There are vastly different payment systems in different countries so that’s why we are pretty excited about innovative technology like blockchain that can help to unify the systems.

More recently we are working on releasing a new feature of our eCheque product, which is one of our most used facet of our product platform. This feature will enable direct bank transfers to more than 15.000 banks. Today we serve approximately 80% of all the banks in the U.S. and with this release we’ll have direct bank payments to 15.000 banks, which is about 98% of all banks in the U.S. We are really excited about this in particular for our eCheque product because it means that our direct bank transfer has a lot of the benefits of card payments. To be more specific, it allows fast settlement, the ability to do fund verifications as well as the option to do identity verifications.

In the U.S. none of those exist on the traditional ACH payment. Since the traditional ACH payment system is fairly

antiquated technology. Our eCheque product can offer the same low cost structure of a cheque but at the same time have all the digital advantages of card payment. Being able to offer this with almost all the banks in the U.S. is very exciting for us.

“Get paid faster with the world’s first B2B payment network designed for today’s Internet”

016

Hot Jobs b

b

b

Senior Product Manager

Business Development Director

Senior Product Manager

San Francisco, U.S.

Paris

Amsterdam

b

b

b

Payment Consultant

Vice President Operations

Senior Manager Payments

Germany

Paris

Berlin

b

b

b

Managing Director

Senior Business Intelligence

Payment Expert

Dublin, Ireland

London

Germany

b

b

b

Regional Managing Director

Test Center Manager APAC

Sales Executive

Manila, Philippines

Singapore

Singapore

017

Events

Date: Dec. 8-9, 2015 | London

Date: Jan. 27-28, 2016 | Paris

This event is where the next generation of early stage start ups stand shoulder to shoulder with established FinTech blue chips and the emerging band of scale ups who have been disrupting the traditional finance scene in recent years. Featuring over 100 exhibitors and 2000 visitors, FCL also plays host to a keynote auditorium with inspirational case studies.

This event provides the Retail Banking professionals actionable knowledge to succeed in the digital era. Combining workshops and interactive insights sessions, the conference focuses on impactful tech shifts such as m-banking, branches digitisation, PSD2, FinTechs, Blockchain...a blend of case studies and technology updates.

Date: Jan 25-26, 2016 | Copenhagen

Date: Jan 6-7, 2016 | Las Vegas

This event will examine why the importance of a good strategy has never been more significant, especially with the large increase in new market players competing with the traditional banks. The conference will also discuss the future of real-time payments and possible risks banks need to consider.

018

This is an annual research and industry event hosted by international research firm Parks Associates at CES in as Vegas.

This executive event features two days of panel discussions on the smart home, Internet of Things and connected entertainment, with trends and implications for connected consumers and opportunities for companies to build new revenues and innovative business models.

You think you are a good match or know someone who is?

WE ARE HIRING Cape Town OFFICE

Country Manager South Africa

Where: Cape Town Experience: 3 years + Type: Full Time charles@paymentsandcardsnetwork.com

You think you are a good match or know someone who is?

2016 The Payments & Cards Network family would like to thank you for your support & trust in our services.

We wish you cheerful & festive times!

Payments and Cards Network Driving Innovation through knowledge

You

have any suggestions or ideas for the next issue of our PCM eMagazine?

Get in touch today and maybe you will be featured in the next edition:

Amsterdam Office Herengracht 576 1017 CJ Amsterdam The Netherlands Email: info@ paymentsandcardsnetwork.com Tel: +31 20 3030 257 Fax: +31 20 8208 295

Follow us now and stay up-to-date with the latest happenings in the payment world!