PCM Volume 2 - Issue 8: Brexit - What happens now?

P CM YOUR GATEWAY TO THE WORLD OF PAYMENTS

Vol 2. Issue 8 August 2016

BREXIT WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

Welcome to Vol.2 - issue 8 Brexit referendum results have put a new light on the political and economical situation of the United Kingdom. Those circumstances brought up many thoughts, for instance, what implications will Brexit have on the Financial Services market in the UK and Europe and will London still be the “Financial Services Hub” for Europe?

To discuss those issues we have interviewed two great UK entrepreneurs – Gary Goldsmith and Dean Kelly.

Carrying on, Bill Melton, CSO & Co-Founder of OmnyPay, talks about the switch from physical to digital retail in stores.

Paul Weiss, Management Consulting Analyst @Accenture, presents an overview of the various options available to bank to tackle the challenges of the new Payment Services Directive (PSD2).

Director @BNP Paribas Fortis, Sudaman Thoppan proves the value of addressability at volume using data and performing transaction analytics in the Payments industry.

For our Startup Spotlight this month we interviewed Emmanuel Osei-Akoto, CoFounder and CTO at PaySwitch, who aims to bring the Ghanaian business community a world-class electronic payment system which will ensure safe financial transactions.

On a special feature this month, we spoke with Abhay Tewari about his Philanthropy startup. Abhay has left his dream job at Apple to start a non-profit. What was his motivation behind this decision and what is he busy doing now?

Finally, an overview of the hottest job openings we have at the moment. Feel like you need a change or looking for a job opportunity? Get in touch directly by clicking on the job. What better way to network and get to know your peers in the industry? Also, check out our premium event partners and make use of the discounts we have on offer before they run out!

For any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please address them to the editors: Amir Abdin - amir@paymentsandcardsnetwork.com Duc Dang - duc@paymentsandcardsnetwork.com Joanna Bak - joanna@paymentsandcardsnetwork.com The Payments & Cards Network team wishes you good reading!

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Contents thoughtleaders

spotlight

4 19 8 16 STORIES 4

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Spotlight: Payswitch

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Special Feature: Sumbon

Digitizing Physical Retail Physical commerce is at a tipping point. Discover the next steps of making Payments seamless with OmnyPay.

PSD2 – the game changer in the banking industry Paul Weiss points out the options available for banks to respond effectively to the threats and opportunities of PSD2.

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Addressability at volume, Data and transaction analytics

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Brexit – will it change the course of the Payments world?

Sudaman Thoppan presents 7 use cases in the world of payments to prove the value of addressability at volume using data and performing transaction analytics.

Gary Goldsmith and Dean Kelly walk us through the implications of Brexit on the Financial Services market in the UK and EU likewise.

“My vision for PaySwitch is that it becomes a complete payment hub when it comes to the Ghanaian market”

Sumbon - Ushering the new era of Philanthropy Abhay Tewari introduces us to his startup and his roadmap to revolutionizing the Philanthropy sector.

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Hot Jobs

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Events

Hand picked jobs of the month within the Payments and Fintech industry. Check out our hottest vacancies for this month and hit APPLY!

Stay up to date with the latest happenings in the industry and make use of our special promo codes!

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Thought Leaders Corner

by Bill Melton

OmnyPay: Digitizing Physical Retail Changing Tides of Retail Remember the days of the Sears Catalogue, and the highly anticipated trip to your favorite department store? Like TV before streaming, consumer choices were limited, and shoppers stayed faithful to their preferred big-box, big name retailer.

If large retailers want to stay relevant, they need to embrace new technology solutions that fundamentally transform physical retail into an e-commerce experience that is personalized, convenient and frictionless - and one that improves their bottom line.

The Internet changed everything, providing consumers with countless options to shop and compare, and to buy from the comfort of their own home. Loyalty quickly became passé, as shoppers clicked away to find the best value, and physical retailers began a “race to the bottom” on pricing.

A Nod to Amazon Think about the consumer shopping journey when you shop with Amazon. Let’s take their mobile app as an example: when you open the app, it automatically identifies who you are and the type of membership you have, and serves you up a personalized page. That page shows previous items you’ve bought, what Amazon recommends to pair with those items, buyer reviews, offers, etc. When you select an item, Amazon shows you a dynamic price, specific to you, with discounts and bundling offers - also curated to you. If you choose to buy an item, you can opt for one-click purchase, and you will earn Amazon points.

At checkout, Amazon already has your specific details - including your address and shipping preferences.

At the completion of your purchase, Amazon sends you a digital receipt.

Fast-forward to today, and retailers are struggling. They can’t compete with online prices - given the costs associated with real estate and store associates, and when they look to technology to enhance the in-store experience, their hands are tied by legacy systems, which severely limit what they can and can’t do.

Physical commerce is at a tipping point. The business models of big retailers have been up-ended by e-commerce, while smaller, nimbler players are successfully leveraging technology to provide defined shopping experiences, and are chipping away at the traditional lead major retailers have enjoyed.

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If a shopper tried to map this journey to an in-store experience, he would be lucky to get 10% of the features mentioned above. But,

what if a retailer could “Amazonize” the physical store experience?

Imagine the scenario: the retailer sets up a connection with the shopper well before he enters the store and, as a result, knows what’s in his shopping list, where he browsed, what loyalty programs he takes part in, etc. Once he enters the store, Location-based services (LBS) on his smartphone identify and authenticate him. The shopper begins to receive notifications on his mobile device from the retailer, which could be any combination of offers, promotions, support, reviews, suggestions, maps, fellow shopper suggestions and retail associate locations. As items are put in his cart, his mobile device automatically adds them to a virtual shopping cart, and coupons/offers are applied. The virtual shopping cart can consist of physical items, digital or virtual items, or items that will be shipped to his home.

At checkout, the shopper’s mobile device pulls up relevant credentials available for payment, with all discounts and rewards automatically redeemed. Alternatively, the retailer can eliminate the cashier function, enabling a cloud-based system to deactivate store tags and process the transaction and discounts as the shopper walks out the door.

Thought Leaders Corner Sound a bit like the classic spaceage Jetsons cartoon? It’s not. This type of digital commerce platform is available today, and is in trial deployment with some of the nation’s largest retailers.

OmnyPay Can “Amazonize” the In-store Experience OmnyPay offers a one-of-a-kind white label, API-driven platform that augments legacy store systems and revolutionizes in-store shopping experiences. OmnyPay’s platform is pre-integrated with leading vendors to deliver loyalty, payments and coupons, as well as LBS, CRM, and social messaging features. Its API makes additional features simply a plug-and-play add-on. The platform takes various data sets from thirdparty solutions to create a single interface for the retailers’ backend, thereby reducing the need for multiple integrations and multiple data sets about the same shoppers.

Most importantly, OmnyPay ties all features and functionality to a user and their authenticated device while pairing it with the payment and commercial transaction mechanism that is most favorable to the retailer, making it a personalized shopping experience from authentication to purchase.

Retailer legacy systems have always been a bottleneck, yet serve a mission-critical purpose when it comes to ensuring the continuous operations of the store. Retailers cannot rip these systems out overnight and replace them with a completely new cloud-based system. With the OmnyPay platform however, a retailer is able to start adding new features and functions to their day-to-day operations and customer experience, without massive investments in infrastructure. Over a longer period of time, the retailer can then make a more gradual transition to new operating styles and processes, emulating business models that maximize revenue streams and minimize costs for the retailer. By ensuring the availability of such a

In-store - Self Checkout

flexible platform that can co-exist with the existing legacy systems, OmnyPay’s platform and solution sets can be integrated and launched in a matter of a few weeks or months, rather than several years.

Tantamount to all of this is the insurance that user credentials, personal identifiable information and retailer data is always secure.

By moving the entire data stream to the cloud and ensuring there is no exchange of unprotected identity data within the physical store environment or on public data networks, the OmnyPay platform provides a level of security and reliability that has never before been available to in-store systems.

With host card emulation and end-to-end encryption achieved through dynamic tokenization, OmnyPay’s vaults are secured with HSM, enabling retailers to maintain custody of their customers’ data.

Bringing Physical Stores into the Digital Age According to Internet Retailer, 75% of store shoppers use their mobile devices in-store, yet big box retailers are woefully behind in catering to these shoppers. According to consumer marketing expert Richard Cohene, “When I walk into a physical store, I feel like I’ve stepped into history. You should have access to much more information, like howto videos and product comparison tools. Beacons will play a role. You should be able to check out yourself

in-store using a mobile app that contains a bar code scanner. The brick-and-click guys lag dramatically when it comes to creating true omnichannel commerce – chain retailers need to mobilize their omnichannel strategies so mobile truly becomes a part of the brickand-mortar experience.”

Lee Peterson, EVP at WD Partners, a customer experience expert for global food and retail brands, echoes that sentiment: “Movement to newer ideas quickly is imperative.

We’re not in a ‘Wait and see what happens’ era anymore, like it was the in the ’90’s. If retailers don’t move quickly to protect assets with better e-commerce and much better store experiences, especially with service, you will see a lot of closures in the next five years.”

OmnyPay’s solution is designed to catalyze large retailers’ mobile strategy. Its platform helps brickand-mortar retailers break into omnichannel commerce by leveraging cloud technology and consumer devices to improve the in-store experience and the bottom line.

Improving the Bottom Line Stores are expensive to run, because of real estate, inventory, hardware and associate costs. OmnyPay helps retailers reduce expensive in-store operations in several ways: • Store IT Systems: Legacy systems are expensive and slow

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Bill Melton Chief Strategy Officer & Co-Founder of OmnyPay Bill is a serial entrepreneur, and was the founder of Verifone and TeleCheck Services (now part of FirstData). He was an early investor in PayPal and AOL, and founded Cybercash in parallel, and is currently on the board of several innovative companies. At OmnyPay he focuses on high engagement retail apps as primary drivers of commerce in physical retail.

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to modernize with additional features and new functionality.

OmnyPay’s cloud platform, with its open API, augments these systems, offloading some of the horsepower needed for modernization projects. Since the platform is offered as SaaS, the capital expenditure for upgrades is kept to a minimum, keeping costs down and in line with actual usage of new features.

Point of Sale Hardware: Point of Sale hardware is expensive to maintain, and even more expensive to upgrade. With OmnyPay, all transactions move to the cloud, making the shopper device the only retailer and transaction interface needed. With a system designed to adapt to existing POS systems with light integration, the retailer can offer traditional POS-based checkouts, as well as advanced mobile-based checkout simultaneously. Over time, legacy POS systems can be phased out of the equation, as shoppers get more and more comfortable with mobile-based checkout.

Checkout Time: As retailers offer more and more options to shoppers in terms of payment, loyalty and coupon choices, as well as additional capabilities like ship-to-home or recurring services and credit lines, it becomes increasingly important that the amount of time that a shopper takes up during checkout is kept under control and reduced if possible. This is especially visible during high shopper traffic periods. By reducing the amount of time it takes to complete a complicated purchase/transaction, the retailer can get more creative in the types of incentives/ services they can offer, while also reducing the cost to install physical aisles and staff them with retail associates.

Self-Checkout and Checkout Aisles: Grocers have embraced self-checkout throughout the

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US, because self-checkout replaces clerks and shortens lines. Retailers can now follow suit in a novel way. By changing the associate’s role into more of a salesperson, or a personal shopper, they can add value to the customer experience.

Additionally the shopper feels empowered to find, select, pay and review items, all from within their own control, without waiting for store associates or staff to help them out.

Long-tail Inventory Items: Retailers can reduce store size by warehousing long-tail items, and enhancing in-store inventory with digital displays where shoppers can browse and order different colors/sizes/ styles. The OmnyPay platform allows for the simultaneous purchase of in-store, online and virtual items, all while reducing overhead costs.

Enhancing the In-store Experience A key mandate for large retailers is to improve the in-store experience for customers by personalizing their buying journey Customer engagement is a priority, but how does a retailer leverage technology to enhance the customer relationship both before, during, and after the shopper enters the store?

OmnyPay believes that customer engagement begins at home on the shoppers’ device, then continues in-store, with a heavy reliance on behavioral intelligence, and continues after the sale. The more a retailer engages with a shopper, the more data the retailer acquires, and the more the retailer can do with that data, such as sending highly-curated offers while the shopper is in-store, providing preferred pricing to loyal shoppers, and sending suggested purchases, based on previous buys.

OmnyPay’s cloud platform connects all of the key players - the in-store system, retailer back-end, thirdparty coupon providers, payments providers, etc., to enable this type of functionality. This connectivity can also be extended to individual brands, which can now use the

established connection with the shopper in the retailer’s location to provide suggestions, support, upsell and variety, while allowing the retailer to act as the transactiongeneration agent, and collect revenue on the purchase made by the shopper.

OmnyPay enables retailers to personalize the shopping experience, moving beyond price as a differentiator, to add value, experience and loyalty to the mix, in order to build a relationship with each shopper that makes them want to return.

Converting Any Surface into a Point of Commerce Why does checkout need to be at a queue in front of the store? Or at a specific department? OmnyPay’s technology securely identifies and confirms that a person with a mobile device who walks into a store is the person that is supposed to be using that device. Once they are authenticated, any surface can become a point of commerce. This

changes the game for retailers, making cashiers obsolete and giving businesses carte blanche to use their creativity to decide what tags, displays, posters, screens, etc. they want to use as a point-of-sale.

With OmnyPay, big retailers can not only compete with the Amazons and other e-retailers of the world, they can go head-to-head with the smaller, nimble retailers who have already started to provide unique experiences to their customers.

They can take a page - not only from Amazon - but from cutting edge retailers and service providers like Starbucks and Uber, who have turned the process of ordering coffee and cabs into a highly personalized, dynamic, engaging experience - with transactions done seamlessly in the back-end.

Creating a Dynamic Digital Channel Physical retail is at a tipping point.

It’s up to retailers to entice shoppers into a relationship that is experiential, rewarding, and provides continuous

value. OmnyPay’s platform provides retailers with a secure, flexible, and integrated digital commerce solution that augments the physical store shopper experience with the personalization, flexibility and power of digital commerce.

This dynamic digital channel creates a single touch-point for consumers to interact and transact with retailers across all channels, using any smart mobile device - in store, online, in-app, or via a virtual aisle or a dynamic media experience. And by combining retailer incentives with low cost payments and loyalty offers within a branded environment, retailers are able to reduce costs, nurture brand loyalty and create new revenue streams.

OmnyPay is available today to large retailers looking for a mobile-first, “Brand Pay” approach to increase engagement, reduce costs and enhance experiential commerce.

For more information, contact info@ omnypay.net.

Omnypay OmnyPay augments the physical store experience with the personalization, flexibility and power of digital commerce. By making the shoppers’ mobile device the primary retailer interface, OmnyPay can convert all physical store shopper interactions into actionable digital commerce transactions, while making checkout and payments seamless and invisible. The OmnyPay platform offers retailers a significant opportunity to increase sales while reducing costs.

Have a look at how digital commerce works https://vimeo.com/173701222

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Thought Leaders Corner

by Paul Weiss

PSD2 - Game changer in the banking industry European banks are at a critical juncture in their history.

The revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) is driving European banks to a defining moment forcing them to make a key strategic decision: whether to become a banking ‘utility’ supporting other providers’ customer-facing solutions, or an ‘Everyday Bank’ playing a central role in customers’ daily lives. The driving force behind this imperative is PSD2 which is set to accelerate the competition and digital disruption that are already reshaping the financial services industry across and beyond Europe. Now is not a time to bury heads in the sand – traditional banks need to consider their position and response.

of a “Payment Services”. While the original PSD applied only to transactions occurring within the EU, the PSD2 will extend this scope to “one leg out” transactions, which means that as a bank you have to make sure your leg of the transaction is compliant. The directive will also extend the 2007 PSD definition of “Payment Institution” to include new categories of third-party payment providers.

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Third-party payment initiation. PSD2 will encourage competition in European payments by regulating payment initiation service providers (PISPs). These services operate using a “push” payments process unlike the traditional, card-based “pull” payments flow.

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Third-party account access. PSD2 will also regulate account information service providers (AISPs). These providers act as aggregators of customer payment account information.

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Prohibition of card surcharges. PSD2 seeks to standardize the different approaches to surcharges on card-based transactions which are currently applied across EU.

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Security of online payments and account access. PSD2 will introduce new security requirements for electronic payments and account access, along with new security challenges relating to AISPs and PISPs.

Change fueled by EU directive The aim of the original Directive on Payment Services or PSD instrument which was adopted in 2007 was very much aligned with the bigger economic vision for the EU – namely to create a single market for payments within the European Union. The objective of PSD1 was to provide a legal framework for all payments made in Europe, with the aim of increasing the speed, efficiency and ease-of-use of European payment services. The centerpiece of this was making banks more transparent to their customers, in areas like interest charges, notifications on changes to accounts, fees charged, and the speed at which refunds are made. For example, PSD1 introduced the concept of a Payment Institution, which is a firm in the payment industry that is regulated but not to the higher banking standard. Think of large payments bodies like PayPal or WorldPay. These customer-focused changes began a journey that will now be continued by PSD2, which picks up and completes a number of strands left unfinished in PSD1. PSD - which must be implemented by early 2018 - will bring about vital changes to the Everyday Payments environment, and banks must be ready for: •

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Extension of scope beyond Europe and in the definition

Banking without walls At the core of PSD2 is the requirement for banks to grant Third Party Providers (TPPs) access to a customer’s online account/payment services while also enhancing the security of internet payments and account access. Access to customer accounts via APIs enables the provision of entirely new types of service that are regulated under PSD2—namely third party payment initiation (provided by Payment Initiation Service Providers or PISPs) and third party account access (provided

by Account Information Service Providers or AISPs).

Thought Leaders Corner In plain English, AISPs aggregates account information to let consumers with multiple banks view all bank details in one portal and PISPs bypasses the traditional card networks and facilitate direct bank-to-bank payments. For instance, when you buy something online you typically enter your payment details into the merchants website, and the merchant then gets the money from your bank account by way of a few intermediaries.

4. Expand the ecosystem and aggregate value

With PSD2, the Directive will allow to ‘ask’ consumers for consent - giving permission for something to happen or agree to do something - to use your bank details, initiate payments or use data for marketing purposes. In particular, PISPs will be able to receive information from the payer’s bank on the availability of funds (a yes/no answer) on the account before initiating the payment (with the explicit consent of the payer), and AISPs will receive marketing related information explicitly consented by the consumer, but only to the extent necessary for the service provided to the consumer. Hence, obtaining consent is (the) key for PISPs and AISPs.

Most banks would instinctively choose option four since it has most potential of unlocking new value and providing innovative customer proposition. Investment in open APIs could present opportunities for more integrated partnerships between banks and third party companies within and outside of the financial services industry. Such partnerships could manifest themselves in (1) consolidation of services – new products/services owned by third parties but offered via the bank’s online portal and/or (2) consolidation of data – customer data stored on third party systems but presented on the bank’s online portal, subject to obtaining necessary consents and authorizations. However, given the pace of change in the payments environment, speed is key – and any bank that fails to move quickly to seize and consolidate its chosen position in the evolving payments ecosystem may find the decision is taken away from it.

Renewed call on strategy From a longer-term perspective, arguably the biggest impact of PSD2 will be to cause banks to face some fundamental strategic questions about what business they want to be in, and how they’re going to differentiate themselves. Accenture believes four primary strategic options are available to banks in order to respond effectively to the threats and opportunities of PSD2. These options are: 1. Comply with PSD2 For some banks, a valid decision may be to narrow the focus of their business model towards the provision of liquidity and infrastructure services. In such cases, the bank becomes a ‘utility’ managing underlying customer accounts, processing payment transactions, and providing liquidity and credit services which are offered to the customer through a TPP who owns the customer experience.

2. Facilitate and monetize of API access Banks gain opportunities to monetize these additional APIs as well as to collaborate with third parties to create new products and services based on these data sets and niche customer needs. An example of such a service would be the sharing of a customer’s mortgage data and identity documents with a home insurance provider (with the customer’s consent)

An open API infrastructure and the consolidation of customer data from multiple third party sources. Within and outside of the financial services industry transforms the online banking portal into a platform reflecting the customer’s everyday needs and transactions. By establishing itself at the center of this ecosystem of both financial and non-financial services, the bank can become a pivotal part of a customer’s daily life.

Opening up competition What’s more, any bank that opts to become a front-end aggregator will not find it an easy task. With customers seeking more joined-up experiences across all areas of their lives – financial services, telecoms, leisure, retail, and so on – bank aggregators will need to move beyond their traditional industry comfort-zone and venture into other, less familiar sectors. It’s an open question whether players from other industries – including technology – are better equipped to cross these barriers.

Some say that PSD2 is the best thing that Fin-Techs could overcome. The directive provides start-ups with a larger playing field with more obtainable bank data and improved laws: what’s not to love? Fin-Techs are typically smaller, more agile businesses that can act quickly to take advantage of new opportunities, and this will certainly take place. Banks should actively seek out key partnerships with Fin-Techs in order to leverage the market opportunity they present. To conclude, it’s obvious that the banking landscape will undoubtedly

3. Provide Advice & New Services - Monetize Insight Leveraging customer insight empowers banks to provide a highly customer-centric, digital banking portal, and create a customer value ecosystem consisting of symbiotic or mutually beneficial relationships between the bank and TPP that create value for the customer. Such services can enhance customer loyalty as well as open new revenue opportunities for both bank and TPP

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change, the implementation of PSD2 just adds more fuel to the (Fin-Tech) fire.

Banks: on your marks, get set, go!

The message is clear. PSD2 opens a range of opportunities and if banks don’t take advantage, others will do. To be ready for the post-PSD2 world, banks need to look through their customers’ eyes, think hard about their future proposition and positioning, and take steps to turn these into reality. Banks that don’t choose to take PSD2 as a matter of urgency may find they’re left with no choice at all.

Paul Weiss Paul Weiss works within Accenture’s Management Consulting Practice, Industry Financial Services, based out of the Netherlands specialized in payments and digital banking. Paul has worked with several financial institutions to assist them in defining their business and technology strategy and then playing a role executing and delivering against that strategy.

To better understand what strategic options are available for Financial Institutions to minimize the disruptive threats of new competition and to maximize the opportunities unlocked by PSD2 and Open APIs read Seizing the Opportunities Unlocked by the EU’s Revised Payment Services Directive: PSD2 – A Catalyst for New Growth Strategies in Payments and Digital Banking.

Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Accenture has extensive experience in payments, Everyday Banking, open APIs and digital banking strategies - and can help organizations to navigate the optimal route along this journey.

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Thought Leaders Corner

by Sudaman Thoppan

Addressability at volume, Data and transaction analytics – 7 Use cases in the world of payments to prove the value of addressability at volume using data and performing transaction analytics.

Introduction – The very ‘few’ challenges that traditional banks face today: “Do we need new banking business models?”.

The answer to this question would have been different pre-2008 global financial crisis. Living in the post-2008 global financial crisis world, we do not need a crystal ball to predict the future of those banks that do not invest their time and energy to rediscover their role and position in the society. And with the market basically making a joke of genuine effort of traditional banking by proving that negative interest rates can indeed be a reality, terms such as ‘operational innovation’ has ceased to be the jargons and started to become the KPI’s of C-stack members.

Threats from FinTechs and GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) especially in the area of data does not leave any choice for traditional banks to consider knowing their own customer even more than they traditionally did. Infact even more than what GAFA knows about their own customers. And then there is pressure exerted on the revenue by extensive regulations and supervision measures required by the ECB, EIOPA, ESMA, EBA, NBB, FSMA, the Basel committee on banking supervision and so on. And there is still the bureaucracy that which is very specific for traditional banking. So, let us ask ourselves again.

“Do we need new banking business models?”.

Traditional banks up for the challenge: Given the challenges that traditional banks are facing today, every bank is in one way or another is investing in creating new expertise. Digitalization is in the strategy of every banks. Increasing operational efficiency is no more an option.

Investing in talent attraction and retention is in the top of their agenda. And they have no choice but to innovate with new way of working. And all of these to create alternate sources of revenue.

While there are many alternate sources of revenue, thankfully, there are very few fundamentals that needs to be addressed by the modern banks.

One of the critical fundamentals is the strategy to manage the addressability at volume. This is a new concept that I coin in this article. ‘Addressability at volume’ just like Merkle’s ‘addressability at scale’ refers to transactions like payment transactions and to address the whole volume of it in both real time and batch mechanism. This concept also implies the visualisation of transactional data in a graphical form rather than the traditional row/ column form. And indeed data management is at the core of everything and will be an implicit requirement for all the features that we discuss from hereon.

The world of use cases: Let us go through a list of use cases that are enabled due to the smart usage of data available

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Thought Leaders Corner in the volume of (payment) transactions that happen throughout the day. Indeed, these use cases will not be a reality unless either the addressability at volume is embraced or the Data quality is confirmed at the source.

Use Case 1: Monitor positions, Anticipate liquidity shortfalls, optimize collaterals, reduce counterparty risks, manage fraud, decrease sanctions screening, increase preapproved credit (at same risk exposure scale) and thus enable targeted pricing: There are immense benefits for all counterparties involved in a payment transaction by strategizing and addressing at scale and embracing smart enterprise wide data usage. It all starts from the fact that by integrating data from payment processing systems, databases and external sources, enterprise-wide insight can be delivered to payment system operators. This could in turn help the payment system operators to monitor positions and anticipate liquidity shortfalls.

Payment service providers, on the other hand ,

can manage their liquidity and optimize collateral, as well as reduce counterparty risk across all systems. On the other hand, banks can improve customer service by cross account balance optimization and proactively share working capital demand anticipation. Let us not forget that fraud can be reduced and the burden of sanctions screening can be reduced heavily.

All these insights can contribute to an accurate measurement of costs and improved profitability through targeted pricing. Banks can also improve their revenue with increased pre-approved credit customers and a bigger portfolio for the same. This is all achieved while the risk exposure remains at the same scale.

Use case 2: Collateral and liquidit y management in high value payment systems: As far as the high value payment systems such as Real Time Gross Settlements is concerned, managing the collaterals and accuracy of liquidity is mandatory. This is so that the opportunity cost on the securities pledged can be minimised

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and at the same the execution speed for such payments can be improved.

Use case 3: Forecast overdraft limit, Forecast value of repos, Forecast value of securities to be pledged, prepare asset deployment to manage liquidity shortfalls: There is also a clear value in forecasting the overdraft limit that is requested to the central bank and also the value of repos or securities to be pledged. The forecasting capability can be greatly improved by adopting transaction analytics and integrating it with addressability at volume. This is made possible by being able to predict the customer payment flows as well the amount to cover the settlement of securities trading through mediums such as ‘delivery versus payments’. Fine-tuning of the models with real time data from the materialized flows allows banks to proactively schedule payments in line with SLA and also adjust collateral levels. This process can be scaled for a tremendous benefit by just maintaining the insight of assets. This is because if a liquidity shortfall arises (as predicted) then, assets could be deployed and thus being proactive rather than reactive.

Use case 4: predict intra-day credit risk, route payments smartly, monitor intra and end day positions, manage collaterals, resolve gridlocks.

I would like to present a term of my own to refer to the data that is available as a result of participating in a settlement. This is especially true for correspondent banks. These banks settle on behalf of the indirect members of the payment systems. Since correspondent banks play a critical role in the settlement process for the indirect banks, they do receive a set of data of the indirect banks. I will like to call this data set as ‘emergent data’. Using ‘emergent data’ it is feasible for the correspondent banks to predict many variables such as intra-day credit risk that indirect members of the payment system might create. This insight then becomes very interesting for smart routing of payments given the liquidity position, the SLA’s and the agreed fees. Not just the correspondent banks, central banks and also the payment service operators can use this intelligence created out of emergent data to forecast many variables such as intra and end of day positions, collateral shortfalls and monitor positions against limits and liquidity reservations.

Gridlock resolution becomes rather straight forward due to emergent data.

Use case 5: Pre-advice, warn customer on alternatives, enable operational innovation: There is probably no customer who does not like pre-advices before their large movements.

This is especially the case if the pre-advices are free. These pre-advices enables customers to act smartly. Banks can indeed use the enterprisewide data available about the customers, integrated intelligently and easily accessible to forecast and the performing transaction analytics using the cash flow data across accounts of the customers enables such pre-advices possible.

Using data from various sources, both external and internal, it is also possible for the banks to warn their customers on alternatives. As a part of operational innovation, it is possible to create ‘just in time financing’. By using the data that is available and embracing addressability at volume and performing transaction analytics, it is feasible to predict the demand for finance in a value chain or any‘data driven customer journey’ of the bank.

Use case 6: Forecast intra-day exposures, monitor positions, Targeted pricing: Data and analytics with addressability at volume can enable banks to forecast exposures such as intra-day exposures to all their major payment counterparties. However unlikely is the common settlement mechanism disruption, it is possible for settlement banks to use the power of data combined with addressability at volume using analytics to monitor positions. Targeted pricing based on funding or intervention cost towards specific counterparties and their impact on profitability is made possible by such insights.

Use case 7: Fraud Management and other such sanction management: Fraud management is one of the critical aspects of payment processing world today. As we start to encode data into graph databases and start visualising data in graph visualisations, there is a great opportunity to identify new fraud signatures which are most probably not apparent in traditional column/row visualizations. Indeed, this assumes real time ingestion of transaction data and complex event processing to integrate and link and apply graph modelling techniques.

This also implies and relies heavily on the quality of data and the ability of the technology infrastructure to address at volume.

Data profiling techniques when applied on transaction profiling enables the creation of business rules to deal with instant payments. This

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is almost a no-compromise feature in the modern instant payment systems especially because of the regulatory constraints and their emphasis on Anti-money laundering, Anti-Terrorist funding etc.

Conclusion – we do need new business models: Embracing the strategy of addressability of data at volume with proper data management will

yield multiple benefits and also enable bank to understand its customer even better. This concept is indeed applicable to the banking world that is beyond payments processing. And yes, we do need new banking models for sure. This is now established beyond any doubts.

Sudaman Thoppan heads big data and enterprise data management (Information management) at BNP Paribas Fortis. He is involved in defining and implanting the data architecture vision of the bank along with rolling out the data management and governance principles to business domains. Masters in computer science and an MBA specialising in Marketing, Sudaman also holds a super specialisation in business analytics and intelligence.

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expert interview

BREXIT - Will it change the course of the payments world?

Dean Kelly

Gary Goldsmith

A highly regarded entrepreneur. Over the last 15 years, Dean has built, grown and exited several agencies that were working across a variety of sectors. Dean, who was once the youngest CEO of a stock-market listed business, has received many awards and accolades throughout his career, not only for successfully growing and exiting businesses, but also for his skills in acquisitions, disposals, turnarounds, and market defining service origination.

Gary was one of the original people behind the success of SThree PLC and a founding father of IT contract recruitment. An experienced Board Director, NED, business consultant and Growth Accelerator coach, Gary’s achievements within various sectors have been well documented and his status is still a draw at any sector seminar.

At the moment Gary is investing in start-ups and enabling exciting businesses to grow faster in an in to exit during this cycle.

PCM: What implications will Brexit have on the Financial Services market in the UK and Europe alike?

services sector spends it time looking for an even keel, which is something we have seen in this industry for the last year. At best, the implications of Brexit are just speculations as most experts and economists have been proved wrong so far. Brexit should be seen as a political decision, not an economical one. As time shows, free markets, trade and entrepreneurialism survive most shocks to the system.

DK: Whenever there is an election, a material political movement on policy, or big decisions such as war/devolution, there is volatility in the markets. However, the markets have been volatile for some time and geopolitical agendas have fueled a herd mentality in the past. The impact of such is that financial

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expert interview DK: Confidence can be knocked, as most people don’t like change or uncertainty, especially when investing in a new enterprise. The resilient nature of the startup means the majority of these businesses will continue to choose the UK as their base. The initial noise was around moving for the right to work or free trade, as many Tech focused startups have multinational teams working cross-borders. However, as the dust has settled these shouts have been replaced with many strong and favorable reasons to stay. The right to work for most will no doubt be protected and technology, built to transcend old systems, facilitates a borderless worldview. The big FinTech investors such as Balderton Capital, Index Ventures, Atomico, FoundersFactory and Local Globe have all confirmed the UK is still their first choice for new investments, along with KKR one of the US biggest investors, who have just injected £50m of funding into a London based Cybersecurity startup. I doubt there will be any financial motivation to move unless it was already being considered.

PCM: W hat will happen to “Passporting Rights” of the Banks & Financial Services firms?

DK: As the big banks hold huge political clout, I believe passporting will be resolved. Although we hear EU ministers stating that the UK would have to accept ‘free movement of people’ if we want to retain our passporting rights within the EEA, my feelings are that pragmatism will win. Financial institutions from Switzerland and the USA have such rights although they operate outside of the EEA, even though they’re based in London. I doubt that any bank will move in its entirety to an EU capital, perhaps a division. We need to recognize that several banks, such as Credit Suisse and UBS have been reducing back office numbers long before Brexit and as with many PLC’s putting out numbers, Brexit provides for a great scapegoat to pre-referendum issues. I’m sure that many of the EU countries would like the financial crown worn by London, but it’s very hard to recreate such longevity, stability and security overnight. For example, last year the EU general court found that the ECB “does not have the

London remains a imporant hub for the financial industry

competence necessary to regulate the activity of securities clearing systems” and therefore cannot force operators to be Eurozone based when handling significant euro-denominated business, Brexit doesn’t change this. With the call for ‘ever-closer union’ within the EU, the banks’ fear of process enforcement, competitive restriction, and general regulation will ensure there is sufficient pressure to resolve passporting. It is also something that Philip Hammond, the new chancellor, has put at the top of his ‘to-do list’.

PCM: Do you think London will still be the “Financial Services Hub” for Europe? Why? DK: If I would have to answer in one word, I would say: yes. London has been the financial capital of the Europe, or the world, since the fall of Venice and a unique trading hub since antiquity. I therefore doubt that a measured Brexit will change this in any lasting, material way. Of course, the stories of change will be rife as every major EU economy will be keen to entice business away from London, but as previously mentioned, the history, stability, security and infrastructure of London would be hard to match. London is also the most cosmopolitan, integrated and vibrant city in the world and therefore a constant magnet for young and highly skilled labor.

PCM: How do you think this will affect the recruitment industry in that space?

GG: The financial sector has been a relatively flat sector within the UK recruitment market for the last 12 months, following previous years of high growth. The high levels of employment

are finding a natural point, balanced with the growth of FinTech, which removes some of the FTE roles in FS, but increases them in Tech. Once Brexit takes place and a new immigration system is established, we may see an uplift as outcomes become more predictable, with new systems and plans being implemented.

PCM: Do you think we will see more (or less) of a certain kind of job in the next few of years?

GG: It is very hard to tell at the moment, as there are many other factors at play in the world economy that could cause issues other than a uncoupling of Great Britain from the EU. Brexit has brought to the forefront China and Asia’s slowing growth, Italian banks that will require a huge bail out, high levels of world debt, out of control public spending, housing bubbles, low productivity and The United States has $10 trillion of government bonds they’re not paying zero back on, so the world is in a precarious position.

However, the membership of the RDLC have been shooting out record months since the result of the referendum. So the show must go on and recruiters will help the world grow their way out of these financial instabilities. Within FS we may see more roles around the impending MiFID II, as well as any system changes required due to the separation of Great Britain from the EU. Tech within FS will continue to grow, FinTech and Cybersecurity especially.

Also the emergence of Blockchain could open up many new opportunities.

Rational optimism eventually smooths out the bumps in the road, as new skill sets evolve and the next generation of companies look to make their mark in the world.

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Spotlight You 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.

startup spotlight

“My vision for PaySwitch is that it becomes a complete payment hub when it comes to the Ghanaian market”

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lectronic payment systems have rapidly spring up as a means of business transaction globally in recent times. Most organizations such as banks and insurance companies are making good use of this technology.

Ghana is no exception in using this advanced technology. It is gradually moving away from a cash based economy to an electronic card payment system. We invited Emmanuel OseiAkoto, Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer at PaySwitch Company Limited, for an interview to tell us his story about starting an innovative electronic payment service tailored for the Ghanaian market.

How did PaySwitch come to live? (Origination and idea behind it) I have been involved in Payments for almost 7 years now and it all started with Ecobank, that was in 2011. Over there I was involved in lots of projects, such as switch integrations, Visa & MasterCard certifications, PCI DSS certifications and EMV

certifications. Just last year, I left Ecobank to join a British company where I was responsible for major systems and switch-to-switch integrations.

The market in Ghana is very green when it comes to e-payments and I was convinced there was a lot of areas we can still explore. Almost all the experiences I have with the Ghanaian e-payment market showed me a lot of opportunities that we could have taken and worked further. Therefore, late last year (2015), I thought that it was time to start something on my own, that will leave a legacy from what I have learnt over the years and help build the market as we want. This is because my experience helped in shaping the entire e-payment ecosystem in Ghana. That’s when I started PaySwitch with a product called “theteller”, which allows everybody to buy data online, pay for invoices or bills, buy tickets and many other exciting services (basically a payment hub for all your needs). That’s how PaySwitch came to live in the first place!

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startup Spotlight In Ghana at the moment there is no independent processors of e-payments. The existing solutions are owned by the banks themselves, which are their switches. We also don’t have a central system in place for monitoring fraud across all terminals within the country, so we want to change this and put a system in place. We are also planning on introducing a private label card, strictly Ghanaian. When I started PaySwitch, this was the roadmap I had in mind, that one day, PaySwitch becomes a complete payment hub when it comes to the Ghanaian market.

What is your mission & vision at PaySwitch?

Our mission is to apply high level qualified and well motivated human capital and cutting-edge technologies with the best security and highly selective partnerships and collaboration to bring to the Ghanaian business community a world-class electronic payment system which will ensure safe financial transactions. Our vision is to become the market leader with unsurpassed insight with the highest ability to execute and deliver results in Ghana.

Our target group is split into two - corporates and individuals.

Our business is basically focused on attracting distributors, manufacturers, retailers, service providers, etc. These corporates are enlisted on the “theteller” so they can receive payments for their issued invoices, bills and several other payments. Individuals on the other hand enjoy the convenience and secure way of making all payments for invoices and bills as well as purchasing airtime/data and e-tickets from the comfort of their homes or offices. When it comes to fraud monitoring, the target becomes other payment processors and banks.

Not only do we monitor fraud but we also provide advice and consultancy services in this regard.

What makes you different than any other Payment platform?

When we were launching PaySwitch, one thing we realised was that, almost all of the other payment applications in Ghana today, were merely developed by expert software developers and engineers. They did have the expertise in their precise areas but most did not have the expertise when it comes to electronic payments as a whole. They were just applications that allow you to pay for invoices and bills, transfer money, etc.

Now, what makes us unique from other firms is that we have the total understanding when it comes to electronic payments.

So, our products aren’t just applications that allow you to make payments and transfer money. We consider all levels of world-class standards to meet the top level requirements of the international community to ensure payments are done, and done very well! Our platform “theteller”, unlike the other platforms on the market is not a wallet. We allow you to do payments directly from your source of fund, could be Visa, MasterCard or even Mobile Money Services such as MTN mobile money wallet and Tigo Cash. This gives our users a lot of flexibility, as they don’t have to deposit their money with us, before making any payments or purchases.

For more information about PaySwitch please visit the website https://www.payswitch.com.gh or click the here.

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Which markets do you currently service and where are you planning to expand next?

Our core focus is not Ghana, but the Ghanaians. In the future what we seek to do is introduce a private label card designed for all Ghanaians, and anybody who has a bank account in Ghana. We would like to offer Ghanaians a digital payment method that is identified and designed by them, for them.

We seek to provide flexibility in making payments back home from wherever they are.

What is your ultimate goal for the next two years?

We are building a switch that will allow Ghanaians to use their private label card linked to their Ghana Cedi account to make payments and purchases, transfer and receive money within and outside Ghana. We are also working on developing our security systems to be able to detect and prevent card fraud, both on the issuing and acquiring side in Ghana. Hence, for the coming two years, this is our strategy and this is what we are trying to achieve.

Any exciting news or announcements you would like to share with the community? “theteller” is currently on the market and is available for Ghanaians all over the world. Ghanaians are able to make any purchases directly through the platform such as tickets, airtime and data for both local and international networks as well as pay bills/invoices and transfer/receive money internationally.

The platform also provides the convenience of paying school fees, admissions and several other institutional payments.

An example is a Ghanaian parent living outside Ghana who wants to pay for their child’s school fees, they would be able to pay through the “theteller” which is accessible on both smart devices and the web, using their Visa or MasterCard, GHLink Cards well as any of the mobile money wallets provided by the TelCos in Ghana.

We are now looking for world class partners, in the form of investors to partner with us, in order to grow and be able to attain the level we aspire. We are also looking to partner with other payment firms to introduce products to the Ghanaian market. We are currently in partnership with Mobility International and TransferTo and we seek to partner with similar firms across the world to introduce various e-payment products to the market. These products can range from digital payment technologies, mobile wallets, NFC and HCE solutions.

Emmanuel Osei-Akoto Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of PaySwitch Company Limited.

Emmanuel is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of PaySwitch Company Limited. He is in charge of all technical solutions and services and also leading the development of “theteller”. He has over 7 years’ experience developing and supporting various electronic payments systems and platforms within the banking industry. He has lead and participated in several projects including Switch-to-Switch Integrations, Visa/MasterCard acquiring/Issuing and personalization certifications.

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SPECIAL FEATURE

Sumbon - Ushering the new era of Philanthropy Abhay Tewari Founder & CEO @Sumbon Abhay was a New Product Operations Manager at Apple (8 years) before starting Sumbon. There he managed the development, manufacturing and launch of multiple generations of Mac products.

He is passionate about addressing the issues of homelessness, poverty and cancer research. He has an MBA from University of Chicago, Booth and studied Industrial Engineering at The Ohio State University.

PCM: Please tell us more about Sumbon and you came to introduce this startup? (Origination) We started with the name “Summum bonum” which in Latin means the highest good. Our interpretation of helping other people is the highest good and that’s how we formed the name “Sumbon”. How we started this company was very serendipitous, we were trying to teach our daughter about the value of charitable giving. When she was turning four, we told her, “Sweetie, no birthday presents this year, instead we are going to find a small charity and raise money for it and give what we collected away”. The idea was, when we give the money away, we were hoping that the charity would come back and tell us what happened with the donation so we could tell our daughter and she could feel good about it.

Teaching the values of giving was really important to us. Both my wife and I grew up in India. Our parents were not wealthy but they wanted to share whatever they had, so we grew up around those values. Coming back to our daughter’s situation, we started looking for a charity for her birthday to raise money for. We realised it was a great idea, but the execution was hard, and we had trouble finding a small charity. I mean, even if you find some on Google, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is any good. The one mechanism usually used for discovering anything new in the world is asking your friends or getting any kind of social validation. However, this does not work with charities because people do not like to talk about giving, it feels like bragging so most people don’t do it.

We couldn’t find a small charity that we liked, so we ended up picking one of the big ones. My daughter raised about $1.000 for her birthday. Sadly, when we gave the money away, we did not even get a thank you card from the organization. We were hoping to find out what the charity did with the money, so we could show our daughter what did she give up her presents for.

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It was a bad experience. At the same time, every two months after that, we started getting something in return and if you want to take a guess… a request for more money and that came without fail.

I started thinking, does this even work? I don’t know of any other industry where you can treat your customer like this and expect to get more and more money from them on an ongoing basis, without providing any value to them. Three and a half years ago we started looking into this and assumed that there must be something out there already, we just didn’t know about it. At a certain point we realised that there wasn’t.

When we did the market research, we found out that there are not many companies focused on trying to change this space, which is a problem. Considering the market size, it came as a huge surprise to us that just in the US individuals give $258 billion a year but the process of giving is quite inefficient.

It boils down to two problems. First of discovery, i.e. finding a charity is very hard. Secondly, people give primarily for one reason - to make a difference, so obviously they want to know what difference did they make and if they don’t find out, they usually stop giving. If you come over to the non-profit side they have exact same problems. This is where we started thinking, that the solution is quite obvious. If you could build the marketplace to connect the two sides, make it easy for individuals to give and make it easy for non-profits to get connected to the right people, you could solve this problem.

This is how it all started and last year, around June I left Apple to start working on this project full-time. The final impetus was a conversation with my 6-year-old daughter, I asked her “Sweetie, should I quit Apple to do this?” (she loved my Apple job), but she goes “Yes daddy, you should!”, I asked “Why would you say that?”. She goes, “Daddy, when you build computers for Apple, you only help some people. If you build Sumbon, you can help lots of people”, I was floored by that. Then she said

SPECIAL FEATURE “Daddy, can I help you in some way?”, (in my head I’m thinking, this is getting more and more interesting), so I ask her “How do you want to help me?”, “I have four dollars, can I give it to you?”, she said. Following that, she put four dollars of pocket change in an envelope and gave them to me. That’s when it hit me. If she gets it, then we must be doing something right and that’s our motivation!

Atul Awate Co-Founder & CTO at Sumbon

What is your mission & vision at Sumbon? How are you different than other intermediaries? – How are you ushering the new era of Philanthropy?

Our mission is to connect the like-minded donors with the likeminded non-profits and make things easier for both sides. If you think about it, the older generation is just used to writing a cheque and not hearing back from the non-profit, other than hearing a thank you. So far this works but people who have grown up in the information age are used to knowing whatever they want. Nowadays, we even know what our friends are having for breakfast. Here, I’m giving away my hard earned money and all I’m getting in return is just a “thank you”, and “trust us we will use your money well”, that’s not going to work very well.

The traditional model of Philanthropy needs to change to engage with the generation shift. If you talk to non-profits, you’ll hear that millennials are not keen on being engaged. My question here is “Are you engaging them the right way, in the channels that they want to be talked to?”. Unfortunately, this is what they aren’t doing. Our goal is to make a very transparent and easy infrastructure for both parties to interact. Think about how simple Fidelity has made the time investing period, you can create a portfolio, you can allocate how much money you would like to invest in certain funds, it sends money away to the mutual funds and it keeps them accountable to come back and tell you your personalised performance. Why can’t we use that model in Philanthropy? It’s a model of transparency, you can have your ratings, you can have whatever you want, but that’s the basic infrastructure that’s needed and that’s what we are building.

We want the non-profits to discover the people that their values resonate with, much more easily. Right now one of the most used channels to raise money from individual donors is to hold dinner/banquet events. During such events, the national average in the US, for one dollar raised is almost 50 cents.

The second most used channel is by direct mail. The statistics show that in the US for every dollar raised, the charities end up spending between a dollar to dollar twenty-five. So, it is mind boggling how inefficient this is. We are trying to make that more efficient. The problem is that the donors probably don’t know about it, so they keep thinking that this model works.

The younger generation wants to be more engaged. They are more willing to donate, if they see their friends donating.

According to a study I have recently read, 43% of millennials give only when they see (on social media channels) that their friends are doing it. We want to focus on sharable impact stories from the non-profits and making it easy for the

champions to share. As an example, I might never share on social media that I gave money to a charity x but if they came back and told me “Thank you Abhay for helping us graduate Matthew from college”, I would be proud of that and will share the information on social media and even if only 20 of my friends like it, still, 20 people would see it as a trusted source.

That’s how we aim to change the model of Philanthropy.

How are you going to make ‘giving’, a part of people’s lives?

That’s a great question. Interesting enough, giving is already part of peoples lives. In the US, 95% of the households give on average $3.000 a year and these numbers are not very different from the UK and Australia. The trouble is, it is not very satisfying. There are a few data sources that state, the large portion of Americans continue to give to bigger non-profits, even though they know they are not doing a good job with it.

Our interpretation is that they have the sense of wanting to do something good but at the same time, they are willing to live with the inefficiencies. We want to change this; we want to make it simple.

Think of how simple retirement fund investing is. In the US it’s called 401K and it’s so simple, you just set it up once and you don’t touch it for years. The reason it works, is you tell them, how much you want to invest in and how frequently and the system keeps reporting the performance back to you, where you can go look at it anytime you want, we are using the same model. Imagine if you are sponsoring a kid in India, wouldn’t it be nice to see the progress of that kid, how he has been growing or progressing, all in one place? You might not login for five years, but whenever you login you would be able to see that progress and that’s what people give for, people give to make a difference. Imagine if you could send a message to that kid, “hey, how are you?”, just by saying that, the communication between you and that kid became humanized, now that kid would want to know about you and be like you.

That’s huge, people in poverty don’t need only money, they need inspiration to get out of their tough circumstances. Just

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Rana Bhattacharjee the challenges I see in the non-profit industry is a traditional Co-Founder & Business practice that since it’s a non-profit the employees should be Development Manager at Sumbon

paid less. The problem with that is, they get really smart people for a finite amount of time, because the motivation runs out after two, three years. When they want to buy a house or a car and they can’t afford it, they leave. Now imagine, you trained this person for three years, they have all this industry knowledge and all of a sudden they leave and you have to start all over again. I’m not sure if that’s the best approach.

by making such interactions you provide people with so much more inspiration than what they can see around them. That’s the new age of Philanthropy we are focussed on.

Why did you think of a non-profit as your startup?

Just to clarify, we are a for profit organisation helping nonprofits. The reason we want to do that is, just by becoming non-profit it would be really hard to scale. I personally don’t like the word “non-profit” because people start thinking it’s not a business, but it is a business, even running a charity is a business. This is where the big frustration comes, when some of the executive directors or CEOs of these charities don’t think of themselves as running a business and this have been a hard experience educating the non-profits on that.

However, we are finding good partners that we want to team up with and support.

What we realised is, the solutions already exist out there, it’s just the application of it that is missing. We want to change the world and we believe that what we are working on, can.

Americans donate an impressive sum of $258 billion to bigger non-profits, despite knowing the inefficiencies. Now imagine if we could channel just one billion dollars to the right places, how much of a difference we could make in the world? Not only the difference to the charities but one could also make very good financial returns, also for our investors. To me, it seemed like a no-brainer. The reason we also want to make financial return is that we want to scale Sumbon to the whole world and to do that, we need to hire the smartest people we can.

I used to work for Apple, if I want to go hire one of my excolleagues, I need to pay them at the same level. Moreover,

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Before we wrote the first line of code, we did a lot of research on the existing solutions and noticed that almost all of them focused on one thing - how to make the financial transaction part of it easy (give money, get tax receipt, etc.). The assumption there is, you already have a donor, who is ready to give, but financial transaction is hard. However, from our perspective that is not solving is the real problem, which is the emotional part of the transaction. People are emotionally attached to a cause and that emotional transaction was not getting captured (I’m giving the money, but I want to know what difference I am making). Our focus is making it easy for the non-profits to come back and tell you the difference you are making so you can feel good about it and hence you would want to give more.

Where do you see Sumbon in the next 5 years?

In the next 5 years we want to have presence in at least 10 countries and should be processing a few billion dollars of transaction. We look at GoFundMe as an inspiration. They went to one billion dollars in ~7 years’ time and we want to do it even better, we want to do it in 5 years. We know that’s not going to be easy. There are lots of challenges, lots of things that we need to do during that time, including finding investors that align with our mission and thinking. Our North Star is, wanting to change the whole way Philanthropy is looked at and we want to make giving a satisfying experience. We have just launched in January and in the last 6 months we already have non-profits from the US, India, UK, South Africa and Australia.

Any exciting news / announcements you would like to share with the community?

One of the exciting news is (this was a huge validation of our own success and efforts so far), we just got recognition from the UK government as a business with exceptional potential and they want us to be part of their global entrepreneur program and want us to expand to the UK whenever we are ready. We are really excited about it. The second one is, we will be launching in India very soon (in the next few weeks), we are just going through some of the final regulatory issues.

Then we will expect see a lot more growth on our system.

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Events Johannesburg, South Africa Join Cashless Payments Summit as we discuss ways in which going cashless can benefit a country’s economy. Our panel of speakers comprises a host of leading experts in the digital financial services sector, and the topics of discussion include, How business can boost the cashless drive, Financial inclusion and many more.

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London, United Kingdom Keeping up with technology is no longer good enough, you need to keep up with customer expectations. The customer wants to have a personal experience, so how can you make it happen? With a remodelled agenda, guided by an expert advisory board, Europe’s Customer Festival will focus on every aspect of the customer journey from start to finish.

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The event will focus on the latest technology trends and advances within tourism and hospitality industries. Hearing the inspirational presentations, prepared by our expert-speakers, will offer participants new ideas for developing their products and fresh viewpoints on future projects. Besides the keynotes, networking and knowledge sharing will be an important part of the summit and it will be an ideal platform to assimilate new ideas on how to improve products and grow profitability.

Cairo, Egypt Endorsed by the Egyptian Banking Institute, Banking Tech North Africa will feature industry experts from North Africa including The Egyptian Banking Institute, Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, Gulf Bank Algeria, Central Bank of Tunisia and more. They will also discuss different banking technology solutions, examine regional regulations, and explore the evolution of the North African banker in order to prepare for system implementation.

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Mondato Summit Asia will explore the many issues surrounding the transition to the next generation of digital finance & commerce (DFC) services across Southeast Asia. The conference will touch upon the diverse use cases seen across the region – ranging from fundamental P2P transfers to savings, loans and credit to products that leverage social media, eCommerce and smartphone penetration.

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