The Fintech Power 50 Annual Guide 2021 by thepower50

THE ANNUAL GUIDE TO THE MOST INFLUENTIAL, INNOVATIVE COMPANIES AND POWERFUL FIGURES WITHIN THE FINTECH INDUSTRY OFFICIAL PAR TNERS

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WELCOME TO THE THIRD EDITION OF THE FINTECH POWER 50 “Out of adversity comes opportunity.” Boy, did Benjamin Franklin get that right.

2020 was tough. Nowhere in the world was left unscathed and no one left unmoved by the scale of the trauma. Now, as we start putting the pieces back together – in, hopefully, a more enlightened and empathetic way – a huge and undeniable truth stares financial services in the face. The pandemic has breached the digital dam. The tide of change that was lapping at our feet is now a torrent and there’s no more standing on the shoreline. But who’s ready to seize the opportunity? The pioneers in this year’s Fintech Power50 cohort certainly are. They’ve seen what needs fixing in a post-pandemic world and their digital-first DNA is programmed to respond. The prestigious Fintech Power50 list not only showcases the most exciting companies and informed individuals in the industry, but also offers members access to The Fintech Power50’s network of fintech companies and leaders. Other benefits include guest spots on webinars and podcasts, the opportunity for opinion-led

JASON WILLIAMS articles in The Fintech Times year and a half and, with newspaper and invitations to super-human effort, networking events as well as rose to the multiple support with talent acquisition. challenges. But the Talent will likely be a key emphasis is on the ‘human’; MARK WALKER battleground as we move now they must concentrate on through 2021 – not only in digitising infrastructure to terms of numbers but also make it fit for purpose in a diversity. We’re delighted to digital-first world. Some of the welcome eight female-led major client wins by fintechs in businesses into the Power50 this this annual would suggest that is year, but, as fintech influencer now beginning to happen at pace. Theodaura Lau points out on page Another big shift since our last edition 45, the industry is still a long way off is in the maturity and mainstreaming of reflecting all groups in society. She makes crypto and DLT-based businesses. You’ll a powerful case for encouraging ‘inclusive find several of our 2021 heroes carving entrepreneurship’ in financial services if out a place for trusted distributed we want to really democratise them. By networks, be they exchanges, regtechs building an increasingly diverse Fintech or facilitators of international trade. Power50 alumni we hope to contribute to There is no doubt that the stature that objective. of these companies will increase as Several themes have emerged as we long-standing institutions facilitate the compiled this year’s annual. storage and exchange of alternative Incumbents came currencies. It will be interesting to see under pressure how fiat and crypto mindsets rub along. over the last This year, we’ve also noticed more references to social and environmental values. Chris Skinner, for one, believes on page 12 that ‘most fintech firms have a purpose in their beating hearts that wants to do good for society and the planet’. So, Fintech Power50 of 2021, let’s get on with building that better world!

This year‘s Fintech Power50 have seen what needs fixing in a post-pandemic world

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SPECIALIST FINTECH ACCOUNTANTS At Moore Kingston Smith, we have a dedicated team of specialist Fintech accountants and advisers. Our experience in both the technology and financial services sectors enables us to advise clients on all elements of business operations: •

Audit and accounts

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Data privacy and cyber security

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Tax compliance and planning

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Digital transformation

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Strategic growth services

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Fundraising, valuation services and corporate finance

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Regulatory compliance

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Global expansion and connections

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HR and payroll

www.mks.co.uk/fintech

Get in touch today Tom Moore: Head of Fintech Sector Group

T +44 20 7566 3817 tmoore@mks.co.uk www.mks.co.uk

SPEAKING UP FOR FINTECH Angela Yore and Kimberley Waldron, Co-founders of SkyParlour, on why focussing on people over product will be key to building a sustainable UK industry in the New Normal 2020 was an extraordinary year for the world, with everything from the global pandemic to civil rights movements driving widespread changes in how we live, work and interact with one another. As social distancing measures accelerated shifts towards e-commerce and digital payments, the UK fintech scene thrived under the pressure. But, as the dust settles on the pandemic, how do we make sure it continues to grow at a sustainable rate. The likely answer will be through a combination of supportive government regulation, private sector investment and fintechs themselves continuing to champion corporate values and social good. As always, in a competitive market, communication will also be key in making sure fintechs have the right conversations around their products with the right people at the right time. Going by the recently released Kalifa Report, however, the UK’s future looks bright from a regulatory perspective. One of the key areas it highlights is the need for the industry to focus on its people and talent. This doesn’t just mean introducing policies such as a fast-track visa scheme to access foreign talent in the short term, but putting in place the right measures to nurture the next generation of fintech innovators. www.thepower50.com

In practice, this means investing in access to education and embedded work placements to encourage more people to take on roles in the industry, paving the way to a more diverse and successful fintech scene, both in terms of gender and culture, as well as geographically. As it stands, the UK fintech industry is largely built around London. Figures suggest that London-based fintech generated 91 per cent of the UK’s fintech investment last year. But we’re starting to see a robust fintech ecosystem developing throughout the UK. The recent news that Manchester was recognised in Mambu’s top 50 cities for fintech is a positive sign of this, placing it second in the UK and ninth in Europe. Promisingly, the report also saw three new cities included in the study, bringing the total number of UK fintech hubs to 13. The UK government is rightfully staking a large part of the country’s economic recovery on this growing fintech scene, and it looks as though this optimism will be matched by private investors. Despite a challenging start to 2020, worldwide investment in fintech rose by 14 per cent, with UK firms garnering the second most equity globally ($4.1 billion), after the US. But the UK will have to continue to develop its talent and ideas if it is to retain its position.

FINDING A VOICE In a world where customers are more likely to support brands whose values align with their own, a continued focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) will be vital for fintechs to continue to grow. From delivering customer-centric products for those impacted by COVID-19 to creating digital platforms for relief disbursement, throughout the pandemic, fintechs were able to use their technology to deliver timely and tangible social good.

Delivering such sustainable financial services, developing the right talent, and generating investment won’t matter, though, if fintechs aren’t able to communicate effectively. This is complicated by the modular nature of the industry, with a network of partners and specialist providers each focussing on one element of the ecosystem. In such a crowded market, identifying your core values and USPs, and conveying these effectively to the correct audience can be the difference between scaling successfully or being a flash in the pan. These fintechs all go through similar stages on the commercial journey, from initial concept through to first funding rounds, and later international recognition and even IPOs, and their communications needs change along the way. This is why we diversified our approach, launching SkyParlour Started and Scale, and underpinning these services with SkyParlour Consult to help fintechs of all sizes find their voice. With a focus on people and causes as well as product, we can help them create a welcoming culture of sustainable growth.

AT A GLANCE Based in the UK, SkyParlour is a communications agency for the international fintech, payments, cybersecurity and e-commerce industries. It has been amplifying technology brands for more than a decade. Its services include brand strategy, PR, media relations, multimedia content creation, brand development, crisis communications, spokesperson profiling and social media management. WEBSITE: www.skyparlour.com TWITTER: @SkyParlour

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Welcome to the #HomeofFinTech Rise, created by Barclays, is a global community of the world’s top innovators working together to create the future of financial services.

We bring the FinTech community together to:

Connect We operate state-of-the-art workspaces in two of the world’s top FinTech ecosystems: London

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New York

Each Rise location offers a unique environment specially designed for the FinTech community to connect, collaborate and build together with Barclays.

Create We continuously pivot, evolve and adapt at Rise. Our awardwinning range of programmes are geared to supercharge a FinTech’s progress: from developing the first PoC to winning a major partnership deal. All supported by our Barclays network of experts, customers, clients and partners.

Scale We focus on the growth and success of our community members, and provide unparalleled support through our specially curated programme of training, events and workshops from across the world, helping FinTechs achieve their full potential.

To join our community and keep in touch with the latest Rise news, go to bit.ly/risesubscribe.

@ThinkRiseGlobal

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Rise is a trade mark of Barclays PLC, used under licence. Registered Number is 1026167. Registered office: 1 Churchill Place, London E14 5HP. © Barclays 2021

Pierre Berger, Partner with responsibility for financial services and the insurance sector at DLA Piper Belgium, outlines how it helps incumbent and new players navigate the legal landscape

ADVISOR THE TRUSTED AVISOR Technology is redefining the financial services sector and, in particular, how organisations interact with their clients. DLA Piper’s global multi-disciplinary team leverages the experience of its financial services, insurance, corporate, capital markets, tax, IP and IT practices to offer integrated, full-service legal solutions to assist its financial services, insurance and technology sector clients navigate this increasingly complex environment. The firm is the trusted advisor of major established players and of many new market entrants, and is regarded as a thought leader in the fintech sector. It supports clients with the following:

STRATEGIC PROJECTS With the proliferation of new market entrants, established players looking to embrace new business models, and technology providers offering competitive advantage, much greater focus has been placed on strategic collaborations than ever before. DLA Piper has experience in: ■ Advising a UK-based venture capital (VC) firm on its partnership with a leading digital accelerator/incubator ■ Assisting a Belgian bank’s collaboration with an account aggregation and payment initiation provider and development of related products

automatically monitor, execute and enforce a legal agreement). DLA Piper has advised on cutting-edge transactions by: ■ Supporting a blockchain supplier with a focus on smart contracts, including developing templates ■ Assisting a blockchain company with its global roll-out of a financial blockchain-as-a-service model

FINTECH PLATFORMS The proliferation of new fintech platforms, distribution arrangements and channels to market, is a development that DLA Piper is uniquely placed to advise on. It has been involved in: ■ Advising an artificial intelligence (AI) company on all legal matters relating to implementation of its AI advisor platform in commercial banking ■ Assisting a fintech with its pilot automatic credit granting platform

FUNDING AND M&A DLA Piper has been at the vanguard of some of the most complex funding arrangements and transactions, including: ■ Advising a corporate VC fund on all its strategic investments in fintech, digital and internet of things (IoT) businesses ■ Advising a billing and payment solution in its acquisition by a leading software and services provider

PAYMENTS & PAYMENT SERVICES DLA Piper has unparalleled experience in the payments services market globally, acting for organisations throughout the value chain. It has helped in: ■ Advising a major card scheme on the governance of its scheme rules, implementing payment methods and creating a contactless payment scheme ■ Assisting one of the GAFAs (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) with the development of its payment products

FINTECH REGULATORY FOCUS The financial services regulatory team assists with authorisation, advising on the services that can be undertaken without requiring authorisation and in negotiations with the regulator. It has: ■ Advised a US-based software company on various regulatory requirements that drive its know-your-customer platform ■ Assisted several banks in relation to their pan-European licensing and crossborder product distribution

INSURTECH

DLT AND SMART CONTRACTS

FINTECH STARTUP WORK

DLA Piper is advising existing insurance companies and new entrants on the regulatory challenges they (may) face in this rapidly changing sector. ■ DLA Piper is appointed as a major insurer’s sole global strategic advisor, acting on a range of ground-breaking digital initiatives, products and services

Distributed ledger technology (DLT) can rapidly speed up data processing. Moreover, it can help with recording transactions and data for regulatory and tax purposes. DLT is also used in smart contracts (i.e. a computer code running on a blockchain, which can

DLA Piper has a presence in the main fintech hubs and advises and supports startups, while protecting them from potential pitfalls in the early stage by: ■ Assisting with their product launch and licence applications

Visit www.dlapiper.com or contact Pierre Berger at pierre.berger@ dlapiper.com

www.thepower50.com

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M A R Q E TA

THE AGE OF THE DIGITAL BUILDER Marqeta spotlights the unsung heroes who are busy constructing an API infrastructure so customer journey architects can reimagine our world In our modern lives, each and every one of us is surrounded by what we might term an invisible construction site. We’re talking about the ever-expanding infrastructure that forms the foundations of the fast-growing API economy. The developers on this infrastructure are unsung heroes whom we know as

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digital builders. Many may not even realise the extent digital builders have come into their own in recent years.

DIGITAL BUILDERS ARE FORCES IN INNOVATION TODAY Over the last 20 years, digital builders have become economy-shaping professionals by innovating with

technology to change behaviours and improve consumer experience – which has only accelerated during the pandemic. Leading up to COVID-19, traditional banks began to shift and moved from talking about reinventing their core business around digital solutions to actually doing it. Many incumbent banks began accelerating their digital

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plans and using more modern tools provided by fintechs. Neobanks and accounting fintechs are meanwhile making gains across the entire financial ecosystem, serving many millions of B2B and B2C customers across the world. The growth seems likely to accelerate as consumers become inherently more digital during the pandemic. Consumers, businesses, technology and commercial companies are driving forces behind innovation. Consumers want the convenience and flexibility of managing their finances from home on their digital devices, and businesses need the flexibility to manage their banking to avoid losing money and time. With technology continuing to adopt a digital-first approach, fintechs have unbundled traditional banking services to deliver more seamless and positive consumer experiences. Technology continues to drive innovation and improve because of innovation, including the exchange of AI-enabled data, which allows more companies to better personalise products and manage risk intelligently. Because of this, more traditional banks are starting to adopt disruptive innovations to keep up with the most digital-friendly challenger banks.

TOOLS THAT EMPOWER API ECONOMY GROWTH With customer demand for innovative digital payments solutions rising, digital builders need several things, including the right technology, visionary leadership and the freedom and flexibility to test ideas to be successful. Modern digital builders often work their magic by using open APIs – the key technology that enables the API economy to deliver the modern functionality consumers and businesses demand. Prior to modern tools, digital builders used legacy platforms with constraints. Modern APIs are consistent, reliable and intuitive, offering real-time actions and documentation. They enable successful card programmes and offer the freedom to develop products on custom terms, through API-first technology that opens up access and connectivity. It’s customisation for increasingly personalised financial products. www.thepower50.com

BEYOND THE TOOLS: VISIONARY ARCHITECTS Tools are important, but equally important is the relationship between digital builders and visionary architects. Visionary architects focus on defining the customer journey and setting the innovation roadmap. As consumers demand continuous innovation and intuitive products from their card providers, architects understand this and provide digital builders’ input to create the right modern

Visionary architects focus on defining the customer journey and setting the innovation roadmap

technology. Modern card-issuing technology allows the visionary architect and digital builder to work in unison and create card programmes that are designed to deliver world-class customer experiences.

IS YOUR BUSINESS A DIGITAL BUILDER? Many businesses may think they’re building digital, but are they really digital builders? There are various vital benchmarks. First, they need fully

functional products and services built, tested, launched, and enhanced in hours and days rather than months and years. They need to provide end users with real-time consumer experiences, such as transaction notifications, payment transfers, and booking confirmations. And access to data geared towards raising customer engagement through more personalised experiences is increasingly imperative. Digital builders must also allow for hassle-free implementation across international jurisdictions through a single integration platform and full and open API control over the development process. They have an ecosystem mindset that fosters connections with other technologically-minded businesses to deliver enhanced offerings to customers. In summary, today’s rapid pace of innovation means businesses need to constantly invest in modern tools and technology. If you want to succeed in the digital economy, you need to create a space for innovation and remove barriers with partners that will help you continually challenge convention. Marqeta powers modern payment solutions for just such companies, innovating new services and process flows in a digital world.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

Marqeta is the modern card issuing platform empowering builders to bring the most innovative products to the world.

COMPANY: Marqeta

It provides developers with an advanced infrastructure and tools for building highly configurable payment cards. With its open APIs, the Marqeta platform is designed for businesses who want to easily build tailored payment solutions to create best-in-class experiences and power new modes of money movement.

Jason Gardner, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: Oakland, California OFFICES IN: US, UK and Australia TEL: +1 888 462 7738 WEBSITE: www.marqeta.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/marqeta-inc/ TWITTER: @Marqeta

WHAT WE DO We write the code behind the card

FOUNDED: 2010 CATEGORY: Payments KEY PERSONNEL:

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TRUST IN THE SYSTEM Elliptic is committed to taking cryptoassets mainstream. But to do that, everyone in the defi ecosystem must play their part in driving out bad actors and cultivating confidence

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Trust and compliance must be the foundation for any financial system if it is to endure – so nowhere is it more important now to create certainty than in the defi space. With record-breaking ransomware attacks haunting the headlines – audacious in their ambition and execution, and increasingly accompanied by demands to be paid in alternative currency – the industry is acutely aware of the need to

demonstrate publicly that it is taking its responsibility seriously to protect the natant system. Users, investors and mainstream financial counterparties, expect nothing less. And, in the absence of regulatory consensus around crypto, there is a reputational and very real advantage in making the first move. Elliptic has been committed to building a more transparent and safer crypto economy for the past decade – and it is working alongside regulators, www.thepower50.com

ELLIPYTIC defi pioneers and a growing number of financial institutions to achieve it. A case in point is the recent joint project between Elliptic and crypto-focussed regtech Notabene to launch a ready-to-use solution for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to comply with the ‘travel rule’ in financial transactions. The rule has long been used in fiat transactions to help law enforcement agencies detect, investigate and prosecute money laundering and other financial crimes by preserving an information trail about persons sending and receiving money through funds transfer systems. Two years ago, the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — the world’s money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog – recommended that jurisdictions across the globe require VASPs to comply with the same travel rule for crypto. But, as of this year, only a minority of regulators had required its VASPs to do so. In May, FATF warned that the gaps in implementation meant there was no ‘global safeguard to prevent the misuse of VASPs for money laundering or terrorist financing’ and that there would be ‘continued misuse of virtual assets through jurisdictional arbitrage’. Several countries are preparing to introduce the travel rule. But adopting the necessary technology now – in advance of regulation – sends a clear signal from industry that it’s serious about guarding against crypto crime. With Notabene and Elliptic’s integrated solution, VASPs can automate transactions with trusted counterparties, while providing them with the data they need to detect suspicious activity and meet regulatory requirements. Indeed, as more and more countries implement the travel rule, there will be a diminishing number of counterparties prepared to transact with those in jurisdictions that don’t. Meanwhile, regulated financial institutions, many of whom are now offering retail and business customers the opportunity to hold and transact in digital assets, are aware of their potential exposure – directly or indirectly – to www.thepower50.com

crypto money laundering, but are unsure of the detail and extent. Banco Santander recently completed a successful pilot with Elliptic to establish just that. Using Elliptic’s Discovery solution, the bank was able to flag and analyse transactions between its customers and crypto exchanges. It not only helped Banco Santander better understand and

The industry is acutely aware of the need to demonstrate publicly that it is taking its responsibility seriously to protect the system protect its own business by mitigating crypto money laundering risks, but also to understand and help protect its account holders. Elliptic’s Discovery uses advanced blockchain analytics to perform counterparty risk assessment on crypto exchanges at scale. The solution was built using a comprehensive crypto data set, offering more than 97 per cent coverage of crypto transactions by trading volume, along with the largest collection of crypto exchange risk profiles. It's currently used by some of the largest financial institutions globally,

and has helped them not only meet regulatory requirements, but also to achieve efficiency gains within financial crime operations and compliance. Whatever the size of an organisation – or even its sector, as open finance widens the scope of what is and is not a financial organisation – compliance leaders everywhere benefit from understanding what red flags to look for so they can play their part in preventing crime associated with crypto assets. As part of Elliptic’s mission to eradicate bad actors from the cryptoasset ecosystem, it recently published a concise guide to identifying these red flags as well as sharing insights on key cryptoasset typologies for money laundering and terrorist financing. Its intention was to help compliance leaders in crypto businesses and financial institutions benchmark controls and inform policy as the industry and regulators work towards common goals: building trust in crypto, managing risk, and maintaining high standards of regulatory compliance. If the crypto ecosystem anticipates and solves challenges before they become a problem, it will not only engender confidence but also smooth the way for a new, open financial system, one that’s no longer alternative, but most definitely mainstream.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

Elliptic provides blockchain analytics for cryptoasset compliance. Our mission is to protect our customers from financial crime in cryptoassets.

COMPANY: Elliptic

Elliptic is backed by investors including Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, SBI Group, and Santander Innoventures, and has assessed risk on transactions worth several trillion dollars, uncovering activities related to money laundering, terrorist fundraising, fraud and other financial crimes.

FOUNDED: 2011 CATEGORY: Regtech KEY PERSONNEL:

Simone Maini, CEO (right)

HEAD OFFICE: UK OFFICES IN: US, Singapore and Tokyo EMAIL: marketing@elliptic.co WEBSITE: www.elliptic.co LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/ellipticco/ TWITTER: @elliptic

WHAT WE DO Bringing compliance to cryptoassets THEFINTECHPOWER50

CHRIS SKINNNER

READING THE One of the big lessons of 2020 is that financial firms have to stand for something bigger than themselves, says Chris Skinner We all know that 2020 was different. The word used most was unprecedented, although if you’re an American supporter of Donald Trump it was unpresidented. In fintech, it was a fascinating last year. We entered the pandemic with many startups at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of funding rounds. For those last ones, there was little impact; those at the start may have struggled. I was involved in a survey of fintech startups during the winter of 2020, and the findings were stark. Two out of five struggled with funding and half found a negative impact on their cash flows and capital. Having said that, it was an amazing year for the fintechs who had traction and attraction. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, UK fintechs raised more than $2.9billion in funding, more than tripling the amount on the same period in the year before, and several firms like Plaid, Stripe, Klarna and others found their valuations shooting through the roof. Why? Well, when the world locked down, the companies geared to be digital saw success. That’s been great news for those with the right ideas and directions; but it also laid stark the firms with the wrong ideas and directions. Those are the two in five who struggled. That is one key message. Another is that 2020 saw a seismic shift from physical to digital and that was reflected in cryptocurrencies. In March 2020, for those who had $1 in almost any crypto, the value increased to be worth $20 or

more today. In other words, 2020’s lockdown saw the unlocking of a crypto bull market, and it rages on and up. On a personal level, I finally got it – got the fact that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are creating the global currencies of the network. This has frightened most governments, which is why they are all announcing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The thing is, the horse has left the stable, and reining back cryptocurrencies to move money into CBDCs may be too late. The cryptocurrency market exceeded $1trillion of investment in 2021, and is now a thing. It is a thing that cannot be ignored and is now far more real than the plinky-plonky experimentation and challenge of the Bitcoin libertarians of 2019 and before. A third area, which builds on the above two, is that while most people see fintech as being all about payments, due to the success of the Plaids and Stripes of this world, fintech is maturing nicely out of that niche. It embraces and includes cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technologies and blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning, small business banking, commercial and corporate banking, private banking and wealth management, trading platforms and far more. Due to the 2020 pandemic, banks have not only realised this but have also finally started to embrace new digital structures. They signed Cloud contracts that had been under consideration for years, and began to partner with fintechs that add value

Most fintech firms have a purpose in their beating hearts that wants to do good for society and the planet

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RUNES rather than dance around them. I guess the final point I would make is that environment, social and governance (ESG) issues rose significantly in the media as a financial pressure, not just a government one – so much so, that activist movements have created specific agendas to target the financial system through groups such as Money Rebellion, an offshoot of the ESG movement Extinction Rebellion. The good news is that most fintech firms have a purpose in their beating hearts that wants to do good for society and the planet. The bad news for banks is that they appear to have no heart. This is why Barclays and HSBC saw their head offices covered in fake oil with broken windows during their annual general meetings in Spring 2021. This is the clear agenda of the 2020s, one that demands financial institutions – whether banks or fintechs – have a clear purpose. After all, if you don’t stand for something, you fall down. These are the big things that demanded attention in 2021: digital change and transformation; a clear purpose and agenda around ESG; the breakout of crypto and digital currencies; and the awakening of banks to actually work with fintech rather than against it. It will be interesting to see what we’re saying in 2022.

AT A GLANCE Chris Skinner is an independent commentator on the financial markets and fintech, author and the voice behind the Finanser.com blog. His most recent book, Doing Digital: Lessons From Leaders, was published in 2020. He is chair of The Financial Services Club and Nordic Finance Innovation, and is a non-executive director of the fintech consultancy firm 11:FS. WEBSITE: chrisskinner.global TWITTER: @Chris_Skinner

www.thepower50.com

FERNN LIM

BE A LADY THEY SAID... Fernn Lim’s top tips for thriving as a female in the financial technology space I’ve had the privilege to be one of the few females working in financial technology. Thriving in a male-dominated technology environment can be challenging and, along the way, I’ve received tonnes of well-meaning advice. So, how do you stand up for yourself? How do you ‘flex and show your power’? As with life, there aren’t any straightforward answers, but, having attended many women empowerment and networking sessions, here are the top seven tips that I found to be the most useful. To the women leaders in all of us – fresh graduates, experienced hires, career mamas, ladies on a career break, ladies looking for a career pivot – this is for you! The whole is greater than the sum of its parts Remember, your career experiences add up to who you are today. Often, females feel they aren’t ‘good enough’ and have to work doubly hard to prove their worth. Statistically, most women will only apply for a job if they feel they meet 100 per cent of the qualifications. Rarely, do we look back at our past achievements and acknowledge that what we have amassed over the years is more than some bullet points written on a Word document. Our collective self is more than good enough.

Keep punching above your belt This was a mantra that my ex-boss once told me: Be hungry. Stay hungry. Keep showing value. Keep punching above your belt. Be known as the one who always gives 120 per cent. Why be mediocre when you can be awesome?

Girl, stop apologising ‘Sorry to bother you’. ‘Apologies for the delay

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in response’. Sound familiar? The word, sorry, is something women say far too often, without realising how detrimental it can be, both on their reputation a nd on themselves. Women apologise unknowingly, because we try to be empathetic. But by over-apologising, we also tend to shy away from self-promotion and end any achievement with self-deprecating humour or attribute it to luck. Remove the word sorry. We can be assertive without being apologetic.

Master the art of influencing and negotiating Be factual. Be logical. Lay out the pros and cons, but let your proponent decide, with the consequences in mind. Don't let emotions run your conversations. Don't show your frustrations and never forget that your body language can often be louder than spoken words. The importance of negotiating is not about winning at all costs but to enable both parties to win in the long term.

Why be mediocre when you can be awesome? Speak up early; speak up often Always waiting for that perfect moment to speak up? Forget it. The longer you wait, the harder it is for you to interject. And you probably weren't paying attention while waiting for that magical moment. Besides speaking up, raise your hand and ask for the job, ask for the raise! Guys will tell you they are worth $XXX and ladies, you shouldn't have to feel shy and nuance your ask.

Exercise is performance. Sleep is performance No-brainer here as we all know exercise releases dopamine and endorphins, which help us perform better

AT A GLANCE Fernn Lim is currently Chief of Staff at nexus, a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) solution by SC Ventures, powered by Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) where she also sits on SCB’s Diversity & Inclusion Council. Among many influencer awards, Fernn was voted one of the Top 5 Women in Fintech (APAC), among the Top 15 Fintech Women (Asia), and Top 25 Women in Fintech (global). In 2020, Fernn was selected for Money 20/20 RISE UP Academy, which focusses on developing the next generation of women leaders in financial services and fintech. at work. Sleep is equally important. Our memory and alertness improves; our blood flow and brain structures improve. It’s fundamental to take good care of ourselves. Not forgetting, senior women are one and a half times more likely to downgrade/leave their careers due to anxiety, burnout and mental health. Seventy-five per cent of women claim exhaustion to be the top trigger. Remember that work is a marathon, not a sprint. Actively reduce your stress levels to perform better.

Be you! At some point, some of us would have been recipients of well-meaning advice like ‘speak with a lower voice’, ‘you need to learn how to play the game’, ‘you need to learn how to negotiate and flex’. Authenticity is real. Don't ever feel that you have to be aggressive or be someone else. There's no point climbing up the wrong mountain if your values are not aligned. Be a lady, they said. I say, be you. THEFINTECHPOWER50

F E AT U R E S PA C E Criminals are lazy. They seek the path of least resistance, which means they are a perpetual threat. But why are those paths even available? It isn’t as if the technology doesn’t exist to block them? And what’s more costly – losses from fraud or the tools that prevent it? As we stand today, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) should be considered ‘table stakes’ when it comes to monitoring and risk-scoring millions of transactions every minute in real time. We know that rules and models are the most effective approach to detecting and preventing enterprise financial crime, including money laundering. But, to truly protect consumers from those perils, organisations must deploy deep learning. Effectively incorporating deep learning into enterprise financial crime prevention has occupied the brightest minds and the most committed engineers in the world. The new architecture these smart people have created is coming at the perfect time for the card and payments industry, as Joe Cunningham, Visa’s Regional Risk Officer for Asia Pacific has pointed out: “Payment security is a fundamental driver of trust, so the industry must deliver on consumers’ expectations of safe, convenient and fast payment experiences.” These

expectations expand way beyond Asia Pacific – they are everyone’s expectations.

THE EVER-GROWING THREAT Payments Cards & Mobile’s Digital And Card Payments Yearbooks 2021 reported that there are more than one billion cards in circulation, generating nearly $100billion in card payments in Europe. In the US, credit and debit card payments continue to reign supreme and, when it comes to contactless cards, Visa data shows this method was used in 73 per cent of all card transactions worldwide in 2020. Digital wallets are increasing in popularity as well; FIS projects they will make up more than half (51.7 per cent) of global e-commerce transactions by 2024. Consider person-to-person (P2P)/ person-to-business (P2B) payments: in the US alone, Zelle reported $106billion in payments were sent in Q1 2021 and that small business transactions grew 180 per cent year-on-year (for the record, Zelle closed with its highest annual volume in 2020, at $307billion). Google Pay now facilitates P2P cross-border payments, along with Currencies Direct, Transferwise, Azmio and others. The implications of these trends and predictions clearly show there are more

channels and more activity. And, as the adoption of digital payments grows, so does the target for criminals. There are people around the globe who will be new, additional users of these services and that equates to more potential attack victims whom financial institutions must be equipped to protect.

AND SO TO DEEP LEARNING… For fraud teams, there’s a groundbreaking means to improve upon the way the existing and increasing volume of money movement is risk scored. Currently, too many transactions are assigned with a mid-level score because the system in place detects something pointing to potential fraud, but without full confidence. This ‘Zone of Uncertainty’ includes transactions that make it extremely difficult to accurately differentiate between a fraud risk or an outlier presented by a genuine customer; for example in low-volume, high-value fraud (as well as high-volume, low-value fraud). For the fraud team, this question equates to ‘do we decline this transaction, or do we approve a potentially fraudulent one?’. Considering the rise in the

ESCAPING THE ‘ZONE OF UNCERTAINTY’ Let’s stop pretending we can’t do more to protect consumers and enterprises from financial crime. With the right technology, we can, says Featurespace

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volume of card payments, this challenge isn’t getting any easier. By incorporating deep learning, however, fraud prevention and detection tools have the ability to remember individual events across periods of time and then compare patterns against known behaviours so that the crucial differences stand out. Deep learning also allows for more nuances from the data to be extracted and analysed, so a transaction

AI and ML should be considered ‘table stakes’ when it comes to monitoring and risk scoring transactions… to truly protect consumers, organisations must deploy deep learning that would have received a moderate risk score will be more likely to receive a high risk score. Ultimately, this reduces the Zone of Uncertainty; catching more fraud and allowing more genuine transactions, which means greater revenue and customer loyalty. Rather than pay lip service to ‘fighting fraud’, the card and payments industry should take a more hardline

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approach. If what we've previously done is the best we can do, it's clearly not been enough. With deep learning,

WHO WE ARE Featurespace is the world leader in enterprise financial crime prevention for fraud and anti-money laundering. It invented adaptive behavioural analytics and automated deep behavioural networks, both of which are available through the Featurespace ARIC platform, a real-time machine learning software that risk scores events in more than 180 countries to prevent fraud and financial crime. ARIC Risk Hub uses advanced, explainable anomaly detection to enable financial institutions to automatically identify risk, catch new fraud attacks and identify suspicious activity in real time. More than 30 major global financial institutions are using ARIC to protect their business and their customers. Publicly announced customers include HSBC, TSYS, Worldpay, NatWest, Contis, Danske Bank, ClearBank, Akbank and Permanent TSB.

we’re drawing a line in the sand that criminals will find hard to cross.

AT A GLANCE COMPANY: Featurespace FOUNDED: 2005 CATEGORY: Financial

crime prevention

KEY PERSONNEL:

Martina King, CEO (top) & David Excell, Founder (below) HEAD OFFICE:

Cambridge, UK OFFICES IN: London, Cambridge, Singapore and USA TEL: +1 423 364 5491 WEBSITE: www.featurespace.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/featurespace/ TWITTER: @FeaturespaceLtd

WHAT WE DO Outsmart risk

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EMBARK GROUP

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME Toby Larkman, Chief Commercial Officer for retirement solutions provider Embark Group, considers how APIs can reduce friction, increase value and lower costs for advice firms… But how many have the experience inhouse to assess and provide the integration they need? The adviser firm ecosystem of today typically contains several building blocks. At its centre sits the client, adviser, and support team. Branching out from that we see a back office/customer relationship management (CRM) system, various financial planning tools (such as cashflow and risk profiling tools), a client portal (possibly), cash management, and several platforms. As clients’ expectation of their adviser’s digital capabilities increases – based on what they experience elsewhere – this set-up poses several challenges for firms. For example, the transfer of data from client to adviser to support team can be cumbersome – and may still include paper forms – while the use of multiple platforms and tools often means logging in and re-keying data several times.

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There may also only be one-way integration between platforms and a CRM, and again between a CRM and client portal, resulting in a poor client experience.

INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGY However, in the adviser firm ecosystem of the future, things are different. There are fewer building blocks and there is two-way integration between them. Our blocks now include open banking alongside CRM, client portal, cash management, risk profiling, cash flow planning – and a single platform. Application programming interfaces (more on APIs in a moment) provide the integration, enabling these blocks to ‘talk’ to each other and remove the

tedious task of re-keying client data or logging into multiple systems. Meanwhile, open banking and freer access to client data could help firms build a client base of the future. So, what are APIs? They enable two or more systems to connect, or ‘talk’ to each other. They create a higher degree of www.thepower50.com

connectivity between platforms, services, and tools, allowing data to be seen and tasks performed from one place. If advisers can move seamlessly between platform, CRM, and customer portal, as well as between risk profiling and cash flow tools, it would revolutionise many financial planning practices. I recently read that, on average, advisers key each bit of client information in at least three times. For

any business, that is an extraordinary and unnecessary overhead. With APIs it means that, with new products coming to market, we are not creating a more disconnected world but increasing the level of connection with each new implementation. Though we may be a long way off that Utopia right now, I do believe the onus is on the industry to solve this conundrum. If we do not, regulators may step in. These issues of connectivity and integration may be quite new to many advisers and wealth managers. How many firms have a chief technology officer or a fleet of project managers to assess and provide the integration they need? I’d suggest very few.

PROACTIVE ADVICE

We operate successfully in both the advised and institutional areas of the retirement market through our retirement-focussed wealth platform, offering a leading range of pension, wrap platform, research and consultancy services to our B2B clients in support of their retail savings and investment propositions to end customers. Embark set out to disrupt the UK investment savings market through technology, processing capabilities, technical excellence in retirement wrappers and the ability to deliver multi-channel savings services to the

There are going to be some relatively hard choices as firms select which building blocks to use in their ecosystem

There are multiple benefits to greater access to client data. Once a customer allows access to their data, it means we could move to a more proactive state of advice relatively easily. For example, it does not take a very complicated algorithm to look through spending patterns and spot where there may be a major life event that would otherwise trigger a client review. We could

For firms that plan to go through this change cycle over the next few years, there are going to be some relatively hard choices as they select which building blocks to use in their ecosystem. But the benefits could be huge, with reductions in operational friction translating into more value for clients, potentially lower costs, and more time for employees to focus on serving clients.

robo-advice, banking and wealth management markets. By combining the acquisitions of a range of specialist businesses with new solutions built using the latest digital technology, Embark provides a unique combination of deep pension expertise and leading technology integration that covers the areas of investment platform, SIPP, SSAS, multi-asset funds, fund research and employee benefits. The company’s technology is designed to deliver real customer value, enabling its clients to profitably service customers of every affluence via a fully integrated dealing solution. Its API interfaces offer streamlined routes to market for leading white label partners and other scale direct to consumer partners.

COMPANY: Embark Group FOUNDED: 2013 KEY PERSONNEL: Phil Smith, CEO (right) CATEGORY: Wealth management HEAD OFFICE: London, UK EMAIL: marketing@embarkgroup.co.uk WEBSITE: www.embarkgroup.co.uk LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ embark-group TWITTER: @embark_group

WHO WE ARE Embark Group is a fast-growing, diversified, financial services business and one of the largest retirement solutions providers in the UK.

then generate a nudge to the adviser. Of course, in a traditional advice model, the adviser wouldn’t necessarily need a nudge but, when we consider a more fluid advice market – perhaps engaging clients with smaller pots that aren’t necessarily being advised on an ongoing basis – this sort of nudging is important. This is a cost-effective and proactive way of building a client base for the future.

AT A GLANCE

WHAT WE DO Advancing the UK retirement savings market through digital delivery www.thepower50.com

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WHY E-COMMERCE FRAUD IS COSTING MERCHANTS MORE THAN THEY THINK The financial hit from fraud goes well beyond chargebacks, which is why a growing e-conomy needs advanced machine learning technology to balance security and sales, says Vesta Globally, we are seeing a seismic shift in consumer shopping behaviour, largely as a result of the pandemic. In Asia Pacific alone, businesses receiving online orders recorded 37.6 per cent growth in 2020, and that is expected to nearly double to reach US $2trillion by 2025. Particularly in the mobile-first Southeast Asia, traffic for online shopping platforms increased by leaps and bounds last year. Singapore led the trend with a surge of 35 per cent compared to 2019, followed by the Philippines (21 per cent), Vietnam (19 per cent), Malaysia (17 per cent), Thailand (15 per cent) and Indonesia (six per cent). Social commerce through Whatsapp, Instagram and Viber in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines also saw a surge. The gross merchandise value from e-commerce increased by 63 per cent and

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propelled spending in the region to US $62billion last year, with a projected value of US $172billion by 2025. Merchants are coming online to meet this rising demand. But, as quickly as consumers race to adopt mobile wallets and merchants race to accept mobile transactions, hackers race to attack the weakest links. Merchants who do not have a line of defence in place to stop mobile payment criminals, due to the speed with which they pivot online, face vulnerabilities in problem areas such as payment fraud. That’s particularly the case in Southeast Asia, where the rate of attempted fraud is up to 12 times greater than the global average. Online merchants here lose an average 1.6 per cent of revenue to direct fraud each year.

Businesses tend to focus on the financial hit from fraud chargebacks, and rightly so. But, sadly, that is not where it ends. In fact, most merchants do not have a fraud problem; they have a revenue problem. Fraud loss and revenue loss are like two opposing weights on a scale – when fraud loss goes down, revenue loss goes up. It can happen when businesses implement stringent safeguards that result in legitimate transactions being rejected – also known as a false decline. Having a valid purchase rejected results in abandoned shopping carts due to checkout friction. Moreover, the spectrum of fraud techniques constantly grows. Alongside the surge in online shopping, for example, has been a growing trend in ‘friendly fraud’. A form of chargeback fraud, it www.thepower50.com

V E S TA occurs when a merchant returns money to a customer, who may have had the ill intent of purchasing something deliberately in order to dispute the payment, only to keep the product or service after receiving the refund. While friendly fraud is often the result of a legitimate misunderstanding – customers don’t remember making a purchase, or they are unaware of an authorised user of their card making the purchase – merchants should still use special tools to differentiate, otherwise businesses may unnecessarily take on high fraud chargebacks. On average, an e-commerce merchant spends almost $4 fighting fraud for every $1 of direct fraud loss. Wrapped up in this sum are also the costs of manual reviews by staff, pre- and post-transaction, third-party transaction costs, shipping and restocking fees and other overheads. E-tailers are leaving far too much revenue on the table due to the fear of fraud, spending more to fight it, missing the know-how, and experiencing customer churn from checkout friction. Perhaps most detrimental for them is the tarnished brand reputation. A bad customer experience can lead to lost customers – in fact, more than half never return.

On average, an e-commerce merchant spends almost $4 fighting fraud for every $1 of direct fraud loss With these points in mind, here are three ways merchants can grow revenue, while reducing the cost of fraud: Integrate machine learning solutions to enhance decision-making It’s easier to make good decisions about transactions when you have more data. State-of-the-art platforms that combine supervised and unsupervised machine learning to check multiple transactional data points can do just that. For example, Vesta uses its graph link database to observe every transaction ever made on a site, from who created the

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order, to how it was paid and delivered. It draws connections between two trillion data points in real time, analysing between fraudsters and good networks. Its models also constantly adapt to new threats on a global scale, drawing data from millions of transactions every minute. This real-time data allows an accurate risk assessment in milliseconds, effectively preventing fraud while reducing false declines. Focus on transaction acceptance and fraud recognition Many businesses hold to the unrealistic goal of achieving zero fraud. There is one easy way to accomplish that: decline all transactions. But if a retailer intends to build a profitable business, fraud avoidance must be balanced with increasing customer numbers and revenue. Adjusting to track approval rates as well as fraud rates is a first step in the right direction. In addition, merchants should think in terms of fraud recognition, which involves building deep learning capabilities that allow a system to learn and analyse, the way a human would, to determine whether a transaction is suspicious. Rather than overly tightening acceptance parameters or choosing a set-and-forget fraud-fighting tool, effective anti-fraud systems must be given the flexibility to learn and adapt to new fraud vectors. This is the key to fraud protection and revenue generation.

Employ risk-based authentication for better customer experience Merchants can better manage customer experience at the account or transaction level by deploying systems that require simple, multi-level authentication when needed and not for every account log-in or check-out. For example, with Vesta’s transaction guarantee platform, the system will only challenge an account or transaction when necessary, meaning 95 per cent of all activities are going through a frictionless experience, and only the five per cent that we deem could be fraudulent are being challenged.

Merchants should work with a technology partner whose system can conduct quick investigations and provide accurate decisions in real time to stop criminal transactions while reducing the number of false denials for valid customers.

WHO WE ARE Vesta is the instant, end-to-end transaction guarantee platform for online purchases, delivering unparalleled approval rates, a better customer experience, and eliminating fraud for leading brands in telco, e-commerce, travel, and financial services. Using machine learning, backed by 25 years of transactional data history, Vesta increases approvals of legitimate sales for its customers, while eliminating chargebacks and other forms of digital fraud, driving the true cost of fraud to zero and transferring 100 per cent of the liability for fraud, including chargeback processing, so our customers can focus on the job of increasing sales.

AT A GLANCE COMPANY: Vesta FOUNDED: 1995 CATEGORY:

Digital commerce fraud prevention KEY PERSONNEL:

Ron Hynes, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: Portland, US OFFICES IN: Atlanta, Miami,

Ireland, Mexico and Singapore TEL: +1 888 440 9956 WEBSITE: vesta.io LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ vestacorporation TWITTER: @vesta_io

WHAT WE DO More approved transactions. Guaranteed

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THE NEW ERA OF PAYMENTS

Angelo Dimarakis, Head of Sales at Radar Payments, reviews the key trends in an accelerated era of change As we move further into Industry 4.0 – the next chapter of data and AI – banks and financial institutions realise the importance of strategic thinking, a differentiated value proposition, and working with the right partners. The global pandemic has forced consumers and businesses to change the way they make and accept payments and the innovation we have witnessed within the payments industry over the last 12 months will continue as traditional processes are disrupted. Collaboration between financial institutions and technology providers will be vital to success as businesses prioritise new ways of leveraging digital payments. Banks and other financial institutions need to continue to raise their game if they are to remain relevant. These organisations are implementing a variety of initiatives to maintain customer loyalty to their services.

THE WAY FORWARD: OPEN BANKING AND EMBEDDED FINANCE According to the UK’s Open Banking Implementation Entity, more than two-and-a-half million consumers and businesses were using open

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banking-enabled products by the beginning of 2021. The growth in open banking solutions is evidence that more consumers and businesses will use compatible products in the future. Open banking-enabled products have not only improved the customer experience, they have also enabled customers to take greater control of their finances by making more informed decisions about the services they use. For example, Starling Bank’s marketplace allows users to connect their app with products and services, ranging from accountancy software to the payments platform. As banks introduce more open banking-related services, customers will become more familiar with open banking’s potential. Embedded finance – which can be defined as the integration of non-financial service providers and financial services – is a significant development as it enables banks to grow their revenue through strategic partnerships as well as insourcing their capabilities to other banks. For instance, supporting embedded finance for non-financial institutions by providing white-label payment services can generate new streams of revenue while

enabling these institutions to offer a superior customer experience. While banks want to maintain their position at the core of open banking, third parties and aggregators will fill gaps within the ecosystem. The number of payment and electronic money institutions registered under the revised Payment Services Directive ( PSD2), has grown rapidly with the proliferation of third-party providers boosting banking innovation and introducing services that leverage new technologies for a seamless customer experience. The evolution of payment initiation service providers (PISPs) and account information service providers (AISPs) will continue to drive down levels of fraud within the payments ecosystem, leading to increased customer confidence in services.

BANKS KNOW THAT CONVENIENCE IS STILL KING The coronavirus pandemic has been a game-changer across the banking industry. The need to stay safe and minimise human contact has impacted the way consumers behave and pay, making room for innovative technology players to enter the market. www.thepower50.com

R A D A R PAY M E N T S QR code payments are re-emerging with purpose as customers look for options for making payments that do not involve physical money, cards, or devices. According to Juniper Research, the number of QR payment users will surpass 2.2 billion by 2025, which equates to 29 per cent of global mobile phone users. Already extremely popular in countries such as Japan and China, QR codes are being increasingly widely adopted across Europe and the US, thanks to the demand for social distancing. Their low cost and fast processing have made them particularly popular among SMEs.

THE BNPL MOVEMENT Due to the economic disruption experienced over the past year, buy now pay later (BNPL) services have gained momentum among consumers and merchants. In early 2021, online shopping specialist Klarna announced it was expanding its open banking services to another eight European countries after a successful launch in Sweden and the UK, while Scalapay (which competes with Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm) raised

$48million in funding earlier this year. While these services were traditionally provided at retail merchant touchpoints or checkout, Affirm has launched a BNPL debit card, which will see a move towards BNPL being embedded into existing financial instruments. TymeBank in South Africa, one of the fastest-growing neobanks, has launched its buy now pay later offering as it understands that this service appeals to consumers in uncertain economic times, while also fitting in with the needs of the younger generation. The questions for banks looking to exploit this trend include whether to build or partner and who will own the customer relationship.

ECOSYSTEM-BUILDING FOR SMEs – MARKETPLACES AND SUPER APPS Ecosystem thinking is also becoming a reality. Fintechs are developing highly tailored paytech value propositions that address customer needs, especially in the SME space, which was previously underserved. Nascent marketplaces and super apps are providing services with

WHO WE ARE Radar Payments is a leading innovative payment processing provider dedicated to financial institutions, including payment service providers (PSPs), banks, acquirers, issuers and fintech. Connecting payments to commerce is what we do best, while eliminating the complexity of payments. We offer advisory services and a one-stop platform for end-to-end omnichannel processing, enabling the acceptance of most of the widely adopted payment methods, delivered as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS), software-as-a-service (SaaS), or fully managed model. We do not compete with financial institutions; rather, we provide them with technology for faster go-to-market strategies. Our global experience translates into end-to-end processing,

embedded finance in addition to the other services that SMEs need to grow their business. Agritech ecosystem Safal Fasal, for instance, is using the ‘phygital’ model for small farmers, providing greater reach and financial inclusivity. Other ecosystems that financial institutions and big tech are focussing on include smart cities. It’s an examples of open-loop technologies, linked to a single ecosystem.

The rise of embedded payments by non-financial third parties is a seismic shift in the provision of payment services The rise of embedded payments by non-financial third parties is a seismic shift in the provision of payment services. White-label solutions with innovative technology are appealing, as not all financial institutions can afford to develop in-house technology resources. With top-notch solutions being highly scalable, financial institutions are committing to building a truly digital ecosystem because, if not now, then when?

AT A GLANCE facilitating an unparalleled array of payment methods, types and schemes into full commerce services. We work on connecting payment to commerce seamlessly and flying under the radar of our partners. Our most recent clients include Tonik, Vista Bank, CIM Bank, PSP Canada and Wallester, among many others. We want our clients to better focus on the business, while we look after the technology. Built using BPC’s SmartVista, an industry-recognised payment solution, the Radar Payments platform delivers scalability, resilience, performance and unparalleled security. Radar Payments is fully owned by BPC and blends BPC’s 25 years of expertise in payments with the fintech world – using the latest digital technologies to create innovative customer payment experiences.

COMPANY:

Radar Payments

FOUNDED: 2019 CATEGORY: Payments KEY PERSONNEL: Jane Loginova, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: Switzerland OFFICES IN: Singapore, Netherlands, Colombia, Hungary and Kosovo TEL: +41 41 760 64 70 WEBSITE: radarpayments.com/ white-label-payment/ LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ radar-payments TWITTER: @RadarPayments

WHAT WE DO Connecting payments to commerce worldwide www.thepower50.com

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JUMIO

THE FACTOR: WHY KYC ISN’T ENOUGH For Jumio, fighting fraud and financial crime doesn’t end at onboarding. Its identity and verification platform KYX, goes to extreme lengths to make the entire customer lifecycle secure Onboarding is what most people think of when they hear ‘KYC’. But companies subject to know your customer mandates are responsible for preventing fraud and financial crimes throughout the entire customer journey – not just the start. Banks and other financial institutions are required to go through a number of steps in order to ensure their customers are not involved with corruption, bribery or money laundering. Traditionally, they’d need more than a dozen solutions to verify the user’s identity, check their ID and supporting documentation, authenticate them on subsequent visits, perform ongoing screening to make sure they’re not on watchlists, monitor their transactions, manage investigations and report suspicious activity. This approach is complex, inefficient, expensive – and often simply doesn’t work. Firms can’t rely on the standard fraud signals anymore. A KYC solution must now look at a variety of factors. For instance, does the person’s ID say they live in New York but their IP address indicates they’re in Russia? Is their stated home address actually a liquor store? Did they create this email address just a few days ago? Is their selfie really that of a live person or did they simply hold up a photo in front of the camera?

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And, after you’ve onboarded your customers, the compliance journey has just begun. You need to make sure your customers remain trustworthy and that they don’t use your business for financial crimes. They weren’t on any watchlists when they signed up with your company, but what about a year from now? Three years from now? You need to periodically review your customers and make sure they haven’t ended up on any watchlists since you onboarded them. You also need to protect your customers from account takeover. Biometric-based authentication can help by capturing a fresh selfie, creating a biometric template of the user’s face and comparing that template to the original template captured during onboarding to unlock the user’s digital identity in seconds. This approach is more reliable than passwords, knowledge-based authentication and even SMS-based, two-factor authentication, which are vulnerable to credential stuffing, impersonation fraud and man-in-the-middle exploits. Does your company allow people to exchange money, either fiat or crypto currency? If so, you’re a potential vehicle for money laundering and need a transaction monitoring solution. Even if your company makes video games, if

there’s a marketplace where gamers can buy and sell game-related objects, you’re creating a forum that money launderers can exploit. Transaction monitoring uses sophisticated rules to look at patterns and spot suspicious activity. This phase is at the heart of anti-money laundering (AML) efforts. AML laws state that when suspicious transactions occur, the financial institution must act quickly to investigate. But false positives plague the compliance industry, and your team must be able to easily investigate each case with deep insights into your data so that they can resolve cases quickly and efficiently. It’s not enough to show the suspicious transactions – analysts must be able to quickly identify related parties, transactions, accounts and payment sources to follow the money trail. A powerful investigation management tool explains why the transactions were flagged and helps analysts connect the dots. Once the investigation is complete, it’s time to file a report with the relevant authorities, such as filing a FinCEN suspicious activity report (SAR) in the US. But these reports are notoriously complex and time-consuming to fill out. In particular, www.thepower50.com

WHO WE ARE Jumio, is the leading provider of AI-powered end-to-end identity verification and eKYC solutions.

After you’ve onboarded your customers, the compliance journey has just begun the narrative section requires the compliance analyst to tell the story of the case and include certain elements, making it a highly error-prone part of the reporting process. Fraud and financial crimes have evolved, and KYC is now just one piece of the puzzle. Instead of looking for separate solutions for KYC, AML, transaction monitoring, fraud detection, case management, etc, smart companies – from financial services, gaming, mobility and healthcare to the sharing economy, government and education – are embracing Jumio’s end-to-end identity and eKYC platform KYX to streamline the compliance process throughout the entire customer journey. www.thepower50.com

It protects its customers’ ecosystems through a unified, end-to-end identity verification and eKYC platform, Jumio KYX. The platform offers a range of identity proofing and AML services to accurately establish, maintain and reassert trust, from account opening to ongoing transaction monitoring. Leveraging advanced technology that includes AI, biometrics, machine learning, liveness detection and automation, Jumio helps organisations fight fraud and financial crime, onboard good customers faster and meet regulatory compliance, including KYC, AML and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Jumio has carried out more than 400 million verifications, spanning 200-plus countries and territories, from real-time web and mobile transactions. It has been the recipient of numerous awards for innovation.

AT A GLANCE COMPANY: Jumio FOUNDED: 2010 CATEGORY: Identity verification through AI KEY PERSONNEL:

Robert Prigge, CEO (right)

HEAD OFFICE: Palo Alto, US OFFICES IN: UK, Austria, Singapore,

India, Colombia and Canada EMAIL: sales@jumio.com WEBSITE: www.jumio.com/ LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ jumio-corporation/ TWITTER: @jumio

WHAT WE DO The total solution to know-your-users online THEFINTECHPOWER50

IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN

Sokin scored a massive goal for democratised finance by launching the first subscription-driven remittance model. It chimed with one particular investor, who’d seen first-hand how stressful sending money ‘back home’ could be…

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SOKIN One of the great strengths of fintech is its unrivalled ability to fuel financial inclusion – to increase access to products and services that were previously out of reach for many people. As the world recovers from the pandemic together, one area that’s crying out for this disruption is remittances and international payments. There’s simply no reason why today’s customers should accept opaque commissions, unexplained costs, or repeat charges. They no longer pay for every track they download, or each film they stream, yet when people want to send money or make a payment to family back home, they are hit by unspecified and variable costs. It’s time for this to change.

Transparency is at the heart of the Sokin service. There are no hidden costs, no pushing up spreads or adding commissions. Users pay a monthly subscription and get highly competitive exchange rates in return. Sokin uses advanced technology that gives users the confidence that sending money is secure and safe, which is vital for both senders and recipients.

Sokin sees a great synergy between global payments and football – the global game; they’re both central to millions, if not billions, of people’s lives and livelihoods

A NEW MODEL FOR A NEW WORLD

PARTNERING WITH THE GLOBAL GAME

As a first-generation immigrant, Vroon Modgill, Sokin’s founder and CEO, was very aware of just how off-putting money exchange can be for many people. Those with family and friends based overseas typically opt to use well-known brands to send money, but the process is difficult, expensive and time-consuming. This is why time and effort have been invested in making the Sokin user experience seamless. From his background in the financial services industry, Vroon knew there’s a cost attached to checking personal details and the legitimacy of funds, but he believed these should be one-off, set-up costs. He saw that the process and costs could be simplified to provide a greater level of access to more people. He also saw that fintech developments around the onboarding of customers and the handling of transactions had created an opportunity to shake up the sector. So, in 2019, Vroon set up Sokin as a new global currency account provider, focussed on creating an open and transparent payments platform. Sokin was the first payment provider to enable global payments for a fixed monthly fee, giving customers the power to make unlimited payments and transfers. Today, it provides both business and personal accounts with no hidden fees, just straightforward currency exchange and money transfers – simplifying and democratising the process.

You may have seen Sokin’s name at some of Europe’s top stadiums. This is because it has partnered with a number of football clubs, including Everton, Fulham, and AS Monaco, to provide services as their official FX and payments partner. Sokin sees a great synergy between global payments and football – the global game; they’re both central to millions, if not billions, of people’s lives and livelihoods. And, as such, there should

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be a strong emphasis on inclusion and democratisation. This feels particularly pertinent as the spectre of a ‘Super League’ continues to hover above European football. Some clubs are behaving like the big banks, seeking a monopoly, and Vroon sees this as the wrong direction to go in. Sokin is proud to count Rio Ferdinand, one of England’s greatest-ever defenders and now a respected football pundit, as a lead investor. Vroon met Rio through a mutual friend and they hit it off, given their similar upbringing. Rio is also from a background where he saw and heard people regularly transferring money to friends and relatives – and he observed the difficulties and stress around that for both the senders and the recipients. It stuck in his mind. His partnership with Sokin is rooted in those experiences as a child and what he’s subsequently learned about investment. He’s particularly drawn by the transformative power of fintech to democratise financial services and extend better tools to people who need them. Rio will continue to play a significant part in Sokin’s growth, as the company continues to build its remittance offering in 38 currencies to 200 countries and territories.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

Sokin is a new global currency account provider, focussed on creating an open and transparent payments platform.

COMPANY: Sokin

Sokin is the first payment provider enabling global payments for a fixed monthly fee, giving customers the power to make unlimited payments and transfers. The company provides both business and personal accounts with no hidden fees, just straightforward, transparent currency exchange and money transfers – simplifying and democratising the process. Sokin was founded by Vroon Modgill in 2019. The company is headquartered in London and has 10 offices globally.

Vroon Modgill, Founder and CEO HEAD OFFICE: London, UK OFFICES IN: Canada, US, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, Singapore, London, Australia, Mumbai and Malta EMAIL: info@sokin.net WEBSITE: sokin.net LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/sokin TWITTER: @sokinglobal

FOUNDED: 2019 CATEGORY: Remittances KEY PERSONNEL:

WHAT WE DO Fixed-fee, commission-free, hassle-free global payments THEFINTECHPOWER50

BUILTTOLAST

Inspired by forex technology, Bybit has built a formidable derivatives exchange in a fast-growing cryptocurrency industry by prioritising speed and customer experience. It is now among the top three destinations for crypto futures Bybit may only be three years old, but anyone in the crypto industry will tell you that the past three years have felt like a lifetime! Over that period, the price of Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, surged and fell, and made the orange coin the subject of countless headlines. However, it also meant the world began to appreciate the need for, and ramifications of, a new and decentralised financial ecosystem, underpinned by blockchain technology. It’s not just about how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – a unit of data stored on a

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blockchain, certifying that a digital asset is unique – enable digital creators to offer value. There is a real-world impact to this, too. Cyptocurrencies have, for example, helped Nigerians working abroad send money back home (avoiding a coterie of middlemen), and they have empowered members of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American community in the US, to find a way to restore economic sovereignty. Not all such projects may succeed, of course, but cryptocurrencies throw open questions about economic equity and offer an alternative route to wealth

creation (and preservation) while accelerating the pace of digitisation0 for underserved communities. At the beginning, all of this was not obvious. Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, launched the startup at a nadir in the crypto world in 2018. Founding members had to be recruited in a year when Bitcoin lost more than 80 per cent of its value. Nevertheless, Zhou was convinced of the fundamental validity of the new asset class after two years as an amateur trader, and aspired to give crypto traders the service that www.thepower50.com

BYBIT forex market participants took for granted. Zhou had previously worked for eight years at XM, a retail broker specialising in foreign exchange and contracts for difference (CFDs). Bybit’s singular focus on a concentrated book of business – Bybit operates 17 contracts, mostly perpetual contract pairs (futures that have no expiration date or settlement) against Bitcoin and other large-cap alternative cryptocurrencies, or altcoins – comes from an ethos of specialised product development. This has allowed it to become one of the top platforms for crypto futures as more than US $70billion in 24-hour trading volume has been registered on the platform, a phenomenal achievement for a three-year-old firm that was bootstrapped with little venture capital support. Many of the other crypto exchanges offer a vast spread of crypto pairs and have fundraised millions of dollars but continue to suffer from outages, poor service, compliance issues and changing roadmaps, which frustrate active traders. “Many of the other exchanges want to be everything for everyone and leave a mixed impression,” Zhou says. “We are focussing on building products that will last, and the difference in quality will be apparent over the long term.” Two of the main takeaways from

Zhou’s time at a forex technology firm was the importance of maintaining 24/7 connectivity for traders, and the need to be bold and allow margin trading for those who desire to hedge or leverage. Bybit typically processes about 10,000 trades per second, but its matching engine can handle five times more throughput. A low maintenance fee that is fixed at 0.5 per cent and a competitive market-maker incentive programme have encouraged liquidity and minimised slippage. In essence, Zhou sought to build a currency exchange befitting the world of crypto.

We don’t want to be dousing fires every other month. Our job is to provide a derivatives market that works Ben Zhou, CEO Naturally, the high speed of trading activity leads to a relative trade-off in terms of difficulty of risk management on the firm’s behalf, so Bybit does not offer fiat-settled pairs, as that would require licensing with myriad jurisdictions that have not yet finalised their investor protection mechanisms. Nor does it aim to offer its services to users in markets where there is a high degree of regulatory uncertainty, as in

WHO WE ARE Bybit was established to offer crypto traders a professional platform where they get excellent customer service, multi-lingual support and an ultra-fast matching engine. We leveraged our experience in forex technology to create a solution that is innovative, and set about deliberately laying the groundwork for a credible derivatives exchange for emerging digital assets. Our highly advanced, user-friendly platform has been designed from the ground up, using best-in-class

the United States and China. As Zhou says: “We don’t want to be dousing fires every other month. Our job is to provide a derivatives market that works. We may diversify our offering, but it has to stay in line with our product mission.” A substantial portion of the user base has so far hailed from Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Bybit strives to stay in compliance across multiple markets and has shored up the ranks of its legal and compliance department. It has also fostered a sense of community among traders across the world through regular interactions, digital events, and competitions over social media channels. The majority of Bybit’s peers, by taking a heavy-handed approach to addressing a larger segment of the market, have struggled to meet the needs of customers and fallen foul of regulators, believes Zhou. He sees clear parallels between the early growth of the forex market and its cryptocurrency counterpart, and hopes the development of a world-class and dedicated derivatives exchange will, ultimately, help improve price discovery and exponentially increase institutional acceptance of a modern asset class. Bybit is confident that more use cases will emerge for crypto-native projects, and aims to grow with the broader crypto community.

AT A GLANCE infrastructure to provide our users with the industry’s safest, fastest, fairest and most transparent trading experience, in which each trade is executed with minimal price impact. It uses a 100K TPS matching engine with a state-of-the-art pricing system that means users won’t encounter unfair liquidations. Importantly, we maintain 99.99 per cent system functionality. Now with more than two million registered users, retail and institutional clients around the world are enjoying a smart and intuitive online trading and Cloud mining experience with Bybit.

COMPANY: Bybit FOUNDED: 2018 CATEGORY:

Cryptocurrency KEY PERSONNEL:

Ben Zhou, Chief Executive Officer (right) WEBSITE: www.bybit.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/bybitexchange TWITTER: @Bybit_Official

WHAT WE DO Create a faster, fairer and more human trading environment for crypto www.thepower50.com

THEFINTECHPOWER50

JIM MAROUS

THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PLAYBOOK FOR BANKERS Six keys to unlock change, by Jim Marous

The disruption of the past 18 months has accelerated the urgency to improve the way customers are served and how business models are executed. The challenge most of those businesses face is deciding which initiatives to prioritise. In many cases, the technology and talent required is not readily available internally. More often, the leadership and business culture is not aligned with what’s needed to execute such a paradigm shift. In all cases, the reality is that change is happening fast. According to Mark Foster, Senior VP of IBM Services, the core response that any organisation should have is to make its workflows as intelligent as possible. I would agree with that. You should start with the desired customer experience and work backwards by rethinking how operations can be reconstructed to provide the speed and resilience needed for digital execution. Ensure data and applied analytics drive decision-making, with cross-functional teams to rethink process flows. Here are my six keys to unlocking digital banking transformation success. Use data and insight to support intelligent workflows In the past, most data was used to create reports that management used to determine progress on annual objectives. In the future, data and applied analytics must be used much more broadly. In some cases, it will mean existing job functions shift from transaction processing to customer engagement, supporting enhanced customer journeys that include proactive advice and product/service recommendations. In other cases, data and applied analytics will support new product innovations. Combining advances in technology and intelligent workflows not only enhances customer experience but efficiency is also

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realised as automation, real-time decisions, the innovation process, utilisation of the hybrid Cloud and other enhancements work together.

People with digital, analytics and change management backgrounds become more important. In addition, current employees must be reskilled and retrained.

Create an innovation culture Transformation requires more than technology upgrades. There must be an organisation-wide culture of customer-centric innovation. Continuous, incremental changes to current products and services will create better experiences and support the growth and retention of customers. This form of never-ending improvement is more important than ever as customers have an increasing array of alternatives from fintechs and Big Tech.

Embrace change One of the hardest challenges is simply accepting the change that is needed. Research by the Digital Banking Report has found that many leaders rely on past successes, which inhibits the desire to make the changes necessary, whether that’s modifying back-office processes or simply moving at the speed now required.

Start with the customer journey This seems obvious, but many organisations do not have a good handle on the performance gap between a superior digital experience and what is currently being delivered. When banks and credit unions ask ‘where should we start?’, I always recommend making the new account opening and digital borrowing process faster and simpler. This is 'table stakes' for a digital-first organisation and those that have done it have seen increases in new business of 50 to 100 per cent. Not only does this elimination of lost business pay for the engagement of a third-party solution provider, but it also improves efficiency that reduces operational costs. Hire for skills and enhance digital training The future of work is still being redefined, with many financial institutions embracing some version of a hybrid home/office model. But a bigger factor impacting the workforce is a rethinking around how to hire, train, promote and engage with staff. Being digital-first means the skills required shift as well. Banks and credit unions need to hire people suited to where the organisation is going as opposed to hiring for past positions.

Partner with third-party providers Speed to market will define transformation winners. No organisation should be making the journey alone. The good news is that there is almost no component of digital transformation for which there aren’t a number of qualified solution providers. Most have already taken the journey you want to take, have seen the same challenges, and have excellent case studies to share. Most importantly, most will save you more money (or generate more revenue) to offset the investment in the partnership.

Customer expectations around enhanced digital experiences will not diminish with time. In fact, experience will likely be the new defining factor in a customer’s choice of provider. The ability to leverage data, analytics, human resources, an innovation culture, and modern technology will determine whether they choose you.

AT A GLANCE A leading fintech influencer, Jim Marous is co-publisher of The Financial Brand and owner and publisher of The Digital Banking Report. He is a regular contributor to the Breaking Banks podcast. WEBSITE: digitalbankingreport.com TWITTER: @JimMarous www.thepower50.com

L E D A G LY P T I S

FOR THE LOVE OF PLUMBING Leda Glyptis on why banks’ passion for fintech now needs to be a ‘hidden’ affair

The love affair between banking and fintech has been slow to blossom. The first contact between financial services incumbents and new technology, combined with new ways of working (a combo that now often gets to fly under the ever-widening banner of fintech) was… not great. The incumbents were faced with startups: companies too small, founders too young, ideas too new to have a natural home in the organisation that was looking at unfamiliar shapes and trying to work out what to do with them. As understanding of new technology and new ways of working evolved, financial institutions started getting more comfortable with digital capabilities. They started learning. It felt slow at the time but, looking back, it was fast and it was determined. So the relationship entered a slightly more positive phase that I like to call ‘I want my bling where I can see it’. That’s a reference to a line in an obscure comedy show that resonated with me. The character was talking to a jeweller ordering her wedding finery on a tight budget and she was outraged: why would you have precious stones all the way round a ring where more than half is obscured? Put twice as much on the front ‘where I can see it’.

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And that’s where banks wanted their fintech: where they could see it. Apps. Channels. Digital became shorthand for ‘on the glass’. What I can see on the screen. And that was not nothing. Before the advent of this era, ‘mobile experiences’ were not a phrase banks understood. So I am in no way dismissing the accelerated journey. But it didn’t take us from zero to hero. It took us from nothing digital and technology that was static, batch-based and monolithic because that is all there was when it was created, to an attempt to ‘have all my bling where I can see it’. This translated to all innovation spend being concentrated in a way that was outwardly visible and could be pointed to for the benefit of customers, industry peers and shareholders: ‘See? We are doing digital. Here is an app.’

The time is upon us to invest in parts of the stack that are less visible… to put our bling where we can’t see it The app, meanwhile, was precariously balanced on top of infrastructure designed in a pre-API world. In a world where nothing was real-time and security and connectivity didn’t coexist. And because banks wanted their bling where they could see it, no budget was found for infrastructure rebuilds. Because it wasn’t visible, it wasn’t quick and it was hard. And because, historically, whenever CTOs had touched infrastructure plumbing and core capabilities, three things happened: too much time was wasted, too much money was burnt, and the CTO found themselves ‘pursuing other opportunities’ at the end of a failed 10-year project. But that era is no more. Technologies ushered in over the last decade or so make the danger of undertaking transformation much smaller – and negligible compared to the danger of trying to have digital end-points without an all-digital infrastructure.

High street banks tried. It can’t be done, not without having jarring and incomplete digital experiences. And then COVID lay those limitations bare. Branches were shut, call centres stood empty and customers were faced with a multitude of jobs that needed doing that couldn’t be done on the app or even the website because the back-end systems were never upgraded and cannot be connected up to what the client is looking at – systems that were managed by constant workarounds and human interventions… and now those humans couldn’t get to work. This is not a criticism. It is a statement of fact – and of hope. Because we went from nothing to finding a very meaningful way of getting started in a matter of years. And now it’s time to do the same again: to find our way, as an industry, to the next stage of this evolution, which is the infrastructure that makes the digital experience more than a few static screens; that makes it real for customers and colleagues. The time is upon us to invest in parts of the stack that are less visible – getting a digital infrastructure in place, balancing scale, speed and security. The next phase of evolution will be all about invisible fintech and the tangible, visible value it brings. The time is here to put our bling where we can’t see it.

AT A GLANCE Leda Glyptis has described herself as a recovering banker, having spent a big chunk of her career working across banking operations, IT, products and geographies. She is a speaker, writer and academic in banking and fintech and currently Chief Client Officer for 10x Technologies which aims to move banks from monolithic to next-gen core banking solutions. TWITTER: @LedaGlyptis

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N REINCARNATION OT TRANSFORMATION BUSINESS BANKING IN 2021 AND BEYOND Traditional banking is crying out for a revolution. In a world where consumer services – from transport to ordering food – are delivered on-demand, digitally and instantly, we now expect the same from our financial institutions. But while the past few years have seen a surge in consumer-focussed banking innovations, spurred by the likes of Monzo, Revolut and Starling, innovation for business customers has lagged behind. Back in 2018, 85 per cent of banks cited digital transformation as a business priority, but fast-forward to today and the needs of modern businesses are still not being met. Regulation remains a hurdle, and services continue to work for the few rather than the many. As a result,

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many businesses, and sometimes entire industries are underserved by traditional banks. In the decade that lies ahead, traditional business banking services will be reinvented to become more modern, agile and reflective of today’s open banking-led era.

WHERE HAS TRADITIONAL BUSINESS BANKING FALLEN SHORT? High risk is also high growth The last 10 years have seen waves of regulation, pushing many incumbent banks to de-risk their business. In many cases, this ‘due diligence’ has been stretched to its extreme as banks prospect and sense-check new customers with ever greater scrutiny – especially if they belong to particular market

segments. Some businesses – sometimes entire industries, such as foreign exchanges or payment service providers – despite experiencing considerable growth, have been deemed too risky by banks and therefore remain underserved. Running to stand still On the plus side, digital transformation efforts are underway, but it’s becoming clear that these aren’t happening fast enough or being focussed in the right places. Incumbent banks have made huge strides towards innovation but, at today’s rate of change, this only has left them standing still. In the business banking world, onboarding processes remain cumbersome, user experiences aren’t intuitive and outdated money movement practices simply aren’t www.thepower50.com

O P E N PAY D up-to-scratch with emerging business models and needs. 2007 services for 2021 customers While other verticals have stormed ahead in transforming customer journeys, traditional banks continue to provide the services they’ve always known their business customers require. But it’s 2021 – commerce is increasingly crossborder, operating in multiple currencies, with multiple counterparties that need to be accounted for. At the same time, a burgeoning startup and innovation community is presenting new business models with entirely new requirements that we couldn’t have anticipated. Overlaying 2007 solutions with a new ‘digital’ front end simply won’t cut it.

A NEW BANKING ETHOS Digital transformation efforts and innovation initiatives have increased but, so far, these have largely focussed on the superficial and hasn’t created the value for business customers that the industry needs to deliver on. That’s not to say that established banking players can’t evolve. But reincarnation is needed, rather than transformation. Banking as we’ve known it will be wholly disrupted but the incumbents have the track records, heritages and experience that make them ideally placed to help build a new banking ethos. The ‘winners’ in 2021 and beyond won’t be those that seek to ‘own’ the most customers, but those that recognise change is imperative and that progress can’t be achieved alone. Modern businesses are evolving in ways that we couldn’t have predicted. Take Amazon, for example – a business that started out as an online bookstore and is now a multi-billion-dollar ecommerce platform, cloud computing and digital streaming provider. How can we expect a banking system built on legacy infrastructure to cope with the cashflow, risk, operational resilience and foreign exchange requirements of a business with these ambitions? In 2021, businesses won’t settle for anything less than the convenient, high-value and intuitive services they use in their lives as consumers. Pretty soon, www.thepower50.com

traditional business banking players will cater to these demands by offering the agile services that we’ve never before associated them with. With applications for emoney licences also continuing to grow, we’ll continue to see payments and banking solutions come from businesses we never expected. Regulation is presenting the industry with a huge challenge, but an even bigger opportunity. From the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and the fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5) to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the second Emoney Directive (2EMD), the frameworks for a more open, collaborative future in banking are now being built. The market just needs to deliver on it.

FUELLING THE FINANCE OF THE FUTURE Banks looking to digital transformation as their saviour who are only focussing on front end services will quickly find they haven’t gone far enough to ensure they’re creating the services of the future. In this world, connecting with API-enabled platforms to collaborate with banks and fintechs alike will be vital to building

smoother experiences and access to better business services. These could be offered by anyone from a payment provider to a marketplace business. Modern businesses will require modern banking solutions and, ultimately, it’s these collaborations across adjacent industries that will change finance and fuel commerce.

Incumbent banks have made huge strides towards innovation but, at today’s rate of change, this only has left them standing still As innovations in consumer banking continue to grow at pace, the inadequacies of business banking solutions will only become more evident. For banks, this will mean taking a close look at not only how they are innovating, but also who they are innovating with. For businesses, it may mean expanding their search beyond the typical banking solutions they would expect, and looking to more innovative providers that understand their core needs and can help future-proof their business.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

OpenPayd is a leading global payments and banking-as-a-service platform for the digital economy.

COMPANY: OpenPayd

Through its API-driven technology, businesses can embed financial services into their products and create the seamless user experiences needed to drive business growth. OpenPayd’s platform removes the need to contract with multiple providers for different services and across different markets. Instead, businesses can access accounts, FX, international and domestic payments, acquiring and open banking services globally via a single API integration. With licensing across the UK, Europe, Canada and others, OpenPayd is committed to providing businesses with a fully compliant solution across all markets, leaving your business to focus on growth.

FOUNDED: 2018 CATEGORY:

Banking and payments platform KEY PERSONNEL: Iana Dimitrova, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: UK ACTIVE IN: Turkey, Bulgaria, Malta and Belgium CONTACT: +44 (0) 208 194 5050 WEBSITE: www.openpayd.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/openpayd/ TWITTER: @OpenPayd

WHAT WE DO Embedded finance for the digital economy THEFINTECHPOWER50

EMBRACING INNOVATION IN PAYMENTS TECHNOLOGY

IFX Payments took the pain out of making high-volume, cross-border transfers for corporates. Now it's looking at how it can support open banking initiatives with its bespoke digital cash management system, says CEO Will Marwick After years of building a successful telephone brokerage business, it became clear to us that the foreign exchange industry was becoming increasingly saturated. More and more market entrants were offering what was swiftly becoming a commoditised product

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as FX services became about the ‘race to the bottom’, with margin the sole determining factor between won and lost business. The opportunity facing IFX Payments was to think creatively about how we could offer our customers value that went beyond saving them money.

IFX’s unique challenge within this was that, as an FX business, we were already serving a diverse set of clients. Our first task was to narrow down our initial target consumer base and establish ways to differentiate ourselves with these clients. Mindful that the retail market was extremely competitive with www.thepower50.com

I F X PAY M E N T S high barriers to entry, comprising of impressive user experiences and razor-thin margins, we opted to focus on our corporate customers. Our mission was to build a frictionless and complete digital payments experience that removes the burden of managing complex payment processes afforded by the traditional banks and empowers businesses to realise their true potential by focussing on the things that really matter. We’d already built our own CRM system, established a versatile payments infrastructure and implemented effective compliance controls and back-office processes to support these functions in-house, so with the foundations of a strong tech platform and highly skilled development team, we were well-equipped to achieve our objective. As well as this, we owned our whole tech stack, so we were free to define our own future and weren’t reliant on the constraints of third-party providers. Coming from a telephone brokerage background, we’ve always been in close dialogue with our clients, meaning we had a really clear picture of our customers’ pain points today and their goals for tomorrow, which helped us understand how we could add value at each stage. We wanted to focus on offering simple banking solutions for those complex problems, emphasising the quick delivery of value-rich features that our clients would love. We first extended our service offering by building an online mass payment solution that allowed corporate clients to make up to 50,000 payments in just a few clicks, with the benefit of account pre-validation to avoid returns and transparent pricing by way of avoiding last-minute rate movements. It was a simple solution to the complexity of managing a high volume of payments and accessing the global payments network. From there, we created a multi-currency virtual IBAN offering – ibanq – to enable businesses to segregate and streamline remittance and collection flows with 100 per cent accuracy, utilising ibanq’s ability www.thepower50.com

to create flexible and purpose-specific sub-accounts. ibanq is fully integrated into our mass payment solution, and can also track payments and account activity with real-time reporting, statements and audit log. The combination of these

We built an online mass payment solution that allowed corporate clients to make up to 50,000 payments in just a few clicks products created a seamless, transparent and time-saving digital cash management platform for businesses. By establishing a clear pricing strategy and identifiable target consumer base, we’ve been able to gather momentum in

WHO WE ARE IFX Payments has built its own payments infrastructure to offer clients a quick, secure and easy-to-use service at low cost. Whether it’s a single transfer or an international payroll run, IFX has global cross-border payment solutions to save time and money. We offer a range of complete banking processes as a service through both modern API-driven and web-based platforms in the form of a market-leading liquidity management system with flexible payments and foreign exchange solutions that can fit any business model. Our flagship product – ibanq – is a multi-currency, virtual IBAN account that's integrated directly into our foreign exchange services and global payments network. That means customers can manage, maintain and distribute funds in up to 39 currencies from one single account and can work with global business funds the same way they would with a regular bank account. Virtual IBANs enable businesses to segregate remittance flows with 100 per cent

2021 and onboard clients quickly and efficiently via our API. We work closely with our customers to showcase our full functionality, collate further feedback to keep incrementally innovating and to help tackle new problems on the horizon before they become a reality. We deliver solutions to production quickly, establishing testing and learning cycles, externally and internally, that allow us to iterate and improve at pace. Strategically, we’re exploring ways in which we can help our customers not just become more efficient by developing new product features, but also by leveraging new regulatory permissions through open banking. That will allow us to consolidate multiple accounts and initiate payments from one single cash management system, so businesses will need to look no further than IFX Payments. accuracy and without the need for reconciliation via a master account, so our customers can be confident in knowing it’s safe and simple for both them and their customers.

AT A GLANCE COMPANY: IFX Payments FOUNDED: 2005 CATEGORY:

Cross-border payments KEY PERSONNEL:

Will Marwick, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: London, UK OFFICES IN: Poland and Dubai TEL: +44 (0) 207 495 8888 WEBSITE: ifxpayments.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/ifxpayments

WHAT WE DO Foreign exchange and payments technology specialists THEFINTECHPOWER50

S A LT E D G E Did you know that approximately 94 per cent of European citizens believe that protecting the environment is very important, while only little over 80 per cent of them would agree to be part of actions protecting the environment? Eighty per cent doesn’t seem enough, considering that environmental damage is increasing daily. The good news is that things have begun moving in a better direction, and open banking is partly to ‘blame’ for it. Its major scopes revolve around providing greater financial

transparency and innovative services but its positive impact goes beyond that. Although open banking has been around for several years now, we’ve recently witnessed greater adoption globally, as digitisation became a worldwide priority. Plenty of services migrated online. Individuals and businesses have experienced the sweet taste of online operations and they aren’t willing to give that up. Companies and institutions are riding the open banking wave – a wave that the majority of consumers is intensely encouraging,

especially now, when this majority consists of Millennials. For them, words like ‘sustainability’ ‘eco’, ‘green’ mean much more today than yesterday. All sectors are going through this transformation, including banking. This digitisation process has been strongly enhanced in the past years, taking a big leap forward. Open banking is a phenomenon embraced by countries around the world, helping financial institutions, from banks to lenders and accounting services, digitise their operations and use less plastic and paper than ever.

IF OPEN BANKING WERE A COLOUR, IT WOULD BE GREEN At Salt Edge, providing APIs to a wide spectrum of businesses is giving financial services an eco boost

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WHEN BANKING GETS ITS ECO-SHOT Fintech’s concept has seriously evolved ever since its appearance, including with the help of open banking. As time passed and open banking regulations began to be adopted globally, the fintech services range became wider, now embracing lending, personal financial management (PFM) tools, loyalty programmes, insurance, bookkeeping, etc. Accordingly, in a quite short period, banking and financial services got injected with some green DNA, thus affecting and perturbing other economic sectors. While at a first sight connecting open banking to ecology seems complicated, looking deeper, you’ll notice that it has become a big part of a conscious lifestyle and business, at multiple levels.

GREEN IS THE NEW BLACK We hear ‘green’ more often nowadays and it doesn’t refer exclusively to the happy colour. Green businesses, green credits, green investments, green everything – companies from all over the world are adjusting their strategies, offerings, and marketing targets towards more than just making a profit. They want (and need) to be in-line with what most consumers expect – sustainability. From their perspective, open banking has played an important role in digitisation. Innovative open banking services have a direct positive impact on the accessibility of natural resources and their rational usage. Just look at how open banking has helped businesses transfer offline operations to the online environment, replacing traditional ways that required tremendous amounts of paper. Here are some of the most common open banking use cases and how they directly support sustainable development: Open banking in lending and credit risk analysis leading to financial inclusion Businesses like Credit Hero and Lendex have turned to Salt Edge for open banking solutions to ensure a wider financial inclusion for their customers. This is probably the domain where open banking has the most noticeable impact, allowing

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individuals and businesses access to funds otherwise unreachable to them. Using open banking data enables lenders to give a second chance for credit approval to potentially great loan applicants who have initially been rejected due to lack of credit history (first-time borrowers, migrants). Besides, open banking cancels potential manipulations in physical bank statements, while helping financial institutions save on fraud decisioning, underwriting, or credit risk-related issues. Lenders see the authentic financial picture of potential borrowers and tailor their offering accordingly. Open banking in PFMs contributing to a more responsible financial behaviour PFMs like Spendee, MoneyWiz and Planner Bee manage to comprise all bank data based on open banking capabilities and transform it into a picture detailing the users’ financial behaviour and the areas that need adjustments. Thus, end users can shift from reckless expenses to a more rational, sustainable lifestyle. What we’ve observed throughout our clients is that, by leveraging open banking possibilities, their companies become more viable. This is obvious, since open banking

contributes to preserving ecology balance by: ■ Stimulating behavioural changes ■ Cutting down on unjustifiable consumerism ■ Enhancing green finances (green lending and investing) ■ Improving financial inclusion for underserved categories by simplifying bank data sharing, even across continents for expats, and introducing alternative reliable data sources for credit analysis for people with thin credit files ■ Reducing the plastic cards and cash use Changing the traditional banking paradigm became possible because of many factors: the obvious increased competition but also the concerns regarding the environment we live in and the upcoming generations' future. All this has catalysed the global digital revolution, forcing the banking sector to catch up. This is where Salt Edge pitches in: we stand for helping businesses become more viable and sustainable: short, medium, and long term. Sustainable businesses lead to overall sustainable development. And that is what we all want.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

We are a financial API platform providing PSD2 (revised Payment Services Directive) and open banking solutions for lenders, accounting companies, banks, and any innovative institution from across the globe.

COMPANY: Salt Edge

There are two main vectors of activity: enabling third parties to get access to thousands of bank APIs via a unified gateway; and developing the technology necessary for banks to become compliant with PSD2 requirements. ISO 27001 certified and an account information service provider (AISP), licensed under PSD2, the company employs the highest international security measures to ensure stable and reliable connections between financial institutions and their customers. It is integrated with more than 5,000 financial institutions in more than 50 countries.

FOUNDED: 2013 CATEGORY:

Open banking KEY PERSONNEL: Dmitrii Barbasura, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE:

Ontario, Canada OFFICES IN: UK, Italy, Romania and Moldova TEL: +1 437 886 3969 WEBSITE: www.saltedge.com/ LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/salt-edge/ TWITTER: @saltedge

WHAT WE DO Open banking for every business

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KUDA BANK

BUILDING THE BIGGEST BANK FOR AFRICANS In less than two years, Kuda has done what banks in Nigeria failed to do for decades... extend free, digital banking to everyone, everywhere. Now it’s crossing new boundaries Kuda has done the near-impossible by making banking entirely free in Nigeria with a big bet on technology. The digital-led bank is now focussed on a much bigger picture - free banking for all Africans on the planet. When Babs Ogundeyi envisioned democratising banking for Africans, he could not have foretold the impact his dream would have around the world. Yet, only a few years down the line, Babs, his co-founder Musty Mustapha and their team at Kuda have insinuated themselves in the all-important global conversation about the future of banking, and the startup’s reputation for bucking the trend in traditional finance is growing by the day. Fuelled by a mixture of bullishness and grit, and helped along by a strong penchant for attracting great talent as well as the backing of some of the world’s most respected institutional investors, Kuda has positioned itself

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as the challenger bank with a mission to make banking accessible, affordable and rewarding for every African on the planet. An ambitious goal, no doubt, but this isn’t just big talk. With more than a million Kuda accounts opened in its launch country of Nigeria as at May 2021, Kuda’s growing achievements cannot be ignored. Armed with cautious optimism and $1.6million in pre-seed funding, Kuda launched as a functional bank for smartphones in August 2019. A quiet launch by any standard (no billboards, no frills, no fanfare), this was a culmination of a two-year journey of experimenting on a Nigerian retail banking landscape that often frustrated customers with charges and long queues at bricks-and-mortar branches. Two years later, banking in Nigeria has evolved considerably, with local regulators creating a more enabling environment for digital-only banks,

keeping in step with trends seen across emerging markets like Brazil and India. Kuda has also taken several steps forward, experiencing viral adoption, boosted by the social distancing rules of the COVID-19 pandemic, refining its product significantly, and unveiling a web app. But its attractive proposition remains brilliantly basic: “We are the bank of the free.” Inconvenient charges for bank transfers and cards are still out, and the bank continues to deliver a debit card at no cost anywhere in Nigeria. What is the catch, though? There isn’t one, at least not for the customer. But for the bank of the free, delivering reliable free services since 2019 means working hard to improve customer experience at every turn – a commitment that often demands building custom tech infrastructures at a fraction of the steep prices that competitors with much deeper pockets typically pay to acquire them. www.thepower50.com

WHO WE ARE Kuda is a UK-headquartered, digital-led bank making banking accessible, affordable, and rewarding for all Africans.

The most important of those infrastructures is Nerve, Kuda’s core banking application, built from scratch by its team of Nigerian software engineers and the closest thing the emerging bank has to a secret sauce.

Inconvenient charges for bank transfers and cards are still out, and the bank continues to deliver a free debit card at no cost anywhere in Nigearia Nerve is the backbone of all services offered by Kuda, and the flexibility and speed it provides makes it a quantum leap of an upgrade from the third-party core banking application the bank went to market with in 2019. With Kuda stepping away from such dependencies, the bank has come into its own and convinced customers, www.thepower50.com

competitors and regulators in Nigeria that it is a serious institution that intends to be around for a long time to come. The next frontier for the bank is its expansion into other African countries, a move it is preparing for with steps such as its acquisition of a Visa licence to produce debit cards independently from July 2021, and its beta roll-out of a business account to bank SMEs across borders. Even with a war chest of US $35million, raised collectively in seed and Series A rounds from backers such as Target Global and Valar Ventures, the bank’s pragmatic decision to restrain itself from splashing cash and instead invest more in the factors responsible for its early growth – technology, mass market outreach and customer experience – gives confidence that it has what it takes to spread its winning formula across the continent. And why shouldn’t Kuda succeed? After all, a win for free banking is a win for Africans.

It has more than one million customers in its launch country, Nigeria, where it provides free banking services through its apps for smartphones and the web.

AT A GLANCE COMPANY: Kuda Bank FOUNDED: 2019 CATEGORY: Neobank KEY PERSONNEL:

Babs Ogundeyi, CEO & Co-founder (right) HEAD OFFICE:

London, UK

OFFICES IN: Lagos, Nigeria EMAIL: hello@kudabank.com WEBSITE: kuda.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/kudabank TWITTER: @kudabank

WHAT WE DO The bank of the free THEFINTECHPOWER50

WING

With a newly minted commercial banking licence from the National Bank of Cambodia, Wing is making good on its promise to improve financial inclusion across the kingdom Millions of rural Cambodians rely on Wing for their day-to-day lives, while those in the city view it as a convenience. The company, which secured a commercial banking licence last year, has a pervasive presence in Cambodia, where nearly every adult in the country used its services last year. As Cambodia’s leading mobile financial service provider, Wing (Cambodia) Bank Plc is poised to

further promote financial inclusion among the underbanked after the National Bank of Cambodia awarded it a commercial banking licence in December 2020. “Wing’s status as a commercial bank is a watershed moment, not only for the company, but also for the country,” says Bunthe Hor, Deputy CEO of Wing. “We intend to improve financial access for all Cambodians and aid economic growth by opening new revenue channels, improving access to funds and expanding our workforce.” Established in 2008, Wing Bank has revolutionised the way Cambodians access finance by introducing instant, secure and convenient mobile services. Its popularity with rural Cambodians and the underbanked has allowed the bank to solidify its position as a market leader. It is one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in Cambodia. Last year alone, more than 12 million people used Wing Bank’s secure financial

services ecosystem – that means that almost every adult in Cambodia trusted Wing Bank to carry out their financial needs. “Our products and services are designed to contribute to improved financial literacy, financial inclusion, and gender inclusion in the Kingdom. Becoming a commercial bank allows us to be even more effective, and that was the driving force behind our decision to pursue a banking licence,” says Bunthe. Wing Bank has been at the forefront of driving financial, gender and digital inclusion in Cambodia through the continuous introduction of innovative products and solutions that were aimed at improving the lives of people. More than 80 per cent of Wing Cash Xpress agents and 50 per cent of its customers are women, making Wing Bank a shining example of gender inclusion in the region.

WING BANK’S SOARING AMBITION 38 THEFINTECHPOWER50

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Wing Bank is now able to provide a broader variety of banking products and services to all Cambodian people, such as loan and deposit services. These complement Wing’s existing portfolio of digital and financial services, delivered through the extensive network of Wing Cash Xpress agents and the popular Wing Money App. “Wing Bank is not a traditional bricks-and-mortar company. Wing Bank is a hybrid digital bank with a modern approach to financial services,” says Bunthe. “With our innovative technology and extensive knowledge of the local market, Wing Bank, our agents and partners are primed to combine efforts to bridge the financial gap by providing tools to the underbanked population.” Wing Bank now provides an array of advanced financial products, both for individual and corporate customers. These include loans, deposits, micro savings, credit referral services, money

transfers, utility and insurance payments, supply chain payments, payroll services and even phone top-ups. Wing Bank also offers retail payments via WingPay and introduced the WingMall e-commerce platform last year.

Wing’s status as a commercial bank is a watershed moment, not only for the company, but also for the country Bunthe Hor, Deputy CEO Today, Wing Bank serves the entire Cambodian population with coverage in every district. The bank has nearly 10,000 Wing Cash Xpress agents, more than 55,000 merchants, and partnerships with industry giants such as Mastercard, MoneyGram, AliPay, WeChat Pay, Western Union, Visa, and Ria.

WHO WE ARE Wing Bank (Cambodia) Plc is driven by the vision to provide every Cambodian with convenient access to financial services relevant to, and for the improvement of, their daily lives. It has already revolutionised the way Cambodians access finance by introducing instant, secure, and convenient mobile financial services in 2008. Today, Wing Bank serves the entire Cambodian population, thanks to the innovative Wing Money App, nearly 10,000 Wing Cash Xpress agents, more than 55,000 merchants, and partnerships with industry giants such as Mastercard, MoneyGram, AliPay, WeChat Pay, Western Union, Visa, and Ria. Wing Bank provides an array of advanced financial products for both

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Wing Bank has also been a great partner to corporate Cambodia. Almost 80 financial institutions, 500 corporate partners and thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises use the Wing Bank financial ecosystem to their advantage. Hundreds of thousands of factory workers receive their salaries through their Wing Digital Wallets, helping them save precious working hours and improve productivity. The licence from the National Bank of Cambodia secures Wing’s vision of improving the daily lives of underbanked people. “We want to extend our financial capacity to ensure that everyone in Cambodia will be able to access financial services that are relevant to their daily lives,” Bunthe adds. “In turn, we hope that this improves the economic growth of the communities in which they live.”

AT A GLANCE individual and corporate customers. These include loans, deposits, micro savings, credit referral services, money transfers, utility and insurance payments, supply chain payments, payroll services and phone top-ups. In addition, Wing offers retail payments via WingPay, and also has introduced the WingMall e-commerce platform. Small and large companies alike are now using Wing’s payroll and disbursement services, speeding up payments. More than 80 per cent of Wing’s agents and 50 per cent of its customers are women, making Wing a shining example of gender inclusion in the region.

COMPANY: Wing Bank (Cambodia) Plc FOUNDED: 2008 CATEGORY: Banking KEY PERSONNEL:

Bunthe Hor, Deputy CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE:

Phnom Penh, Cambodia WEBSITE: wingmoney.com/en/ LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/wing -cambodia-limited-specialised-bank

WHAT WE DO The bank for every Cambodian THEFINTECHPOWER50

INCLUSIVE, DIGITAL AND SUSTAINABLE… That’s Contour’s vision for the future of global trade, made possible by a common, decentralised network that creates a new category of personalised trade services, built around trade finance

– the only path forward is the expansion of trade finance and an increase in its accessibility. Ultimately, trade finance will need to become much simpler for banks to provide and for businesses to access. This necessitates trade going digital with greater sharing of information among participants. But, to make that a reality, we need to act collectively today to move our industry forward.

AN INDUSTRY IN FLUX International trade is often referred to as the lifeblood of the global economy. It has the potential to lift communities out of poverty, connect cultures and bridge economic gaps. Despite this, many businesses still find trade-fuelled growth out of reach because of the obstacles created by antiquated trade finance processes and limited access to trade finance itself. To achieve greater equity of global trade – and achieve it with economic, environmental and social sustainability

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The variety of participants involved in a single trade can be vast and diverse, from manufacturers to shippers, banks, commodities companies, governments and retailers – the list goes on. Information sharing between each of these participants can be very challenging, and data tends to be fragmented and siloed. The problem is rooted in the lack of digital records, as trade, unlike other industries, is still heavily dominated by antiquated, paper-based processes.

Thankfully, change is happening. Driven by emerging technologies and innovative thinking, trade is evolving, creating greater opportunities for new global participants who have traditionally struggled to access the industry, and improving sustainability across the board.

ELIMINATING PAPER Infrastructure is the cornerstone of trade. Without airports, terminals, waterways, canals, highways, bridges and railways, goods are unable to move around the world. But documents are as important as infrastructure. Logistics partners, corporates and insurers generate a vast amount of documentation that supports the movement of goods throughout the lifecycle of a trade. Without the necessary documents, goods can be left stranded on a dock for weeks, waiting for the paperwork required to release them. When it comes to the trade of services or technology, there might not even be www.thepower50.com

CONTOUR any physical goods to move, but it still requires documents to enable financing, risk mitigation and trusted title transfer. Today, that means paperwork and processes that drive opaqueness, unnecessary cost, barriers to entry and the prevalence of unsustainable practices. The underlying problem is the lack of a common network. To shift from paper records to digital records, the world first needs a trusted, common digital network. Shared solutions can then be built on this network and deployed on a global scale, lowering barriers to entry, enhancing transparency, reducing risk and even making environmental improvements by reducing paper and couriered documentation.

DECENTRALISED NETWORKS With so much data in global trade, privacy and autonomy must be provided. A decentralised network is an ideal tool to achieve this, allowing integration and transparency in real-time while still maintaining data security and independent ownership. Through a decentralised digital network, no one party, including the network operator, owns the entire network or controls all the data. All parties in a transaction can share relevant information with a clear and auditable data trail – without sharing any data to unrelated parties in the network. Greater inclusiveness is a natural by-product of a decentralised network. If international trade is underpinned by a common decentralised network, then companies of every size will have more opportunities to do business, including new entrants who will have unrestricted access to global markets and finance for the first time. Banks will also benefit from the ability to safely expand their client base to smaller, faster-growing companies in new and existing markets, helping them remain profitable and competitive in the trade finance space. In addition, digitisation can move the industry towards total elimination of paper documentation, greatly improving environmental sustainability. Paper accounts for around 26 per cent of total www.thepower50.com

waste at landfills, and the environmental effects of producing it include deforestation, the use of enormous amounts of energy and water as well as air pollution and waste problems.

LINKING TRADE AND TRADE FINANCE International trade needs to innovate as an industry. The trade finance community

The trade finance community can succeed together or fail alone… a common network is only the first step to building a better future for trade can succeed together or fail alone, and a common network is only the first step to building a better future for trade. Once a common decentralised network has been established, the industry can then work towards improving linkages between trade finance and the wider trade world. Trade and trade finance are intrinsically linked, but with data currently trapped in their respective industry silos, participants can greatly benefit from trade finance

work flows and services that bridge these two worlds. A trade service may include elements of a trade finance workflow, such as a letter of credit (LC), but it will integrate the workflows with sources and consumers of data across the trade ecosystem, and then deliver it, custom-tailored to a client – for each and every transaction. This is a major shift away from an off-the-shelf trade finance product to a highly-tailored, fine-grained, controlled instrument for finance and risk mitigation. Trade services will be personal, providing solutions to fit the unique situation of a transaction, instantly and in real-time. This is where the oft-quoted trade finance gap can start to be effectively removed, by reducing the cost of providing trade finance and increasing the quality of data to better understand and price risk. With a global decentralised network of banks and corporates, and with deep integrations to both the physical supply chain and banking systems, the possibilities for new trade services are endless. With a conscious, collaborative effort from all stakeholders in global trade, there is no reason why these possibilities can’t start to be realised today.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

Contour is a digital trade finance network that is building the global standard for trade by bringing together the world’s banks, corporates and ecosystem partners into a common, digital, trusted ecosystem.

COMPANY: Contour

Powered by innovation, trust and collaboration, Contour uses decentralised technology to offer seamless integration with market-leading, digital document systems and other digital networks, enabling the instant flow of trusted data across the world’s trade routes and currently fragmented ecosystems. Contour was named a Leader in Trade for Digitalisation at the GTR Awards 2021.

OFFICES IN: United States

FOUNDED: 2020 CATEGORY:

Trade finance KEY PERSONNEL: Carl

Wegner, CEO (right)

HEAD OFFICE: Singapore TEL: contact@contour.network WEBSITE: www.contour.network LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/

contourtrade

TWITTER: @contourtrade

WHAT WE DO The trusted network for global trade THEFINTECHPOWER50

IN A CLASS OF ITS OWN

Contis doesn’t just pull the carriages in financial services – as an end-to-end banking-as-a-service provider, it ‘owns the train set’. And this year, it’s laying a lot of new track There aren’t many people in the payments world who can match Peter Cox’s track record for being in the right place at just the right moment – and turning those moments into a sizeable profit. He was there for the explosion in shared ATM services in the States, there for the start of supermarket card-based loyalty schemes in the UK – and he’s there now, at the helm of banking as a service (BaaS) provider Contis, just as the new age of embedded finance dawns. His philosophy, he told one interviewer, has always been to ‘bite off more than you can chew and then find a way to swallow it’. It’s never given him indigestion. Quite the opposite. In a fintech environment characterised by unicorns with scarlet balance sheets, he’s built Contis into a highly profitable, international full-service

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banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider without once having to provide a pitch deck to outside investors. The business, like the man, is self-made; financed from its own sizeable revenue streams. “This industry is full of people who think doing business at a loss is clever; it never has been,” says Cox. “Fintech is not about how much you raise, but how much you deliver.” Which is why he decided early on that the only way to do that well was for Contis to, as Cox puts it, ‘own the train set’. “We are a leader in BaaS. People use that term very broadly, but Contis is not an assembler of different people’s solutions; we own the tech and the licences,” he says. “And we proved it was the right strategy.” Not only is it one that makes internal processes more reliable (Contis platforms maintain 99.99 per cent uptime), but it

also gives clients confidence that, if there is ever a problem, ‘you don’t get into that situation where everybody points the other way’, says Cox. The only functions outsourced to specialist third-party providers are know-your-customer (KYC) and fraud protection systems – the latter provided by FeatureSpace’s AI-driven ARIC Risk Hub and the former, since May 2021, by W2, which looks after end-to-end KYC/ AML processes for customer onboarding and ongoing monitoring. “They don’t slow us down; they help us improve our deliverables,” says Cox. That’s just as well because the past 16 months have been one of the busiest periods – if not the busiest – in the company’s 13-year history. It’s witnessed an 80 per cent increase in transaction processing and a 50 per cent growth in www.thepower50.com

CONTIS new business volume. Contis’ clients now run the full gamut of providers – from crypto pioneers (it’s used by eight of the top 12 exchanges) to Tier 1 banks and, increasingly, non-finance firms. The company has already doubled in size in 2021 and that curve is only set to get steeper as it pushes into managed services globally, starting with EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific), and also looks to capture a significant slice of the market for embedded finance. In June, it launched a new banking division, headed by former Tier 1 banking executive Andy Lyons, with a focus on bringing embedded finance to high-growth businesses in Europe. “We expect to be a significant player in Europe and beyond in the embedded finance space,” says Cox. “If retailers want to offer any financial services – and, chances are, most will – they’ll need regulated support. Contis also has a consumer credit licence, so we can provide credit and embed all that in a proposition with sophisticated

onboarding. I believe corporates will become the banks of the future.” Lyons’ appointment followed a reorganisation of Contis’ business internally in March of this year to create dedicated teams addressing bank payments, end-to-end regulated BaaS solutions, stand-alone managed services,

We are a leader in BaaS. People use that term very broadly, but Contis is not an assembler of different people’s solutions; we own the tech and the licences Peter Cox, Chairman & Founder, Contis Group

including card processing for regulated businesses, core banking technology and financial inclusion solutions for credit unions and community banks. The last of those is something Cox has personally been committed to since the early days of his career. And with a new product called Engage – the only go-to-market brand Contis has ever

WHO WE ARE Contis is Europe’s number one banking-as-a-service platform. The most trusted provider in the market, we deliver 99.99 per cent uptime, serve two million customers and process more than £7billion a year. Put simply, we help businesses launch their own accounts, cards and payments services. This might include providing alternative banks with a complete account (with Direct Debit, Faster Payments, debit card, etc), umbrella payroll companies with a remittance platform or companies with access to Faster Payments infrastructure. With Contis, they can provide next-generation payments to their customers. Our award-winning technology also powers the most popular payments solution for crypto companies across Europe. It allows you to spend on card directly from

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introduced – he hopes at last to bring about significant change in the area of financial inclusion by helping raise the sector’s profile among consumers. Engage is a digital account, exclusively for credit union and community bank members, regardless of their financial status. “Engage is an end-to-end solution providing back-office core banking and linking that to dedicated bank accounts for loans and savings, cards and ApplePay,” explains Cox. “The big challenge right now is that the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has killed payday lenders. That means there are a vast number of people who are being forced into the hands of loan sharks. Credit unions and community banks can use Engage to introduce loans and investments to customers.” It’s one example of how ‘owning the train set’ lets Contis lay the tracks for a new type of financial services. “What we are witnessing is a revolution,” says Cox, “and we not only see ourselves being very much a part of that but also empowering it, because we are trusted and we are reliable.”

AT A GLANCE your crypto or stocks and shares wallet, yet the merchant still receives a fiat payment. The conversion happens at point of sale, so you can now buy coffee with your Bitcoin! This revolutionary tech is changing the game for companies like Bitpanda, Naga and many more. The Contis platform is a highly configurable and feature-rich, end-to-end banking and payment solution, powered by our real-time technology and proven, reliable processing. Our offering is fully scalable and configurable, providing clients with true choice. The platform is fully owned by Contis and is PCI DSS Level 1 compliant, which means we don’t rely on third-party providers (e.g. BIN sponsors, card issuers, payment processors) for its delivery. Contis is an issuer, processor and Principal member of Visa and Mastercard with full sponsorship capability.

COMPANY: Contis FOUNDED: 2008 CATEGORY:

Banking as a service KEY PERSONNEL:

Peter Cox, Executive Chairman & Founder (right) HEAD OFFICE:

Skipton, UK

OFFICES IN: UK & EEA TEL: +44 330 1596 348 WEBSITE: https://contis.com/ LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/contis-/ TWITTER: @Contis_

WHAT WE DO The future of payments. Your way THEFINTECHPOWER50

EMMANUEL DANIEL

THE RISE (AND FALL) OF THE PLATFORM

So much is riding on the platform economy that perhaps we choose not to see it's already being put to rout by a token world, says Emmanuel Daniel Even as we are just getting the hang of it – supercharging Web 3.0 with artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things – the Platform Age is in permanent decline. Financial services had, in any case, only ever been assigned a supporting role, after social media, room rentals, car-pooling, food delivery and other businesses that appear to have flourished on it. Yes, some digital banks, brokerages, insurance and buy now pay later operators have become unicorns, darlings of the venture capitalists, but only on the back of automating or digitising existing businesses. They were not transformational. Many digital banks tried to become platforms themselves, but never quite found the formula. They said they wanted to make finance more inclusive, to reach the unbanked, reduce the cost of payments. We will come to realise that the real goal was to onboard as many users as possible as a preamble to building a subscriptions-based business. There was no way finance was going to become cheaper for the poor when there is a venture capitalist sitting under each platform, waiting to be rewarded for taking a risk on it. Meanwhile, every former banker cum entrepreneur has been automating another sliver of customer analytics into another application in a layer of many, to be sold back to banks as added cost to their business. At the same time, protected by legislation, those same licensed banks and insurance

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companies have reduced their API partners to patch solution vendors, repairing deficiencies in their mainframe-based infrastructure, instead of democratising finance and making it open to all players. The well-meaning policymakers who promoted open banking will have to wait for another iteration of personalisation to realise their vision of a democratic system. And yet, the Platform Age for finance will not die an immediate death. In fact, Web 3.0 will even give the impression that personalisation is achievable. With more data and artificial intelligence, the platform players will appear to know everything about us. In my upcoming book, I talk about the personalisation of finance; how finance will become embedded in the four features of personalisation – identity, inter-operability, digital asset and non-repudiation. The speed with which the decentralised finance community is building and funding these four features is frightening. While senior bankers discuss technology stacks and interoperability at SIBOS, as they have every year for the past 10, the defi community is adding functionalities on a token every second week. We can only imagine what personalisation will mean as these features evolve. We have a hint already. Many blockchain-based cryptocurrencies today carry applications, payments, data and funding all in one token. The fact that the central bankers and incumbent players treat them as pariah does not invalidate

them. Even permission-based blockchain application vendors are now migrating towards a permissionless architecture. The genius of cryptocurrencies is not that one can hit $60,000 in value, but that every person on earth can be a designer, owner and proliferator of their own cryptoasset. Peer-to-peer lending and payment businesses that failed in the Platform Age will be given a new lease of life in the token world: everything will be re-architected around the user. This transition from platforms to personalisation will not arise out of policies or planning by people in the existing regime. So, you will not find support for what I am saying among them. No, the transition will be driven by counter-intuitive forces in the cauldron of destitute desperation. Conceptually, it will be difficult for some to imagine what it all means to the current players. Institutions will need to be repurposed, products changed. This is probably the first time anyone has even suggested the platform economy was going into this transition. Even though all the evidence is there, we see only what we choose to see.

AT A GLANCE Author and entrepreneur Emmanuel Daniel is founder of online information platform for the financial services industry, The Asian Banker, and also of Wealth And Society, a community of like-minded, ultra-high-net-worth individuals, families and founders who have the vision to transform society for good. WEBSITES: theasianbanker.com,

wealthandsociety.com TWITTER: @EmmanuelDaniel www.thepower50.com

THEODORA LAU

A SPARK TOWARDS TRUE PURPOSE Theodora Lau on how fintech can lead us to Beyond Good

In the midst of the longest economic expansion in US history, millions of workers experienced deteriorating financial and physical health. Inequality within our developed nation was reaching historic levels. In fact, according to the OECD, income inequality in the US is the highest of all the G7 nations. Then came 2020 and the global pandemic, which has not only exacerbated inequalities around the world, but also shone a bright light on them. For example, while many of us adapted to new ways of living and working, conducting zoom meetings from the comfort of our own homes, 30 per cent of American K-12 public school students were getting caught in the digital divide, struggling with inadequate connectivity when they needed it most; one in four people faced food insecurity – 81 million people in the wealthiest country in the world. While we’ve seen an explosion of consumer fintech startups in the past 10 years, promising to democratise all aspects of financial services, from investing to personal finance and lending, are we doing enough to help those who are most in need? How much do we truly understand how the other half banks? How often are we really changing the status quo and creating new business models and new values, versus just going through the same motions of value extraction but with a glossier wrapper? There seems to be a bigger prize, something more noble, one with purpose. Take the gig economy. From Brazil and South Africa to India and Indonesia, ridesharing drivers and www.thepower50.com

delivery workers have kept economies running while most of us shelter at home. Yet many are struggling to get by and make ends meet. As we emerge from the pandemic, how can we advance the economic opportunities of this growing group of essential workers, and help them build financial resilience?

Towards purposeful innovation Broad societal inclusion can only be realised when the monetary inequalities in our communities are addressed. Money drives opportunities, and opportunities in turn create positive impact across generations. So, how can we reimagine business creation to leverage talent and generate wealth?

Economic inequality is not inevitable; it is a human-created problem that can be solved While talent is equally distributed, opportunities, unfortunately, are not. Populations such as women and communities of colour are severely under-represented when it comes to business creation in both the EU and the US. Black-founded companies attracted around one per cent of venture capital funding annually from 2016 to 2020. While we have seen an encouraging upward trend in speciality fintechs serving the needs of forgotten demographics, from LGBTQ+ to immigrants and beyond, funding opportunities for them are still a drop in the bucket, compared to the mega rounds elsewhere in the fintech ecosystem. Until we can increase the diversity of funding partners, this will remain a formidable challenge. Inclusive entrepreneurship is an integral part of inclusive growth of any society. To kickstart the economy, we need a system that works for more people. From creating

supportive networks to improving access to capital, we must be more intentional in improving the diversity and inclusivity of our entrepreneur ecosystem. We must foster a more collaborative environment for ideas to take root, and help more businesses focus on new ways to sustain the basic needs of their own communities. We must do more to acknowledge the heterogeneity of our population and the diverse needs of citizens within it.

Going beyond good Economic inequality is not inevitable; rather, it is a human-created problem that can be solved. Access to credit and other financial services, including savings and microinsurance, along with access to income generation, can move the needle on equality, and truly transform society across geography, gender, and fragile communities. During times of uncertainty, we have a unique opportunity to turn empathy into lessons of hope and purpose, and leverage our shared experiences to create more genuine connectivity to the needs of each other. It is time to turn these moments into a Beyond Good movement, and create a more equitable society for all.

AT A GLANCE Theodora (Theo) Lau is the founder of Unconventional Ventures, a public speaker, and an advisor. She is the co-author of Beyond Good, and co-host of One Vision, a podcast on fintech and innovation. She is also a regular contributor to top industry events and publications, including Harvard Business Review and Nikkei Asian Review. WEBSITE: unconventionalventures.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ TWITTER: @UnconventionVc THEFINTECHPOWER50

BOT TOMLINE

ISO 20022: MAKE YOUR MOVE Ed Ireland, Solution Lead for Bottomline’s ISO 20022 programme, explains why the standard is a springboard to increased revenue streams and operational efficiencies

ISO 20022 is an interoperable global business standard that is transforming the international payments infrastructure. It improves the quality, structure and security of financial transactions and can read QR codes, biometric devices and e-invoices. It provides richer and continually enhanced data and, consequently, better data analysis, status tracing, sanction checking, automated invoice processing, pre-validation, cyberfraud management and detection. It also cuts payment costs and improves the end customers’ experience by reducing queries. Financial institutions and enterprise organisations must gear up for ISO 20022 now. It is not just about digital banking platform changes, it covers everything from clearing to settlement to customer proposition. It will revolutionise your entire operation. But, because the true benefit of ISO

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20022 is automated straight-through processing, existing legacy systems will need upgrading or replacing.

WHEN WAS ISO 20022 INTRODUCED? ISO 20022 isn’t new. Although not in the same form it is now, the standard was introduced in 2004 and is operational in 70 countries. A few institutions have already fully migrated, some – such as

the Bank of Japan – have partially done so, and many have yet to begin the process. Interestingly, businesses in EMEA and Asia are further ahead with implementation than those in the US. The delays are partly due to the pandemic, but other regulatory changes, such as SRD II, new compliance requirements, already busy roadmaps, and Brexit, pushed it down the ‘to-do’ list. www.thepower50.com

GET SUPPORT WITH YOUR MIGRATION Migrating to ISO 20022 is a complex task. Wherever you are in the process, you must have an infrastructure, integration and messaging plan, and a team and budget in place. This isn’t something that can be left to your IT department alone. To fully realise the benefits of ISO 20022, your IT and operations teams must work together to create a comprehensive solution that cuts costs, creates efficiencies and improves customers’ experience while erasing their existing pain points. You may benefit from external support, too. Your workforce may have

The sooner you adopt ISO 20022, the sooner you reap the benefits of high levels of transparency, better customer service and, of course, improved operational efficiency

WILL ISO 20022 CREATE TRUE INTEROPERABILITY? ISO 20022 should create full interoperability because it ensures that the payment and its data travel together. The full benefits of this interoperability, however, will only be felt when all the players in the value chain are compatible with the standard and speak its language. If they are not all working to the standard, require manual intervention or are transporting incomplete data, delays and disruptions will occur and the operational efficiencies that ISO 20022 brings in terms of cash forecasting, managing liquidity and supply-chain management will be lost. www.thepower50.com

the know-how to translate and migrate all your systems, but outside experts who have already helped dozens of businesses make the move could save time and money in the long run. The sooner you adopt ISO 20022, the sooner you reap the benefits of high levels of transparency, better customer service and, of course, improved operational efficiency. Bottomline is experienced in helping financial institutions and banks migrate to ISO 20022. We look at the individual practices of the markets that you work with, see what the requirements are and work out bespoke solutions to ensure that your interfaces can continue to support your operations throughout the migration period and beyond.

ACT FAST TO REAP THE BENEFITS Banks and financial institutions the world over are instigating changes across their operations in a bid to stay competitive,

introduce new revenue streams and improve customer service. Migration to ISO 20022 is an integral part of this process. The quicker you adopt the standard, the quicker the leap to operational efficiencies, cost-cutting, new opportunities for cross-border and real-time payments, boosting customer satisfaction and minimising fraud. It provides the solution for many go-forward challenges. So, don’t delay. Make the move!

WHO WE ARE Thousands of fintechs, banks and other financial institutions and corporates around the world rely on Bottomline (NASDAQ: EPAY) for domestic and international payments, efficient cash management, automated workflows for payment processing and bill review, and state-of-the-art fraud detection, behavioural analytics and regulatory compliance solutions.

AT A GLANCE COMPANY: Bottomline FOUNDED: 1989 CATEGORY: Payments KEY PERSONNEL:

Rob Eberle, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE:

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, US OFFICES IN: Canada, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Kosovo, Israel, France, Germany, India, Australia and Singapore TEL: +44 (0) 118 982 2253 WEBSITE: www.bottomline.com/uk LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ bottomline-technologies TWITTER: @bottomlinetech

WHAT WE DO Making complex business payments simple, smart, secure THEFINTECHPOWER50

THE HUMAN TOUCH – AND WHY IT’S STILL KEY Incumbents still have a thing or two to teach fintechs about customer service, says Graham Smith, Managing Director at Volopa. And they ignore those lessons at their peril Since the fintech revolution began, driven by the concept of open banking, a raft of new financial services has become available for the average consumer. While an individual’s choice of bank used to be determined by geography and proximity to a branch office, there are no such restrictions these days. Customers can access a variety of financial products through their smartphones, wherever they are, at any time of day. In a matter of moments, they can sign up for services provided by brands that didn’t even exist just a few short years ago. The shift in the landscape has been truly remarkable. The plethora of new players in the market has certainly made it an interesting industry to work in, as has the sheer range of products for consumers to choose from. The headlines tend to revolve around the newcomers, and rightly so – in many cases, they are changing our understanding of what we thought was possible. There are many brilliant individuals and teams in fintech

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right now, creating fantastic experiences that completely redefine how we make payments and manage our money. But we ignore the wise, experienced old heads at our peril. While the high street banks seem to have struggled to keep up with these innovative rookies, there are still a few big lessons that can be learned from the established names. One key element that new entrants in the financial services marketplace need to learn is that the importance of the human touch should never be underestimated. This is something that the big banks have always understood, particularly when it comes to large, life-changing decisions, such as mortgages and business loans. There is a great deal of emphasis in the fintech industry on creating experiences that are ‘sticky’ – things that customers like so much that they keep on using them. Building loyalty is fundamental to any successful business, especially if it operates in a highly competitive landscape. But the pressure of running a lean, agile fintech operation in such a

competitive marketplace is immense. There are many processes that need to run smoothly behind the scenes. Regulatory compliance is vital and there are tricky decisions to be made in terms of which bits of infrastructure to build and which to acquire or outsource from third-party suppliers. This takes up a significant amount of time and resource, and other fundamental parts of the equation – such as user experience (UX) – can suffer as a result. When we talk about UX in fintech, we tend to focus on the look and feel of an app and how easy it is to navigate and perform various tasks. One thing that we often don’t consider is customer support, but I would argue that this is a foundational pillar of the user experience. In many instances it is virtually impossible to speak to a human being right away if you have a problem – quite often, your first port of call is a trawl through the FAQ section of a website. Alternatively, you may find yourself having a ‘conversation’ with a chatbot. www.thepower50.com

V O L O PA Now, there are plenty of instances where chatbots are useful. Answering simple questions, or directing users to the correct function or feature, for example. Indeed, this can free up a lot of time for human customer service operatives, leaving them to focus on the more complex issues. Chatbots, in theory, should be driving efficiency in a business and it’s easy to see their appeal to fintech businesses that want to be as streamlined as possible. The fact of the matter is, though, that chatbots are a turn-off for many customers. A report from CGS, issued last year, found that 17 per cent of UK and US respondents had become frustrated by their interaction with a chatbot. In the same survey, 44 per cent said that they wanted businesses to make it easier to make direct contact with a human being. Some chatbots are more advanced than others, but often there are issues with language and usability that simply add to the annoyance when a user is trying to solve their problem. The chatbot is effectively a brand advocate, and if it isn’t doing a good job, then you are going to have an unhappy customer. Augmenting the customer service offering with a chatbot feature can be done – and done well – but there needs to be a good understanding of when a real person needs to get involved. It isn’t appropriate for a chatbot to be dealing with a customer who has had a card payment unexpectedly blocked late at night while they are overseas on a business trip, for example. New entrants in the financial services market have to recognise exactly when there should be a human being to offer advice, empathy and support. Nobody wants to stand in line to get access to a teller in order to carry out basic banking functions, but nobody wants to have their mortgage application rejected by a computer, either. It’s a question of finding the right balance. It’s even more essential in the midst of a public health crisis, when many people are likely to be feeling the pinch, that customers can access human beings directly. A chatbot isn’t going to be able to offer sympathy and understanding to someone who has lost a significant chunk of their income through no fault www.thepower50.com

of their own, or be able to offer more flexible terms for repayments. So why make the customer jump through hoops in the first place? The big banks have always recognised the importance of customer trust. While

The fact of the matter is that chatbots are a turn-off for many customers… People will always trust other people more than they trust computers

the financial crash of 2008 obviously had a big impact on this, it’s telling that recent research from BIS found that consumers in the US still trust the big banks more than they trust government agencies, big tech

companies and, crucially, fintech companies. Though the big banks may be lagging in terms of innovation and are still playing catch-up with many of the fintechs, they seem to have got one aspect right in building that trust. I firmly believe that it is their customer service which is at the heart of this. People will always trust other people more than they trust computers. In a world where we are rushing to simplify everything by automation, perhaps we also need to consider that people still need people, that human emotions such as empathy cannot yet be provided by a chatbot, and that investing in high-quality, human-led customer service will never be a mistake. Customers that feel cared for, that feel valued, and understood, are bound to have more trust in an organisation which in return will create higher brand loyalty.

WHO WE ARE Volopa is one of the UK’s first fintech innovators in the international payments, foreign exchange and prepaid cards space, which changed the way businesses manage and send their money. Founded in 2011, our experiences over the last decade have shaped our values: Excellence – We set high standards in everything we undertake, both internally and externally, and strive to achieve an outstanding performance in our customers’ experience. Transparency – Our customers can see clearly what they are receiving and what they are paying for. We create an environment of trust, openness and accountability. Innovation – We are already leaders in the fintech sector with our current innovative products, market-driven approach and investment in R&D. We continually look for new and creative ideas to develop our products and relationships. Teamwork – We promote open and clear communication, both internally and externally, and we remain focussed on the team result for ourselves and our customers.

Respect – We respect everyone, including our competition. We listen to our customers and build collaborative, trusting relationships, specifically designed to ensure all parties benefit.

WHAT WE DO A one-stop-shop for your business expenses and international payments AT A GLANCE COMPANY: Volopa FOUNDED: 2011 CATEGORY: Payments KEY PERSONNEL:

Graham Smith, Managing Director. (right) HEAD OFFICE: London, UK TEL: +44 (0) 333 4001287 WEBSITE: www.volopa.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/volopa/ TWITTER: @volopa

THEFINTECHPOWER50

PAVING THE WAY TO DIGITISATION ZignSec has delivered the first business registry in Europe to utilise blockchain technology Although 97 per cent of IT leaders in Europe believe that automated processes are key to digital transformation, 54 per cent of organisations' processes are still manual. This discrepancy emerged in The State Of Process Automation study by Camunda. The survey shows that manual processes caused many errors for companies, while employees’ urgent need to shift to working from home in 2020 has further driven the necessity to automate more processes. Slow digitisation prevents many companies in Europe from automating those processes on a global level. But new software, utilising blockchain

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technology and machine learning, makes it possible for organisations to reach the next stage in digitisation. The Malta Business Registry (MBR) is one example. The Maltese government engaged ZignSec subsidiary Wyzer to renew the register and lift it onto a future-proofed platform. The old system was outdated, complicated and required physical signatures. Wyzer developed the new register based on its No-Code framework – which is also empowering ZignSec’s new No-Code Compliance Manager. This enables businesses of any size to automate compliance and business-critical processes without the need to engage in costly and time-consuming IT projects. The new MBR platform is built with simplicity and user-friendliness in mind and allows non-technical members of staff to configure the system to specific needs. It enables the Malta Business Registry to significantly optimise all its

processes, including registering, verifying and maintaining new and existing businesses while ensuring the highest security standards. Digital signatures are used instead of physical ones, which previously required significantly more time and resources. The simplicity of the new portal also makes it easier for employees to work remotely and become more agile. Importantly, the utilisation of blockchain technology prevents data intrusion and makes it impossible to manipulate data. This means that data is tamper-proof and can be audited in a secure manner. "By automating more processes and implementing multiple digital verifications, as Malta Business Registry has done, more companies in Europe could take the next step in digital transformation,” says Daniel Grech, Managing Director at Wyzer. “It would save an enormous amount of time and resources while allowing www.thepower50.com

ZIGNSEC

organisations to move that much faster.” Automating digital processes reduces errors in repetitive manual tasks while improving the overall customer journey. Decisions can be made much quicker, leading to a higher satisfaction and system acceptance. “The reason why many companies still fail to automate their processes and undergo a digital transformation is

because they are chained to outdated legacy systems,” says Timm Schneider, CEO of ZignSec. “Large and highly regulated environments especially struggle to renew their infrastructure and fall behind today’s standards. “Our No-Code Compliance Manager platform enables clients to actively use new technologies and bring them to their next level in digitisation.”

WHO WE ARE ZignSec offers best-of-breed technology, including biometric verification, machine learning algorithms and utilisation of blockchain technology, for digital onboarding, global ID verification services, and business automation. Our platform evolves constantly by aggregating the best available verification and data providers within each geography. By combining individual solutions that meet each customer’s need, we have created a powerful workflow engine that can be configured to any business or market. With the launch of our No-Code

By automating more processes and implementing multiple digital verifications, more companies could take the next step in digital transformation AT A GLANCE

Compliance Manager platform we enable all our clients to rapidly deploy and automate business-critical workflows and to access modern technologies such as machine learning for risk and compliance checks. As one of the first regtech companies listed on NASDAQ First North in Stockholm, we are setting new standards and challenging the status quo for global verification and compliance services as we digitise, optimise, automate and perform business processes for our clients. ZignSec is a single gateway partner to solve the fragmented global world of regulatory compliance.

COMPANY: ZignSec FOUNDED: 2015 CATEGORY: Regtech KEY PERSONNEL:

Timm Schneider CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE:

Stockholm, Sweden OFFICES IN: Singapore, Czech Republic and US TEL: +46 8 410 785 00 WEBSITE: www.zignsec.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/zignsec TWITTER: @ZignSec

WHAT WE DO Identify anyone, anywhere – in real time www.thepower50.com

THEFINTECHPOWER50

A D VA N C E . A I

FAST-TRACKING GLOBAL EXPANSION Umair Javed, Head of Strategy at ADVANCE.AI, on how the company’s end-to-end risk management platform is accelerating both its own growth and that of its clients

ADVANCE.AI is a leading AI and big data company in Asia that specialises in digital identity verification, risk and credit scoring, and digital lending solutions. ADVANCE.AI is riding this massive digital step-change across the core industry sectors we serve. API call volumes for our Cloud-based software more than doubled in 2020. In the same year, we were named in LinkedIn’s Top 10 Start-ups in Singapore, awarded Best International Fintech at India’s Fintech Awards and listed in the Next Global Tech 50: Artificial Intelligence shortlist by global investment research firm Equal Ocean.

COVID-19 has seen banking and financial services as a whole forced to digitise their entire operations as well as shrink and redesign the experience of the physical bank.

OUR SUCCESS IN ASIA

Customers are also demanding a better, more seamless customer journey and experience. This re-imagining of the digital customer experience is no longer a nice to have, it is an imperative that lies at the crux of whether the organisation thrives post-COVID or fades into irrelevance. Beyond financial services, the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) applications within the e-commerce and retail sectors has also grown exponentially as more people transact digitally. Online payments and customer authentication with anti-fraud technology can simplify and improve the overall customer experience. And if increasing productivity while lowering cost is vital for your business, then AI can drive process automation, improve customer and competitive insight through data, and transform customer and employee engagement.

Our core suite of services is currently being used by nearly 1,000 enterprise clients across Southeast Asia, India and Greater China in banking, financial services, fintech, payments, retail, and e-commerce. Key clients include large multinational banks and financial services organisations, as well as regional fintechs, payments, retail and e-commerce platforms that are looking to digitally transform their operations, manage risk and optimise resource efficiency. We are seeing growing demand and adoption of our holistic suite of end-to-end API and software-as-a-service (SaaS) products and services, which solve digital transformation, fraud prevention and process automation for enterprise clients. This demand is coming not just from markets outside Asia, such as Mexico, the UK, Europe and Africa, but also in

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related industries outside our core sectors, such as insurance, gaming and the Internet of Things.

WHAT MAKES US UNIQUE As we look to expand, ADVANCE.AI is fortunate to have several factors stacked in our favour, but I would posit the following three: Our in-house technology Owning and developing our own AI technology gives us full control over quality and cost. This allows us to provide responsive, targeted and seamless best-in-class solutions for customers, without having to rely on third-party AI providers. Our one-stop platform Developing our own end-to-end risk management platform enables clients to actively manage risk across all their business needs. This also allows for localised, tailor-made solutions for customers. For example, our facial recognition models and optical character recognition (OCR) technology are trained to be highly accurate in the different markets in which we operate. Our family of brands ADVANCE.AI is a business unit under the umbrella of the Advance Intelligence Group. Backed by a number of top-tier venture funds, the Advance Group is a Series C technology company that leverages a wide range of industry expertise and partnerships to build an ecosystem of products and services for consumers, enterprises and merchants.

www.thepower50.com

A WORLD VIEW FROM SINGAPORE Sitting in Singapore, we have a world view from this island republic. Singapore is among the global leaders when it comes to a fully fleshed out and fully supported national AI strategy, designed to improve the national economy and improve people’s lives. Singapore is also at the centre of Southeast Asia, home to the world’s third biggest market of 650 million people, many of whom are young, digital-first natives who are craving access to credit and a wide range of financial services.

Beyond financial services, the potential of AI applications within the e-commerce and retail sectors has also grown exponentially as more people transact digitally Beyond that, Singapore is also an ideal gateway between East and West, and a top target for high-tech talent, investment and international expansion for many high-growth companies. It is for these reasons we are excited about the opportunities that being part of a global list such as the Fintech Power 50 brings. We are on the fast track of global expansion against the backdrop of rapid digitisation across the industries and partners we serve, and we’re incredibly excited about the future that lies ahead. www.thepower50.com

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

Headquartered in Singapore, ADVANCE.AI is a leading AI and big data company in Asia that specialises in digital identity verification, risk and credit scoring, and digital lending solutions.

COMPANY: ADVANCE.AI

Our core suite of services is used by nearly 1,000 enterprise clients across Southeast Asia, India and Greater China in banking, financial services, fintech, payments, retail, and e-commerce. Our key clients include large, multinational banks and financial services organisations, as well as regional fintechs, payments, retail and e-commerce platforms that are looking to digitally transform their operations, manage risk and optimise resource efficiency.

FOUNDED: 2016 CATEGORY:

IDV, risk products, digital lending KEY PERSONNEL:

Dong Shou, Co-Founder and CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: Singapore TEL: +6 597951580 PRESENCE IN: Southeast Asia, India, Greater China and Mexico WEBSITE: advance.ai/us LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/advance.ai/ TWITTER: @ADVANCEAI_

WHAT WE DO Solve digital transformation, fraud prevention and process automation for enterprise clients THEFINTECHPOWER50

RINGING THE CHANGES As more consumers emerge from the pandemic than went into it using digital payments, it’s important to find the right balance so no-one’s excluded from a cashless society, says wearable payment pioneer McLEAR

In the UK, research by the Bank of England has shown how the pandemic has accelerated the trend away from paying by cash, with the frequency of ATM withdrawals in October 2020 down 40 per cent on the previous year. While partly due to an overall reduction in consumer spending, this also reflects public concern that handling banknotes may risk spreading the virus, even though tests have found the likelihood of this to be remote. The Bank’s earlier July 2020 survey showed 71 per cent of respondents were using less cash than before the

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pandemic, with 44 per cent saying they could go for more than a month without using it at all. Of course, this significant change has not been driven by consumers alone. Following government advice, many retailers have encouraged them to use contactless and, on reopening their stores after the UK’s initial lockdown period, some announced that they would no longer accept cash payments, without knowing the drastic impact that this could have on the day-to-day lives of the vulnerable or those with limited access to financial services. Forty-two per cent of respondents to the Bank of England survey claimed to have visited a store in the previous six months that did not accept cash – up from just 15 per cent in January. Across the world, the same picture is emerging. Since the pandemic began in www.thepower50.com

McCLEAR 2019, nearly half of respondents to a survey in Asia Pacific claim to use cash less often, while two-thirds of Latin American consumers say they are using it less or not at all. In Europe, which already had the largest proportion of contactless payments, 64 per cent of people say this is now their preferred way to pay in-store. Without a doubt, COVID-19 has increased the use of contactless payments in markets where it was already commonplace and stimulated it in newer ones. And with almost three-quarters of people stating they will continue to use contactless when things get back to normal, this trend seems here to stay. But close to one-third of adults – 1.7 billion globally – are still unbanked. Meaning they do not have access to something as simple as a transaction account to store their money, send or receive payments, make purchases with a debit or credit card. In the UK alone there are an estimated 10 million people who are financially excluded and therefore still rely on cash. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the shortcomings of cash into even sharper focus, and we need to work together to facilitate opening of

accounts, rely on reforms and developments in fintech innovations, mobile and digitally enabled payments. What we can no longer do, is nothing. Every one of us as individuals or businesses has the duty to ensure we do our part, so no one gets left behind on the journey towards a cashless society.

Without a doubt, COVID-19 has increased the use of contactless payments in markets where it was already commonplace and stimulated it in newer ones We need to find the right balance – but what is that balance? Is it applying the same as that of the People’s Bank of China when it punished 16 merchants and institutions, including parks, public service institutions, parking lots and insurance companies, for refusing to accept cash? Or, rather, do we need to focus on how we can make a truly lasting and sustainable, positive change, which would inevitably require more support from the UK government and regulators, reforms, and private sector innovations

WHO WE ARE McLEAR is the pioneer of wearable payment technology for consumers and businesses. Our Smart Ring was invented and patented in 2013, designed and engineered to be water and shock resistant, requiring no battery or charging, making it the ideal wearable payment device that fits seamlessly into any lifestyle. RingPay for consumers launched in 2018, enabling UK consumers to make contactless payments both domestically and globally. Ringholders can set their own rules and manage their Ring through a dedicated app, which has access to numerous features and benefits, exclusive to McLEAR Ringholders. The world’s first payment Ring was showcased, alongside McLEAR’s partner www.thepower50.com

to support further financial inclusion? Given the recent and almost certainly lasting changes in how people around the globe are choosing to pay for things, there is likely to be more demand for alternative payment technologies – including, in the post-COVID era, wearables such as McLEAR Rings. The rings are made from high-purity zirconia ceramic, which, compared to plastic, has longevity of issuance beyond a typical two- or three-year cycle. Both stylish and secure, McLEAR Rings are shock resistant and, unlike smart phones and watches, never need charging. As they’re fully waterproof, you don’t have to take them off to wash or sanitise your hands, either. They provide added security to users by reducing physical contact at payment points, giving peace of mind to the elderly, vulnerable and people with disabilities. While we still have some way to go at McLEAR to financially include everyone, the option to pre-pay certainly has its place in allowing as many people as possible to use this product to make transactional payments. So, rather than scrabbling for a card or your phone when you reach the checkout, why not Ring the changes?

AT A GLANCE Visa, at the Rio Olympics followed by other key events, including Super Bowl 51, Eurovision 2017, FIFA Confederate Cup 2017 and the GRAMMY Gift Lounge 2018, with celebrities such as The Hooligans, Zac Brown, Jeff Timons, Paul Shaffer, Anthony Hamilton, Shaggy, Louis Fonsi, Kesha, Ice T, Neil DeGrasse and Lea Robinson becoming Ringholders! McLEAR works in partnership with Visa, Thales, Infineon, and other leading financial and technology institutions to bring the Smart Ring to more end-users, and with financial institutions and businesses that are looking to provide their customers with the latest wearable payment technology.

COMPANY: McLEAR FOUNDED: 2013 CATEGORY: Wearable payment technology KEY PERSONNEL:

Daniel Blondell, COO (right) HEAD OFFICE: Richmond, Surrey, UK OFFICES IN: APAC EMAIL: enquiries@mclear.com WEBSITE: mclear.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/mclear/ TWITTER: @mclearco

WHAT WE DO Pioneer of wearable payment technology THEFINTECHPOWER50

REGTECH’S BROADER ROLE We are in the realm of the fourth industrial revolution where automation and smart technologies have blurred the lines between the physical, digital and biological with advanced computing and intelligent data analytics.

As a result, seamless and intuitive experiences are expected as part of our everyday lives across all industry sectors, in spite of decentralising most of our services from secure and central places to more remote locations, especially due to COVID-19. From Jan/Feb 2020 to Jan/Feb 2021, IDnow saw a rise of more than 200 per cent in ID verification transactions. This is due to the influx of new clients requiring

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Benjamin Haas, Senior Director EMEA at IDnow, explores how regulation and digital ID verification will need to go hand in hand in future stringent know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks, but also existing clients increasing demand for our online ID verification services. The pandemic has quantum-leaped global digitisation across all business sectors (particularly in finance) as employees move to work from home;

unfortunately, cyber fraud has accompanied it. According to our IDnow Identity Fraud 2021 trend report, during the first week of lockdown there was a 40 per cent increase in attempted cyberattacks. Between March and June 2020, IDnow noticed a 231 per cent increase in similarity fraud, a 180 per cent increase in fake ID usage, and a 75 per cent surge in social engineering. The precedence for collaborative technologies that have been implemented in an extremely fragmented business environment has seen a huge surge in demand for authentication and verification services, for example when onboarding people into the workplace and/or applying for www.thepower50.com

IDNOW products – you want to know that you’re on-boarding an authentic person or validating a real consumer in financial products/services industry. As a result, businesses are balancing the needs of fulfilling and satisfying evolving compliance and security requirements, such as KYC and AML checks, while meeting a high standard for digital experiences at a click. In addition, for a broad modern target group, seamless integration and intuitive user experience is at the forefront of everything people do. The massive shift towards digitisation over the last year has placed huge pressure on firms to implement technology at pace in order to deliver a digitally-savvy, remote experience, safely and securely. This has meant that organisations have had to quickly pivot and adapt in order to survive and retain customers. Therefore, companies have had to deploy technologies that deliver complete protection without hampering that intuitive experience. A critical part of doing this is via online identity verification.

ALL ABOARD THE DIGITAL IDV TRAIN! Consumers expect digital onboarding to be almost instantaneous, while ensuring uncompromising safety. However, the challenges businesses have is ensuring that the right security tools are implemented quickly and efficiently, without impacting scalability and experience. The KYC process ensures that an institution’s customers are genuine. It assesses and monitors risks and is an integral part of preventing and identifying money laundering, terrorist financing and other criminal activities, such as identity fraud. The digitisation of KYC procedures has revolutionised an institution’s mandate to verify and validate a customer’s ID and biometric data within minutes, versus hours or days. Regulation also needs to keep pace with that rate of change; just as the world is in the midst of major digital transformations, so too must regulators contend with their own disruption. www.thepower50.com

A study from PA Consulting found that 92 per cent of organisations think they will feel a negative impact if regulators fail to evolve within three years, highlighting fears that increased regulation equals diminishing opportunities for innovation.

REGULATING THE REGULATORS – HELLO REGTECH Regtech – a technology that ensures regulatory compliance when dealing with funds and ID verification – will play a huge role over the next few years. Ironically, just as technology is the

Just as the world is in the midst of major digital transformations, so too must regulators contend with their own disruption disrupter of regulation, it can also be the solution. Regtech allows regulators as well as businesses to develop and use compliance-fortified solutions, without compromising innovation. In a number of sectors, regulatory reporting is a resource-intensive cost of business. In finance alone, $270billion

per year is spent on compliance and regulation – about 10 per cent of operating cost. If regulators agreed on a way of gathering standard information – and compliance processes were automated, recorded and streamlined, supported by stringent verification technologies – it would eliminate the ‘spaghetti junction’ of standard information across various industries. It would also enable businesses to be super slick by using digital verification tools such as biometrics and liveness checks – where biological identifiers, such as fingerprints and selfies, are used in conjunction with a liveness detection program to ensure that the person is really there. The ID verification processes will still have to have a human element to check certain things, but machine learning and artificial intelligence will support the process in order to prevent ID fraud. There’s also an opportunity for regulators to automate how they gather, analyse and approve company submissions, which would significantly accelerate an onerous process. This means approval can be achieved within hours or days instead of weeks.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

IDnow is a leading identity verification platform in Europe with a vision to make the connected world a safer place.

COMPANY: IDnow

The IDnow platform provides a broad portfolio of identity verification solutions, ranging from automated to human-assisted, from purely online to point-of-sale, each of them optimised for user conversion rates and security. The company has offices in Germany, the United Kingdom and France and is backed by renowned institutional investors, including Corsair Capital and Seventure Partners. Its portfolio of more than 670 international clients, spans a wide range of industries, and includes leading international players such as Western Union, UBS, Commerzbank, Sixt and Munich Re, as well as digital champions like N26, Solarisbank, wefox and Tier mobility.

Andreas Bodczek, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: Munich, Germany OFFICES IN: UK and France EMAIL: sales@idnow.de WEBSITE: www.idnow.io LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/idnow/

FOUNDED: 2014 CATEGORY: Regtech KEY PERSONNEL:

WHAT WE DO The next-gen identity verification platform THEFINTECHPOWER50

TINK

THE FUTURE IS OPEN Tink’s report on open banking in Europe reveals the UK leads the way in believing the digital shift in financial services is here to stay During the COVID-19 pandemic, financial institutions have been forced to adapt to more digital ways of serving their customers, while people across all age groups have had to become familiar with using these digital services. This has led to the digitisation of financial services being fast-tracked. In Tink’s new report Open Banking In A Post-pandemic World, 56 per cent of UK financial executives say they believe the fast-tracked digital shift caused by COVID is permanent – that’s far ahead of the European average of 41 per cent. This shift to digital is propelling financial institutions to concentrate their efforts

on the creation of digital services, on improving the customer experience and restoring profitability – with almost three-quarters (72 per cent) of UK financial executives saying the pandemic has increased their focus on open banking. Even in light of digital transformation efforts that have been set in motion over the past few years, 65 per cent of financial executives across Europe still believe that financial institutions need to increase their speed of innovation. This digitisation shift has resulted in an increased appetite for financial institutions to leverage technology, and find solutions to new challenges as a result of COVID-19. In fact, more than two-thirds (68 per cent) of European financial executives say their interest in open banking has increased during the pandemic. Our report also shows that the pandemic has focussed the minds of financial institutions on three key business priorities. Three-quarters (75 per cent) of executives in the UK see an increased need to enhance their digital services – to streamline onboarding and

manage more customers digitally. Eighty-eight per cent are also focussed on the customer experience – the highest of all European countries and far ahead of the European average of 70 per cent – to differentiate themselves from competitors and boost customer engagement in an increasingly digital world. For 84 per cent of UK financial executives, there is an increased focus on restoring profitability through automating and streamlining business processes, against an average of 68 per cent in Europe. “The UK leads the way in believing the digital shift in financial services is here to stay,” says Rafa Plantier, Head of UK and Ireland at Tink. “In fact, the UK is ahead of the curve on interest in open banking increasing during the pandemic, allowing financial institutions to improve digital services, level-up the customer experience and bring greater profitability to their organisations. This reflects the UK’s position as a leading hub for fintech innovation and as pioneers of the open banking movement.”

Executives acknowledge the irreversible shift to digital services in the post-pandemic world Financial executives who agree with the statement: “The impact of the pandemic in the financial industry will have permanent effects” 56.3%

53.3%

Spain

46.7%

France

45.0%

Netherlands

40.6%

European average

40.0%

Denmark

n=308 Source: YouGov, Tink, 2021

39.1%

Belgium

37.1%

Italy

36.8%

Finland

34.3%

Germany

31.8%

31.6%

Portugal

Sweden

26.1%

Norway

Open banking is higher on the agenda in the post-pandemic world Financial executives who agree with the statement: "The pandemic has increased interest in open banking technologies" 79.0%

Finland

78.3%

Belgium

72.7%

Portugal

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71.9%

68.6%

Italy

67.9%

European average

66.7%

France

66.7%

Spain

65.7%

Germany

n=308 Source: YouGov, Tink, 2021

65.0%

Netherlands

63.2%

Sweden

60.0%

Denmark

56.5%

Norway

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Despite the big shifts that the financial services industry has witnessed during the pandemic, 44 per cent of financial executives in the UK still see the consumer transition to digital as a short-term blip, and expect things to return to normal. But more executives in the UK (72 per cent) than on average in Europe (67 per cent) believe that COVID has increased business risk. Clear signs of looming economic danger are on the horizon – with households under increasing financial distress, non-performing loans set to rise and businesses at risk of bankruptcy when government support runs out. This suggests that some financial institutions are at risk of sleepwalking into a future of unforeseen challenges that may have a severe impact on their customers, unless they recognise the significant and lasting impact that COVID has had on the financial industry. “The pandemic has forced many executives to remedy the lack of personal interaction with customers by focussing on delivering digital services,” says Rafa. “But this has also provided a way of creating more value for the customer, while increasing insights to identify or even predict potential risks and new demands. Financial institutions have seen that open banking technology presents opportunities to increase the speed of innovation, introduce new commercial streams and revenue opportunities, while enabling operational efficiencies that will benefit their business long term – and nowhere is this more true than in the UK. “But there are also many executives who are expecting things to go back to normal,” Rafa adds, “who will need a plan on how to respond and where to focus their digitisation efforts as the transformation of financial services continues to pick up pace.” Tink has set out to help empower the pioneers of financial services – the financial institutions that are looking at technology not as a cost, but as an opportunity to improve many of the things they do today: how they operate internally, how they deliver their products, and how they will serve their customers in a post-pandemic world. www.thepower50.com

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

Tink is Europe’s leading open banking platform that enables banks, fintechs and startups to develop data-driven financial services.

COMPANY: Tink

Through one API, Tink allows customers to access aggregated financial data, initiate payments, enrich transactions, verify account ownership and build personal finance management tools. Tink connects to more than 3,400 banks that reach more than 250 million bank customers across Europe. Founded in 2012 in Stockholm, Tink’s 400 employees serve more than 300 banks and fintechs in 18 European markets, out of offices in 13 countries. Our current partners include PayPal, NatWest, American Express, ABN AMRO, BNP Paribas, Nordea and SEB.

Co-founders Daniel Kjellén (CEO, top) and Fredrik Hedberg (CTO, below)

FOUNDED: 2012 CATEGORY: Open banking KEY PERSONNEL:

HEAD OFFICE:

Stockholm, Sweden OFFICES IN: UK, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Portugal, The Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Poland and Slovakia EMAIL: info@tink.com WEBSITE: tink.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/tink-ab/ TWITTER: @tink

WHAT WE DO We power the new world of finance

Almost three-quarters of UK financial executives say the pandemic has increased their focus on open banking THEFINTECHPOWER50

TRADE LEDGER

UNLOCKING SME FINANCE

Lending to small and medium-sized enterprises has been difficult and expensive – businesses struggle to get the working capital they need, and lenders miss out on a huge potential market. Trade Ledger makes it possible Two hundred million businesses globally are unable to get the credit they need, and lenders are missing out on a £1.2trillion market. The problem for lenders is an information gap: which potential borrowers are a good risk? In the past, trying to get this information has led to slow and inefficient processes. While that’s bad for the lenders’ bottom line, it can be catastrophic for borrowers, for whom a day’s lack of funds can mean business failure, with the knock-on impacts to the lives of staff, their families and communities.

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Trade Ledger was founded to stop this happening and enable small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their communities to succeed, by enabling lenders to lend more effectively. Trade Ledger created a platform to address the information gap by bringing together all the data that lenders need throughout the customer lifecycle. It analyses the data, automates process, and provides great visibility, with broad

indicators, such as profitability, as well as full details of individual borrowers and loans, so banks and other lenders can grow their loan book and reduce risk. The platform supports asset finance and term loans, and also enables lenders to offer complex products, such as invoice finance and embedded finance, with confidence – in the UK and

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Australia, 80 per cent of businesses are service-led, and have intangible assets, such as intellectual property and licence sales, which is leading to growing demand for invoice finance.

HOW CUSTOMER-FOCUSSED ARE LENDERS? SME borrowers want to know what they can do to avoid running out of cash, whether they can invest to grow their business, even whether they can buy a house next year. With Trade Ledger, you can be far more helpful to your customers. With access to the wide range of data sources that the platform provides, you can better assess risk and serve a broader market. Customers can often receive lending decisions and even make an initial draw-down the same day – allowing them to be far more responsive to their own customers and markets. You can also offer a rapid assessment to potential customers of whether they’d get a loan, and the next steps to securing one.

HOW IT WORKS Sales teams or introducers simply enter minimal details of prospects, and the Trade Ledger platform gathers the data needed for processing the credit application in the correct format. The data comes from lenders’ core systems, borrowers’ accounting packages, and third-party data providers, in near real time, via APIs. The platform shows the status of applications and accounts, and presents analysis, business metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) via a standard web browser in a format that’s easy to read. The platform is secure, with ISO 27001 certification and there’s no additional software to install – ever. Your teams all have access to the same source of information – a single version of the truth, with a single way of working, reducing silos. There’s no need to copy or re-key data, reducing errors. It gives you a consistent view of your customers’ business activities and their ever-changing risk profile. The platform has a document repository, too, so there’s no need to search in files, folders www.thepower50.com

or emails for key information. There’s also a Broker Portal that provides a self-service channel, enabling brokers and aggregators to introduce business and track deal progress themselves, enabling lenders to manage all accounts in one place. Trade Ledger’s platform can work with, or replace, existing applications and systems. It enables digital transformation at a pace that’s right

Trade Ledger’s purpose is to transform the commercial lending experience for an individual organisation. It’s fast to configure and straightforward for IT teams to work with.

BENEFITS FOR CUSTOMERS Businesses typically have to devote 30 hours to applying for credit, and wait 90 days for their first drawdown. With Trade Ledger, processes are typically six times faster. Lending decisions can be made in as little as four minutes, with drawdown within an hour.

Trade Ledger’s purpose is to transform the commercial lending experience. The platform enables new services, improved margins, and better relationships between lenders and borrowers, all through the application of data. Our unique understanding of electronic invoicing and other business transaction technology, has enabled the creation of a supply chain transactional network that is at the core of the platform. This provides unparalleled access to the B2B transaction data that underpins receivables. We use this unique ability to determine payment risk and fraud accurately for any receivable. For our lending customers, this equates to an unfair advantage through superior underwriting capability and, ultimately, much-needed product innovation to address this underserved market. The platform further enhances our lender customers’ business via the network effect, whereby the enhanced products drive greater customer adoption, which in turn drives further market demand and product innovation investment.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

We want SMEs to succeed. To do this, they need finance. Our platform enables lenders to provide this finance – and also to improve their profit margins, grow their loan book, and improve the customer experience.

COMPANY: Trade Ledger

Trade Ledger was established in 2016 as a Cloud-native, banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform for better SME and mid-market lending. It supports many secured lending categories, including invoice finance, commercial loans (revolving credit facility), equipment finance, asset-based lending, supply chain financing and factoring. Trade Ledger is a complete digital business lending operation for customers, introducers and bank staff. We create a channel (internal and external) to support all major types of cash flow lending products and enable faster growth. The platform is fully compatible with embedded finance products.

FOUNDED: 2016 CATEGORY: Lendtech KEY PERSONNEL:

Roger Vincent, MD for UK & Ireland (right) HEAD OFFICE: London OFFICES IN: Globally TEL: +44 (0) 7944 364 609 WEBSITE: tradeledger.io LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/tradeledger/ TWITTER: @TradeLedger

WHAT WE DO Enable credit for every business THEFINTECHPOWER50

DAVID BIR CH

CRYPTOCRIMES FORCRYPTOTIMES David Birch ponders on the sinister reality of true digital anonymity There are those who say that uncensurable, untraceable digital cash is a shield against dictators, a force for liberty and a boon to free men everywhere. Well, I say be careful what you wish for. The issue of anonymity in payments is complex and crucial and it deserves informed and calm strategic thinking because digital currency touches on so many aspects of society. An obvious and important one is crime. Would digital currency change crime? If I hire thugs to lure a cryptobaron to a hotel and then beat him up to get $1million in Bitcoins from him (as happened in Japan), is that a cryptocrime or just old-fashioned extortion? If I use Craigslist to lure a HODLer to a street corner and then pull a gun on him and force him to transfer his Bitcoins to me (as actually happened in New York), is that a cryptocrime or just routine mugging? If I get hold of someone's login details and transfer their cryptocurrency to myself (as has just happened in Springfield), is that a cryptocrime or plain fraud? If I kidnap the CEO of a cryptocurrency exchange and

AT A GLANCE David Birch is an author and advisor on digital financial services, who has consulted to some of the world’s biggest banks. His most recent book, The Currency Cold War, was published in 2020. (He is not a criminal mastermind!) WEBSITE: www.dgwbirch.com/ TWITTER: @dgwbirch

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Bitcoin is not a very good choice for cybercriminals. It's just not anonymous enough then release him after the payment of a $1million Bitcoin ransom is that, as the Ukrainian interior minister said at the time, ‘Bitcoin kidnapping’ or just kidnapping? Personally, I would have asked for the ransom to be paid in a more privacy-protecting cryptocurrency, because, as I explained in the FT a few years ago (2013, in fact), Bitcoin is not a very good choice for cybercriminals. It's just not anonymous. Hence, my scepticism about claims that Bitcoin's long-term value will be determined by its use for crime. But what if there was a truly untraceable cryptocurrency out there? Would a cryptocriminal mastermind be able to use it for something more innovative than the physically-demanding felony of kidnapping? A wholly new crime for the virtual world? One with the potential to take over from drug dealing (currently approximately 40 per cent of organised crime revenues) as the best option? There is at least one that I can think of.

The ‘assassination market’. I explained how it works in my book Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin and it goes like this. Someone runs a public book on the anticipated death dates of public figures. If I hate some tech CEO (for example), I place a bet on when they will die. When they do, whoever had the closest guess to their date and time of death wins all of the money staked, less a cut for the house. Let’s say I bet $5 (using anonymous digital cash through the TOR network) that a specific CEO is going to die at 9am on April Fool’s Day 2022. Other people put down bets as well. The more hated the person is, the more bets there will be. April Fool’s Day 2022 comes around. There are now $10million staked on this CEO dying at 9am. I pay a hit man $5million to murder him, get the $10million dollars sent to me in anonymous digital cash and give half to the hit man in untraceable digital cash too. What’s more, if I can run a social media campaign and use anonymous bots or friendly trolls to persuade a few million people to put a $5 bet on the date of death, then some enterprising hit man will make their own bet and kill the subject anyway. Population-scale, unconditionally anonymous digital currency means it is only a matter of time before CEOs check their lottery dates before their stock prices, politicians check the number of bets placed before they check the number of votes cast, and celebrities check their payout size before they check their number of Instagram followers. I see in the FT in June, that criminals have begun shifting from Bitcoin to the privacy coin Monero, which hides the sender and receiver (as well as the amount exchanged). It is therefore posing new problems for law enforcement already. But maybe, as the old saying goes, they ain’t seen nothing yet.

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LUCY LIU

LEARNINGS ON A JOURNEY Lucy Liu, Co-founder and President of Airwallex, shares her experience as one of the youngest leaders in fintech Some of the most rewarding things in life will come to you in the most unconventional of ways – as was the case with my pathway into fintech.

journey has taught me so much. I hope some of these learnings will benefit new or budding fintech entrepreneurs.

I graduated from uni into an investment consultant role at China International Capital Corporation (CICC). After a career break to travel around Europe and Japan, I returned to Melbourne and reconnected with my friends and now co-founders, Jack Zhang and Max Li. They owned a cafe in Melbourne at the time and were searching for a solution to a problem they had: why were cross-border payments so expensive? As small business owners, they were trying to cut costs, and buying the likes of coffee cups and labels from overseas should have saved money, but it only added more expense as they were stung by major transaction fees. The idea for Airwallex began taking shape in 2015 as a solution to the problem business owners face when managing the costs of importing and exporting goods and services. With a background in finance, and fresh from my travels overseas where I, too, had been caught out with unexpected costs when moving country to country, I was immediately drawn to what Airwallex could achieve. Airwallex celebrated its fifth birthday in December, which was very special. To think the business went from a single idea to becoming a critical global financial infrastructure for businesses, and to a team of more than 700 employees across 12 offices around the world is incredible. This wonderful

Assemble a team that fills your skills gap When I look at my co-founders, I see that we are united by a passion to support businesses globally, but we are ultimately different people. With this comes a diversity of strengths. Once we identified what we each were good at and assigned roles that best suited our strengths, we built a team that filled in the gaps in our knowledge and experience.

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Find a big problem to solve Like Airwallex, most startups set out to resolve a very specific issue or challenge. We have since grown our product suite, creating a more efficient and affordable way of doing global business. The bigger the problem space, the larger the opportunity to build out products and market share. Don’t be defined by your age or gender I was 25 when Airwallex was founded and experienced a few double takes when people saw my business card. Some were surprised to see such a young female president of a startup, setting out in a fairly male-dominated field. I have come to view being a young woman in business as a strength. It makes me want to share my time, learnings and experiences – particularly where I can add a woman’s voice to the discussion. Find mentors to guide you I have been fortunate enough to be guided by a wonderful array of mentors.

My co-founders, for example, have taught me a lot about perseverance and resilience. Having their continued support really helped shape my identity as a founder, leader and mentor myself. Strive towards work-life integration instead of work-life balance For any founder at the epicentre of taking critical business decisions, boundaries between professional and personal life blur. Work-life balance is often unachievable. I love what I do, but I also try to integrate my personal responsibilities into my work schedules, and vice versa, providing a way to spend quality time with my two-year old!

If you’re thinking of starting a fintech business, I encourage you to take that leap. Due to the pandemic and the mass shift online, significant opportunities exist right now for founders. There has never a better time.

AT A GLANCE Lucy Liu (right), Jack Zhang, Max Li and Xijing Dai co-founded Airwallex in Melbourne in 2015 to empower businesses to operate anywhere, anytime. Liu was named Emerging Fintech Leader of the Year at The Finnies 2020 Fintech Awards, where Airwallex also picked up Fintech Organisation of the Year and the People’s Choice Award. WEBSITE: airwallex.com TWITTER: @airwallex THEFINTECHPOWER50

DON’T AUTOMATE INEFFICIENCIES!

Jennifer Geary, General Manager, EMEA of Cloud banking provider nCino, on why true digital transformation requires business process re-engineering For the last few years, ‘digital transformation’ has been a buzz phrase within the financial services industry. Organisations of all sizes were discussing it, prioritising it, and implementing it. And yet, when COVID-19 struck and forced us to pivot to digital channels, many financial institutions faced an awkward realisation. For all their talk of transformation, they were still saddled with fragmented and disparate systems that made it difficult to be agile when necessary and meet their customers’ needs quickly and efficiently.

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In a recent Regulatory Trends Outlook report, Deloitte highlighted legacy infrastructure as one of the key challenges facing financial institutions. Today, despite significant investments and initiatives, many financial institutions are still using separate systems, point solutions, and applications that often don’t – or can’t – speak to each other, causing bottlenecks and silos in company processes. The problem is that investments in technology can only do so much. True digital transformation goes beyond simply implementing online banking, developing mobile apps, or designing a slick front-end

interface. It requires the re-engineering of infrastructure, inefficient legacy processes, and internal culture, too. Only then can financial institutions create fast, frictionless processes that empower employees to meet – and exceed – customer needs. A recent study by CapGemini found that most financial institutions understand that a positive experience and appealing front end are crucial in order to keep customers happy and loyal. An unfortunate result of this is that less visible middle- and back-office activities, which are also essential for customer satisfaction, are often neglected or seen as secondary. www.thepower50.com

NCINO Financial institutions must recognise that consumer expectations are increasingly being set by non-banks, such as Google, Amazon, or Apple, and that customers expect the same ease of use, range of choices and digital enablement that they get in every other area of their lives. When it comes to banking, this might be the ability to open a new account anywhere and on any device, such as a mobile phone or iPad, apply and get approved for a loan within minutes, and receive automated, on-demand, and personalised financial advice. However, if organisations only focus on building trendy apps, they’re essentially implementing superficial or cosmetic changes to a channel in a vain effort to disguise an inefficient process. To deliver a truly exceptional customer experience, organisations must look at back-office

If organisations only focus on building trendy apps, they’re essentially implementing superficial or cosmetic changes in a vain effort to disguise an inefficient process processes and data flows to make sure they’re in alignment with what digitally-savvy customers desire, while also ensuring that all transformation initiatives are tied to valuable efficiency gains. It’s up to the financial institution to re-engineer their processes in order to deliver an exceptional digital customer experience and not simply use technology to automate inefficient work flows. Below are four areas to keep in mind as financial institutions embrace an agile, defined, cohesive strategy and embark on a true digital transformation journey: Platform: Investing in a higher-level technology platform that makes it possible to organise and automate processes across a multitude of applications is a key part of any digital transformation process. Look for a technology partner that not only understands but also actively offers a digital solution that combats financial

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institutions’ pain-points by reducing manual processes, streamlining them and providing insight into customer data to further strengthen the relationship. Integration: When departments are siloed, the ability to streamline and increase productivity is curtailed. Implement a system that integrates the front, middle and back offices into end-to-end work flows that can empower employees to collaborate across departments and offer a better customer experience.

Orchestration: In addition to collaboration, the transparency of a single platform solution can simplify the work of risk and compliance teams, making it easy to aggregate and report on data across the organisation. Employees at all levels of the company benefit from a single, reliable, real-time view of critical business processes.

Micro-transformation: It’s more important to do digital transformation right than to do it all at once. A micro-transformation strategy allows financial institutions to address their most

urgent needs while building their digital capabilities over time. With large digital transformation projects, users can often feel overwhelmed by all the changes. However, with micro-transformations, users will be introduced to changes gradually, allowing them time to adapt and form new habits that will yield benefits far into the future. With many more consumers choosing to continue to do business digitally, even as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressure to innovate and roll out new technology and services to stay ahead of the competition has arguably never been greater. However, too many financial institutions still believe digital transformation means launching new digital products and services whilst overlooking the real need: re-engineering processes and workflows to be more efficient, not just more automated. To create a truly innovative business and keep up with changing demands, financial institutions must avoid the cosmetic and invest time in transforming the most important parts of their infrastructure that add meaningful long-term value.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

Listed on NASDAQ, nCino is the worldwide leader in Cloud banking.

COMPANY: nCino

The nCino Bank Operating System® empowers financial institutions with scalable technology to help them achieve revenue growth, greater efficiency, cost savings and regulatory compliance. In a digital-first world, nCino’s single digital platform enhances the employee and client experience to enable financial institutions to more effectively onboard new clients, make loans and manage the entire loan life cycle, and open deposit and other accounts across lines of business and channels. Transforming how financial institutions operate through innovation, reputation and speed, nCino works with more than 1,200 financial institutions globally, whose assets range in size from $30million to more than $2trillion.

CATEGORY: Cloud

FOUNDED: 2011

banking technology

KEY PERSONNEL:

Jennifer Geary, General Manager, EMEA (right) HEAD OFFICE: Wilmington, US OFFICES IN: United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Canada and Germany TEL: +1 888 676 2466 WEBSITE: www.ncino.com/ LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/ncino-incTWITTER: @ncino

WHAT WE DO The worldwide leader in Cloud banking THEFINTECHPOWER50

OUR 5 MOST SURPRISING LESSONS OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS! From LGBTQ+ banking to crypto and ESG investing, Vacuumlabs isn’t short of enthusiasm or talent when it comes to tackling the big issues of our time. Here, it looks back over what a decade of derring-do has taught it (and us) Slovakia is a country of inventions. Parachutes, metal guitars, and even photographs all began life in our vibrant Central European nation. So, you could say, finding technological solutions is in our blood. It’s what we do. At Vacuumlabs, we’ve contributed inventions of our own. We conjure up original ideas with our clients and carry them all the way through to completion. Since our launch in 2011, we’ve built innovations in online banking, crypto wallets, user experiences, and fixed more dreaded spaghetti code than we can

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count! Along the way, we’ve learned invaluable lessons. After much internal discussion and a healthy debate, here’s our countdown of the top five.

Incumbent doesn’t mean impossible… just look at Mox! It’s fashionable in fintech circles to say old-school banks are behind the times: outdated mindsets and outdated machines. But in 2020, one banking giant blew the lid off that tired preconception. Creating an app so good that already one per cent of the population have downloaded it, this incumbent exceeded all expectations. The bank is Standard Chartered, and the app is the already famous Mox. Mox has completely revolutionised app-based banking, and the CEO, Deniz Güven, is a true visionary. Güven told us how he didn’t want to use ‘any existing technology from the mothership’. In fact, he was looking to reverse that trend and ‘build the future operating model of Standard Chartered’. As software developers, this was music to our ears. From the drawing board to launch day, we got to work with gusto – and we loved every second.

What we learned from Güven – and many of our other global banking clients – is that ‘incumbent’ doesn’t mean impossible. Not by a long stretch. If Mox is anything to go by, big banks are just getting started.

With enough passion, five people and three months is all you need to build a world-leading crypto wallet “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” More than 2,000 years ago, Chinese philosopher and politician Confucius came up with these wise words. In the 20th Century, the iconic Mark Twain was credited with saying the same thing! Now we’re repeating it, too – because it is so true. We’ve learned this for ourselves, time after time. But the one memory that stands out is when we built the leading high-security, lightweight wallet for cryptocurrency Cardano, AdaLite. When we started, it was a passion project – a hobby. But we soon realised that there was a glaring gap in the market and that Cardano would grow exponentially in value. Five cryptoloving team members built a wallet from scratch in just three months, which has www.thepower50.com

VA C U U M L A B S since been downloaded a whopping 170,000 times and counting! What’s more, Cardano shot up in value – it has reached a market capitalisation of US $39billion. It’s become the most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and Ethereum. Passion matters. It’s what fuels innovation.

Software developers do ESG better than many investment funds Environmental, social, governance – or ESG – investing has become mainstream. In Europe, for the first time ever, money flowing into sustainable index funds surpassed all other funds in Q1 2021. But there’s also a lot of skepticism too. And rightly so! Something that’s clear to us, however, is that we can do better. We can take ESG to new levels as software developers. And there’s zero greenwashing. For example, we used our skills to help users reduce emissions by creating a carbontracking calculator for the Swedish credit card company, Doconomy. It gives customers a run-down of their carbon footprint, including materials, packaging, energy use, and transportation. Tools like this are vital to raise awareness and meet the world’s 2030 goals. We do pro-bono work to help improve governance and society, too. Another example is a tool we built in our hackathon to detect political corruption for an NGO. When we do ESG, we can all make a monumental impact. We’re creative in a different way, and our ideas have the power to change the world.

expect, it also helps users plan the finances for unique life goals, such as starting a family or transitioning gender. This taught us that, as software creators, we don’t need to wait for clients to come to us. We are activists, too, and can lead progress ourselves.

It’s OK to create our own competitors. We are a community Occasionally, we’ve helped build a tech company that we know could one day be our competition. That’s because we create exceptional software that we know their clients will love. It doesn’t stop us sharpening our pencils and drawing up original ideas for our clients to reach their goals, though. One example is the global open banking platform Railsbank, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, based in London, with so much potential. Another example is the all-in-one SaaS for purchasing and management, Cledara. Some people

Above all else, anything is possible if you have the right people

Social activism has a place in tech. In fact, it’s essential We make tech to improve the lives of people. All people. So, when our co-founder Matej Ftacnik, decided to do something to support LGBTQ+ communities, we couldn’t wait to get involved. We’ve been busily creating the software for the US’s first-ever LGBTQ+ online bank, Daylight, and we couldn’t be prouder! Backed by Visa and Marqueta, it’s an online bank with a difference. As well as all the usual features you would www.thepower50.com

WHO WE ARE Vacuumlabs is a trusted global technology partner with a proven track record in successfully delivering full-stack fintech solutions. We provide agile teams, remote by nature, software engineers, and designers with years of experience in building fintech, cryptocurrency, online marketplaces, and digital products. We have strong beliefs about spaghetti code: no-one deserves tangled, confusing, or overly complicated code in their products. We work to provide our clients with top-quality and straightforward solutions, helping them reach and exceed their goals. Our clients are located all over the world. And so are we, with more than 300 expert talents across Bratislava, Prague, Budapest, Hong Kong, New York, London, Kosice and Brno. Founders at heart, we love to get involved with creating progressive tech and communities. We’ve already helped found the first LGBTQ+ bank in the US

might fret about this and worry about losing clients. But not us. We welcome it. It keeps us on our toes. We learn a lot along the way, and best of all, it helps the whole fintech movement grow together because creating a healthy ecosystem benefits everyone!

BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON OF ALL…? In writing this article, we shortlisted our most memorable lessons over the past decade. There were so many that nearly made it into the shortlist… like making banking magical with Thought Machine and untangling spaghetti codes for developers. But what we’ve learned above all else is that anything is possible if you have the right people. From the ideas and brainstorming stage, all the way up to the launch date and beyond, our people are talented, passionate, and brave. Every day, they make the impossible possible. We want to thank everyone for the work and dedication you put in. Happy 10th birthday to us and here’s to many more surprising lessons! and the tech hub FinTech Slovakia … who knows what we’ll do next! We’re always looking out for our next adventure.

AT A GLANCE COMPANY: Vacuumlabs FOUNDED: 2011 CATEGORY: Technology provider to banks, fintechs, and more KEY PERSONNEL: Matej Ftacnik, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: Bratislava, Slovakia OFFICES IN: US, UK, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Hungary and Hong Kong TEL: +1 800 284 2165 WEBSITE: vacuumlabs.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/vacuumlabs TWITTER: @vacuumlabs

WHAT WE DO We put the ‘tech’ in fintech THEFINTECHPOWER50

Ready to create the Next Big Thing?

Whatever your business, Moneyhub’s open finance platform cultivates consumer trust – the ultimate brand currency – allowing you to deliver innovative, hyper-personalised customer experiences

There is no doubt that COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way we work, live and shop. Digital transformation was already well underway, but the pandemic rapidly accelerated the pace. Around the world, governments, industry bodies and businesses are doubling down on what really makes a difference to help people live a meaningful, rewarding life. In this new and changeable landscape, businesses are all looking to create innovative solutions to answer existing and emerging customer needs. However, discussions at the 2020 World Economic Forum told us that in order for consumers to buy into a brand, one component is absolutely vital: trust. Trust has become the ultimate brand currency, and without it, no amount of marketing or advertising will fill this void to enable a company to truly succeed. Good business has always been about secure and personalised relationships, and for the first time in history, there is now a way for businesses of all shapes and sizes to understand their customers inside-out – their goals, pain points, and how they live their lives. It’s called open finance.

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THE KEY TO BUILDING TRUST Fundamentally, open finance gives businesses a way to truly know their audience, providing automated, real-time and in-depth data about their user base. The result is a win-win situation for all parties: businesses are able to use the insight provided by consumer consent-driven data sharing to create tailored products and services, thus building a loyal customer base who become promoters for the brand. Meanwhile, consumers have access to individualised solutions that help them meet their needs and achieve their goals. The value exchange is real and immediate: consumers are continuously delighted,

Helping Consumers & Building Trust Insight Knowledge

holistic and unique to each customer

current data

Timing when needed

Action

convenient and tangible results

while businesses keep growing and positively impact their bottom line. Open finance data enables a truly customer-first focus, as when businesses are able to understand their customers as individuals, they can treat them as such. Open finance data, analysed correctly through powerful AI and machine learning, means businesses are able to process more, and make better sense of it than a human brain, granting the company a truly holistic and unique window into their audience. This allows businesses to develop and provide appropriate products and services in a convenient way, delivering action at precisely the time it’s most needed – opening up what businesses can do for their customers in a way that is scalable and meaningful.

OPEN FINANCE FOR ALL It’s easy to assume that open finance is only relevant to the financial services sector, but the benefits are there for the taking by everyone. Open finance applies to all businesses, across all industries, giving them the insight, understanding and knowledge about their customers to develop better products and services, enabling them to help and delight their www.thepower50.com

MONEYHUB audience, or answer a specific conscious or unconscious need. It’s not just for multinationals either: some of the most groundbreaking solutions have been created by SMEs and startups. Moneyhub began life in 2014, championing financial wellness for users of their app and portals. However, Moneyhub’s vision was clear from the outset: the value of open finance reaches far beyond the financial services sector. From retail and telecoms, to hospitality and utility companies, every business needs to thoroughly understand its customer base in order to provide the most tailored product or service, to compete and truly succeed – and open finance provides the mechanism for that. Moneyhub is the open finance platform that enables businesses from all sectors to understand and engage their customers through powerful data, analytics and smart, actionable insights that deliver unique, hyper-personalised experiences that deliver against customer need – creating value that builds trust. Taking consumer consent-driven data from a vast variety of data sources, Moneyhub uses its categorisation engine and machine-learning to layer on the intelligence required to surface tailored,

holistic insights. Without categorisation, data is useless. Right now, Moneyhub is enabling its clients to reach more than 40 million people through its open finance platform across a range of industries, from online advertising and payments, to building societies, employee benefits, pensions, and investments. For example, OneBanks

From retail and telecoms, to hospitality and utility companies, every business needs to thoroughly understand its customer base – and open finance provides the mechanism for that is pioneering its shared branch banking concept, Sugi is enabling investors to green up their portfolios, and Mercer and Aon have created next-generation solutions in the field of employee benefits to promote financial wellness, all powered by Moneyhub’s suite of APIs and white-label solutions. Lumio, OpenMoney and Arq all provide specialisations to help people manage their finances and do

WHO WE ARE Moneyhub is the open finance platform that enables businesses from all sectors to truly understand and engage their customers through powerful data, analytics, actionable insights and card-free payments. In the UK, Moneyhub offers consentdriven financial data access to more than 200 financial services providers via 580 connections, with an additional 3,500 connections in Europe. Moneyhub has defined the foundations for open banking and open finance: ■ It was the first to offer true, secure, open banking integrations powered by APIs, and the first to provide payment initiation services (PIS) – an alternative to card payments,

more with their money, using Moneyhub’s technology to do the heavy lifting. Moneyhub is also powering faster, more convenient and cost-effective payments, such as Roqqett and the request-to-pay app Incomeing by Bankifi. And it is shaking up the world of online advertising with its work with Zedosh – the first regulated Attention Exchange®. Its partnership with impact investment platform The Big Exchange is helping make financial services more inclusive and accessible for all – a free mobile app ensures that taking control of personal finances is easier than ever, helping users make their cash count for more. Furthermore, current and historical open banking data is used for credit checking, affordability and income verification to allow fast, efficient and cost-effective underwriting for mortgages, loans or rents, as used by Hometrack. Creating the ‘Next Big Thing’ and delighting customers is now firmly within the grasp of any company with vision and ideas. Using open finance to deeply understand customers, and using this insight to create meaningful, tailored and fitting solutions that drive consumer trust is the key to success. And Moneyhub can support businesses every step of the way.

AT A GLANCE which lets an authorised third party initiate the transfer of money from one bank account to another, on behalf of (and with consent of ) the user. ■ Members of the team co-founded the Financial Data and Technology Association (FDATA) and, as part of the OpenID Foundation, created the Open Banking Standard used in the UK, EU and now globally. ■ Moneyhub holds positions on the steering committees for the Pension Dashboard and The Investing and Savings Alliance (TISA) Open Savings, Investments and Pensions initiative. ■ It is regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and is ISO 27001 certified.

COMPANY: Moneyhub FOUNDED: 2014 CATEGORY:

Open finance KEY PERSONNEL:

Sam Seaton, CEO (right)

HEAD OFFICE:

Bristol, UK

OFFICES IN: Slovenia TEL: +44 (0)117 280 5120 WEBSITE: moneyhubenterprise.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/

moneyhub-enterprise/

TWITTER: @MoneyhubEnterpr

WHAT WE DO Powering innovation for the greater good www.thepower50.com

THEFINTECHPOWER50

THEFINTECH THEFINTECH FORFINTECHS FOR FINTECHS Live since only October 2018, Kani Payments has reconciled more than €5billion in payments for its fintech customers, supporting them in being able to launch, get services to customers and scale faster.

An award-winning software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, it brings automation, accuracy and compliance to reconciliation and reporting – both often manual and time-consuming back-office processes that are carried out by finance teams to account for payment transactions. Winner of Leading Financial Services or Payments Start-Up at the Emerging Payments Awards in 2019, Kani has since made huge strides. It is now integrated with many of the major processors as well as collaborating with, or servicing fintechs, challenger banks and payment companies across five continents. Clients and partners include Paysafe, Equals Money, Sodexo, Moorwand, Hay, OnePay and global banking-as-a-service leader, Railsbank.

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Kani is proving to be a shrewd choice for scale-hungry challengers looking to automate their payment reconciliation process

manual reconciliations and card scheme reporting. Accurate and verifiable reconciliation and reporting is essential for fintechs and payments companies, yet many attempt to process these tasks manually, resulting in them being a huge drain on resources while the output is often inaccurate – payments data is complex and challenging, to say the least.

Kani is a payments data ingestion and analytics tool. It reduces complexity by consuming data from across the payments landscape, bringing automation to the manual finance process, allowing back-office finance teams to reconcile and report on their large and contrasting data sets in seconds, instead of weeks. It was born out of founder Aaron Holmes’ 20 years of experience working within payments, including as chief innovation officer at global processor GPS, during which he witnessed the complexity and problems first-hand of

A FUNDAMENTAL FINTECH NEED Kani consumes processor outputs, bank data, data from Mastercard and Visa, and third-party sources, so that the fintech or payments company doesn't need to build an expensive system in-house and learn the complexities of processing payments. Instead, Kani transforms those complex data sets into a format that is easy to understand and provides the client direct access to its own isolated and secure data warehouse and version of the Kani platform. Kani then automates the key processes and insights needed, specifically reconciliations, management information, www.thepower50.com

K A N I PAY M E N T S and key regulatory reports, such as the Mastercard QMR and VISA GOC. The Kani solution is easily integrated into the client’s processing infrastructure to improve and streamline the back-office reconciliation and reporting capabilities.

ONE EASY-TO-USE TOOL Finance teams around the world need to reconcile and report on payments to show that correct transactions have been made and are in the right place, at the right time. For too long, teams have been using tools such as Excel for complex processes, making these tasks highly manual, time-consuming and prone to error. Excel is a powerful tool, but if you’re a fintech or challenger bank with an appetite for growth, dealing with huge volumes of transactional data, multiple data sources in different formats and currencies, this out-dated method will restrict expansion. With increased complexity in digital payments and regulation/compliance requirements to adhere to, Kani’s solution to consume payments data, automate these key processes and provide the information all in one easy-to-use tool, is validated as a highly innovative, fast and auditable solution to an old problem. It saves weeks of company resources, regulation headaches and inaccuracies of data that can hold back building a successful, disruptive fintech at pace.

PROVIDING VALUE TO RAILSBANK The innovative solution offered by Kani has helped many companies to transform their finance infrastructure, streamline their payments operations, report accurately, better understand the needs of their clients, make predictions and allow for process improvements – all freeing up employee time to focus on other things. The Kani solution has been hugely successful with companies such as Railsbank. To date, Kani has reconciled millions of transactions for Railsbank and the leading banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider is now also helping Kani test its new AI-powered Record Matching functionality, for both the UK and Singapore. This automation and accuracy has enabled Railsbank to scale www.thepower50.com

faster with complete clarity, insight and control over its payments data and customer behaviour. The BaaS leader turned to Kani in early 2020, primarily for support in understanding the data behind card

We needed a tool that provided complex file matching without needing strong technical or development skills to be able to use it. Kani was flexible and fast-moving Shahina Ali, Railsbank payments, as this was relatively new to it. During the first few months in partnership, Railsbank set out to acquire a payments company in the UK. This was a pivotal moment in the relationship, due to the large wave of incoming data and information that needed

to be reconciled. Kani completed the migration process smoothly for Railsbank, demonstrating its technical capability and knowledge of payments. Shahina Ali, Head of Treasury and Payments at Railsbank, says of the partnership: “The collaboration with Kani, its reporting functions, platform, and solution as a whole, helped streamline the migration process. It definitely prevented a lot of things from going wrong that easily could have. “We needed a tool that provided complex file matching without needing strong technical or development skills to be able to use it. Kani was very flexible and fast-moving, which suits our ways of working. “It’s rare to find a company with that breadth of knowledge about how card payments work. In particular, Aaron has such extraordinary knowledge of the payments industry, meaning that working with Kani has felt extremely secure, right from the beginning.”

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

Kani is an award winning payments data ingestion and analytics tool. It reduces complexity by consuming data from across the payments landscape, bringing automation to the manual, time-consuming finance process.

COMPANY:

BIN sponsors, challenger banks and other fintechs are using Kani to do two weeks’ of transaction reporting and reconciliation work in under 30 seconds. The powerful software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool provides accuracy and compliance to the whole reconciliation and reporting process, in addition to fulfilling legal, regulatory and scheme reporting requirements, like the Mastercard QMR or Visa GOC. Born out of years of experience of the complexity and problems of manual reconciliations and scheme reporting, Kani has built a team of payments experts who are addressing this problem for fintechs and payments companies globally. It has reconciled billions in payments for its fintech customers, supporting them in being able to launch and scale faster.

Kani Payments FOUNDED: 2018 CATEGORY: Paytech KEY PERSONNEL:

Aaron Holmes, Founder & CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: Newcastle, UK OFFICES IN: United Arab Emirates TEL: +44 (0) 772 5655077 WEBSITE: kanipayments.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ kanipayments TWITTER: @KaniPayments

WHAT WE DO Fintech reporting and reconciliation made simple THEFINTECHPOWER50

VYNE

For too long merchants have suffered from a lack of true payments innovation, clunky UX and expensive fees. Vyne’s account-to-account payments solution solves all those issues at a stroke

THE TIME IS NOW FOR MERCHANT-CENTRIC PAYMENTS! Over the past 70 years, the act of taking a payment has evolved. Long gone, for instance, are the days of the credit card imprinting machine, known to those who remember it as the “click-clack’. Today, plug-ins and integrations can be added at the flick of a digital switch, opening up more means for merchants to take payments. But even in this plug-and-play payment world, merchants are feeling the blunt force of the incumbents’ inability to evolve. Since the 1950s, the payments market has been dominated by a handful of incumbent players that have led the innovation and digitisation of transfers. But since the introduction of online banking in the 1990s, the speed of innovation has stalled. Contactless cards, now widely used, are the most recent payment innovations founded by the incumbents and it took a whopping 12 years for them to reach the mainstream. And while merchants are forced to use out-of-date solutions, they are also suffering increasing incumbent fees. For too long, payments have been stacked against the very businesses that enable the payments industry to thrive – the merchants themselves. Multiple middlemen make the act of completing a payment cumbersome, slow and downright frustrating. On average, a new online customer has to tap their phone more than 24 times

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to enter card details, then enter long-forgotten security passwords, before a payment is completed. This friction results in dropouts and therefore a lack of revenue for the merchant. Not only are merchants losing income through clunky customer experiences, but they’re also feeling the impact of fraud and chargebacks. In 2020, ‘card not present’ fraud accounted for £452.6million in the UK market, according to Statista. The security steps put in place to combat this fraud add unwanted friction and complexity to an already cumbersome journey. The cherry on top? Cost. Increasing

Open banking has opened the doors for more competition in the payments space, lighting a fire under the incumbents incumbent fees and Brexit interchange price hikes are leaving merchants with a sour taste in their mouths, as well-earned revenue is eaten up by heavyweight market players – because let’s face it, up until now they’ve faced little or no competition, so they have no incentive to make their fees competitive. Vyne believes the time has come to wave goodbye to high-cost acquirers, clunky user experience and the threat of fraud – because open banking has

thrown a hat in the ring, empowering merchants and bypassing acquirers Launched and standardised in 2018, open banking has opened the doors for more competition in the payments space, lighting a fire under the incumbents. Now, merchants have more payment options that come at a lower cost. Not only does open banking provide a cost-effective alternative to acquirers, but it also solves the payments problems merchants are facing every day. The user experience is dramatically improved as manual card data entry is a thing of the past. Consumers simply go to their banking app, biometrically authenticate themselves and authorise the payment, taking the number of taps to complete a payment from 24, on average, to as few as three. Merchants, of course, need peace of mind that they’re not falling victim to fraud – and payments powered by open banking provide a higher resilience to it. By authenticating a payment through biometric information or bank-level security, merchants can be confident that the consumer is who they say they are.

ENABLING MERCHANT GROWTH, REDUCING COST AND STREAMLINING BUSINESS OPERATIONS The time is now for merchant-centric payments, where businesses aren’t held back by the incumbents that claim to www.thepower50.com

enable them – and after decades of combined experience in the payment industry, Vyne’s founding team knew there was a better way. One where merchants and consumers benefit from the payments they make and take. By combining industry and merchant expertise, Vyne’s team has built a holistic, open banking, account-to-account payments solution that empowers merchants to manage their entire payments life cycle easily over one platform. Vyne’s full-stack solution takes care of one-off and recurring payments, from payment authorisation to reconciliation. It was a tough 2020, and as we move through 2021 and into 2022, merchants will continue to look to reduce costs and grow revenue. Vyne is empowering that business growth by enabling merchants to reach and convert more customers through seamless user payment experiences. It’s helping businesses better manage cash flow and reconciliation with instant settlement and real-time dashboards. It’s enabling businesses to save. Save on cost, by avoiding acquirer fees. Save on time, by enabling businesses to integrate in days, rather than weeks, and by reclaiming costs otherwise lost on fraudulent purchases. It’s time for a payments ecosystem that empowers merchants, not stifle them. It’s time for open banking-powered account-to-account payments. www.thepower50.com

WHO WE ARE Today, getting paid online is expensive, slow and a huge point of friction. Vyne solves these problems with instant account-to-account bank payments, eliminating the middlemen while improving consumer experience with faster, safer, seamless payments. From checkout to refunds, recurring payments to reconciliation, Vyne's full-stack solution has the entire payment lifecycle covered. With more than 50 UK and 4,000 EU account provider connections, it’s driving democratisation of open banking-powered, account-to-account payments. We're helping businesses:

■ Combat fraud with strong customer authentication (SCA). Through biometric scans and the banks’ own security management, the risk of fraud is dramatically reduced without negatively impacting UX. Streamline your business operations with a quick integration that developers love. With a single, simple API for the entire payments lifecycle, merchants can get up and running with Vyne in days.

AT A GLANCE COMPANY: Vyne FOUNDED: 2019 CATEGORY: Paytech KEY PERSONNEL:

■ Reach more customers with seamless UX. With Vyne’s payment experience, there’s no need to enter card details or search for security pins. Payments are completed in as few as three taps. ■ Better manage cash flow with instant settlement. There’s no need to wait days or weeks for funds to settle. With Vyne, they settle instantly, so merchants always have a real-time grip on cash flow.

Karl MacGregor, Co-founder & CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: London, UK OFFICES IN: Europe EMAIL: hello@payvyne.com WEBSITE: www.payvyne.com LINKEDIN: Linkedin.com/ company/payvyne/ TWITTER: @payvyne

WHAT WE DO Payments perfected THEFINTECHPOWER50

GPS

THE YEAR OF THE ISSUER PROCESSOR As investors push valuations skywards, the unsung heroes of the payments revolution are finally emerging from the shadows, says Joanne Dewar, CEO of Global Processing Services (GPS) What an incredibly exciting time to be at the heart of the fintech ecosystem. The significant in-flow of capital into the payments industry globally during the pandemic, as highlighted by Marqeta’s IPO, demonstrates that the investment community continues to believe that the immense promise of fintech and digital payments is here to stay, long after the economic headwinds of COVID have subsided. For nearly a decade, the merchant acquiring space has been the key focus for investors, as players such as Checkout.com, Stripe and Adyen disrupted and revolutionised payment acceptance around the world, lowering barriers in enabling the flow of money between consumers and merchants. Investors have bet big on these players with fantastic results – these three companies alone processed more than US$600billion of payments last year. Stripe was valued at an impressive US$95billion earlier this year, making it one of the most valuable private fintech companies in the world; Adyen’s current market cap is now almost US$60billion; and Checkout.com saw its most recent fundraise push its valuation to more than US$15billion. As merchant acquiring disrupted the payments industry and has seen company valuations skyrocket, attention is now turning to the issuing processing space.

THE UNSUNG HERO OF PAYMENTS Fintechs thrive on speed and agility, leveraging the capabilities of partners to do the heavy lifting whenever possible.

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Issuer processing has become one of the most common capabilities to outsource, providing economies of scale and cutting-edge technology. This has culminated in some of the biggest fintech unicorns in the world being powered by issuer processors, thereby contributing to their exponential growth by allowing them to focus on creating innovative customer experiences without the operational complexity of, and high costs associated with, building their own payments processing capability. The intrinsic value that issuer processors bring is increasingly being reflected by the post-M&A valuations of some of the biggest companies in the space, from SoFi’s US$1.2billion acquisition of Galileo and its SPAC merger taking its market cap to US$16.9billion, to SaltPay’s acquisition of Tutuka and its subsequent US$700million fundraise that valued the company at more than US$1billion. This is further highlighted by the increased investor interest that Marqeta’s IPO brought, demonstrating that the year of the issuer processor has now arrived.

payments, crypto, lending and credit, including buy now pay later (BNPL) propositions, digital banking, FX, remittance, open banking and more. These fintechs include Revolut, the financial super app with a global customer base of 15 million; WeLab Bank, one of Hong Kong’s first homegrown virtual banks, which recently announced it has grown its customer base to 100,000 in less than a year since launch; Razer, the gaming giant that is building a major fintech proposition, starting from southeast Asia, one of the most unbanked regions in the world; Ziglu, a challenger bank that allows customers to acquire and spend cryptocurrencies as easily as fiat currencies on a single payment card; and Zilch, Paidy and Laybuy, all BNPL firms which offer greater convenience at a time when consumers may be financially stretched as a result of COVID. As the tailwinds that accelerate the move towards digital payments and increasingly cashless societies replicate simultaneously across all geographies, we believe that the global opportunity could be almost five times that amount.

POWERING NEXT-GEN PAYMENT SEGMENTS

THE INCUMBENT CHALLENGE

Next-generation fintechs are providing some of the hottest innovations in payments and are being powered by issuer processors that are only now beginning to emerge from the shadows in their own right. While commonly associated with challenger banks, issuer processors are now often servicing an enormous range of payments products, including expense management, B2B

The nimbleness of fintechs and their ability to quickly pivot and introduce innovative functionality to address specific needs saw the likes of Starling Bank bring its Connected Card to the UK market within 10 days of the first COVID lockdown to help friends and families of the vulnerable or those self-isolating to shop for groceries and necessities on their behalf. It is this kind www.thepower50.com

of innovation that is causing legacy players to rethink their digital strategy and look harder at the partner integrations available to them. It has taken traditional banks an average of four years to replicate a single feature launched by a fintech challenger, such as freeze cards, and the benchmark of expected functionality

Some of the biggest fintech unicorns in the world are being powered by issuer processors adopted by fintechs as standard will only continue to rise. This is especially true in Europe and Asia Pacific, where innovative propositions and super apps are increasingly challenging the previous stronghold of incumbents. By leveraging the capabilities of agile partners, traditional banks will be able to modernise their infrastructures and respond to rapidly changing customer demands and expectations, especially in a far more digitised COVID environment.

WHO WE ARE Global Processing Services (GPS) is the trusted and proven go-to payments processing partner for today’s leading challenger fintechs, including Revolut, Starling Bank and Curve. Founded in 2007, GPS’ highly flexible and configurable platform places the control firmly in the hands of global fintechs, digital banks and e-wallets, enabling them to deliver rich functionality to the cardholder. It is a multi-award-winning issuer processor, powering next-generation

AT A GLANCE payment segments, including expense management, B2B payments, crypto, lending and credit (including buy now pay later propositions), digital banking, FX, remittance, open banking and more. GPS is certified by Visa and Mastercard to process and manage any credit, debit or prepaid card transaction globally. It is equipped to meet the stringent standards required by Tier 1 banks and has integrated with more than 40 issuing banks and operates programmes for 180-plus clients in 60 countries, using in excess of 150 currencies.

COMPANY: Global

Processing Services (GPS)

FOUNDED: 2007 CATEGORY: Payments KEY PERSONNEL:

Joanne Dewar, CEO (right)

HEAD OFFICE: London, UK OFFICES IN: Newcastle, Singapore,

Sydney and Dubai

TEL: + 44 (0) 330 088 8761 WEBSITE: globalprocessing.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/

global-processing-services TWITTER: @GPS_Processor

WHAT WE DO The trusted and proven go-to payments processing partner for today’s leading challenger fintechs www.thepower50.com

THEFINTECHPOWER50

AEVI

HOLISTIC COMMERCE A NEW DIGITAL REALITY COVID-19 has finally introduced the era of ‘digital first’. The world is moving beyond channels – and so are customer expectations. They want digital comfort, connectivity and efficiency from even their smallest local retailer.

While many merchants flocked to digital marketplaces amidst the crisis, these solutions only served as a band aid to stay in business; it requires a major overhaul of the overall commerce infrastructure in the longer run. This digital make-over will be characterised by two guiding principles: digitisation and flexibility. Merchants are looking to their business partners to support them in executing these strategies.

A TALE OF TWO MINDSETS In an increasingly complex world, merchants of all sizes are looking for agile partners that can help them to start, grow, modernise, or innovate. For a long time, merchants sourced their commerce infrastructure channel independently and separate from their payment infrastructure. But in this era of

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Face-to-face and e-commerce payments must find common ground as the world moves beyond siloed channels, says AEVI

holistic approaches, merchants large and small are turning to different types of digital challengers – fintechs that adopt a digital mindset to create relevant, flexible solution sets, supporting their merchant base with streamlined processing across channels and employing data and AI to add additional value to their relationship. SME merchants increasingly are turning to business solution providers to source their complete business and payments infrastructure from them. Larger merchants and global businesses are engaging the services of payment-as-a-service (PaaS) providers to help them consolidate and orchestrate their diverse, international payments operations across channels.

Woken by the imminent threat of these new-age fintech challengers, face-to-face (F2F) incumbents increasingly employ partnership models and/or mergers and acquisitions to extend their services through vertical and horizontal expansion. This market consolidation is driven by three distinct strategies:

■ GO BIG: Leverage cost reductions to be more competitive ■ GO STRONG: Serve integrated payment partners more efficiently ■ GO SMART: Engage in business solutions themselves What all players in this highly co-opetative industry realise is that in a world of eroding payments margins, the focus shifts towards the intelligent use of payments data to create value for stakeholders. While this is easy to achieve on the digital side, it is significantly harder in F2F environments.

A SYSTEMIC FAILURE The problem with buzzwords is that www.thepower50.com

commerce that promises digital efficiencies to F2F merchants and access to real customer touchpoints to digital ones. Nevertheless, what stands between merchants, solution providers, and the interconnected world of efficiency is a barrier of crusted interdependences that sits between checkout and payments on the physical side, limiting the free flow of payments and data and choice of partners.

» there is lots of talking and hardly any action. For years, everybody talked about ‘omnichannel’, but, in truth, F2F and digital channels were operated, for the most part, independent of one another, especially when it comes to the customer checkout process. To understand the challenge of truly merging the channels, one must look at their origins. Electronic F2F payment acceptance was introduced to merchants almost 40 years ago and has undergone only minor upgrades. Built on an analogue mindset, payment devices were developed as data fortresses, focussing only on speed and security. Though the acceptance model spread across the globe, it saw regional variations that, over time, developed into the highly fragmented, inflexible infrastructure still prevalent today. That stands in stark contrast to the digital side, which developed at the beginning of the millennium. As e-commerce faced the challenges of the customer not being present while being open to the world at the same time, it was built on the foundation of openness, integration, and data. The result was solution sets that are highly flexible, connected and partner-oriented. While these models could co-exist over the last 20 years, the two channels are now merging to provide holistic www.thepower50.com

In a world of eroding payments margins, the focus shifts towards the intelligent use of payments data to create value for the stakeholders

INDUSTRY SOLUTION NEEDED! While the rigidity of the F2F world was accepted and even appreciated by various stakeholders for a very long time, as it kept the status quo and protected its local preservers, the game has completely

changed in times of digital-first. Resistance to change is no longer an option for merchants, nor for any of the solution providers. The market is looking for a solution for this systemic challenge. Some stakeholders are looking at Android-based smart point-of-sale (POS) systems, while others are focussing on industry standards, such as nexo’s, to open the F2F checkout flow. While all these solutions offer necessary and relevant steps towards a more open and agile F2F commerce environment, they all individually fall short as regards the bigger picture, as they are either too exclusive, complicated, or regional. To truly change the game in time, the industry requires a combination of open industry standards (such as ISO 20022, nexo and Android) and the execution speed of a private entity to deliver an open, neutral platform, accessible to and respecting the role of each stakeholder, while offering freedom of choice and speed of execution for all industry players.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

AEVI provides a platform for merchant-facing businesses that enables them to upgrade to more agile, more data-driven propositions. It gives their merchants easy access to any payment technology and business solution, resulting in the best possible in-store customer experience.

COMPANY: AEVI

Our global, Cloud-based platform empowers them to upgrade to more agile, data-driven propositions, driving efficiency, innovation and an improved customer journey across all channels. We are backed by some great, tech-influential supporters. With Diebold Nixdorf as the majority shareholder, we are lucky to innovate next to others that share the same vision. Our minority investors consist of Mastercard, HPE Growth Capital and Schroder Adveq.

FOUNDED: 2015 CATEGORY: Fintech KEY PERSONNEL: Mike Camerling, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE:

Paderborn, Germany OFFICES IN: London, Prague and Atlanta EMAIL: info@aevi.com WEBSITE: www.AEVI.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/aevi-int-/ TWITTER: @aevidomore

WHAT WE DO Simplify the face-to-face payments world THEFINTECHPOWER50

CURVE

TIME FOR A CHANGE Paid with the wrong card? Never mind – rewind!

Fast-growing financial super app Curve can help customers across Europe to supercharge their finances and take back control of payments, up to 90 days after the transaction took place. Its trademark Go Back in Time (GBiT) tool began as an intervention to help customers free up cash and switch payments between cards in a time of need during the COVID crisis. Our team was acutely aware that our customers were impacted unequally across households in different income brackets and we worked fast to put GBiT™ in place quickly. What began as a temporary support has now become permanent and is the most popular feature of the Curve app, among a range of funky tools that put customers in the driving seat when supercharging their finances. In the first six months of 2021, switched transactions using the Go Back in Time feature totalled just shy of £32million across the UK and Europe, comprising

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Developed in response to the pandemic, the enduring success of Curve’s Go Back in Time™ tool shows just how open consumers now are to payment innovation approximately 600,000 transactions, proving its value to customers’ day-to-day money management. That’s not surprising, given the complexity of human nature and spending habits, which guarantees a multitude of scenarios where such an option to rewind would be immensely useful. We’ve all had fantasies about changing the past – ‘what if I’d done this?; I wish I’d done that’. The Go Back in Time feature in the Curve super app quite literally means customers can. It’s free and is entirely managed by the individual user. So, for example, deciding in hindsight that charging the grocery

bill to the joint account was a mistake need no longer be a problem, nor will realising that much-needed new laptop should have been put on the credit card rather than the debit card. Go Back in Time doesn’t just help customers correct accidental payments or free up available credit on an already maxed-out current account – it also allows past payments to be moved from debit cards to credit cards or vice-versa, and even to spread the cost of any payment to improve immediate cash flow for customers who need it most. The savviest will be able to race against time and avoid credit card interest and charges if they stay on top of their billing cycle, simply by shifting things around to free up available credit. With different customer profiles in mind, there’s something to be gained for household budgets across all demographics, and we are always analysing and listening to customers’ needs, with an ‘outside-in’ approach that develops products around their thinking, not just ours. www.thepower50.com

HOW DOES IT WORK IN THE APP?

THE NETFLIX AND SPOTIFY OF FINANCE Curve is a fintech that combines multiple cards and accounts into one smart card and even smarter app, giving customers the opportunity to boost their legacy bank accounts well into the 21st Century without leaving their bank, so they can manage their cash and spending insights with features not yet offered by other providers. There’s no need to change behaviour or switch banks, just the opportunity to benefit from new and innovative features that take advantage of all the latest fintech on offer, such as GBiT, or Curve’s Anti-Embarrassment Mode, which automatically defaults payments to a secondary card to avoid awkward declines. All evidence since the start of the pandemic points to a paradigm shift in customers’ perceptions of brands, services, and benefits on offer – with significant rewiring towards digital of even the most skeptical of minds and slowest of adopters. In the six months prior to April 2021, European and US consumers continued to embrace digital channels, while insights from PwC’s June 2021 Global Consumer Insights Pulse www.thepower50.com

Survey revealed evidence that dramatic shifts in customers’ online behaviour is sticking, with 44 per cent of respondents (at the time of publication) claiming to shop online via smartphone or tablet on either a daily or weekly basis – more than doubling since 2018. This shift has gifted the fintech industry with a market that is ripe to adopt new products and services with the realisation that both time and money can be saved to great personal advantage. Normally, this coming around to change would have taken years to happen but it’s been amplified by the circumstances of COVID and customers having extra time on their hands to really analyse and optimise their banking habits. The future is here. It’s now, and the benefits are all for the taking.

■ Tap the transaction you want to change and choose Go Back in Time ■ Swipe through the Curve wallet and select the new card you wish to pay with ■ Move payments from one card to another – free of charge ■ Enjoy the financial freedom and benefits you get from being with Curve

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

We might look like the other cards in your wallet, but Curve is something entirely different.

COMPANY:

Curve connects your debit and credit cards into one, so it’s the only card you ever need to carry (and the only PIN you ever need to remember!). We work hard to make things easy, to take the thinking out of banking for good. From spending insights to instant cashback and market-leading exchange rates, every perk you get with Curve, you get on every card you add to your Curve wallet. With great exchange rates, rewards, and insights across your accounts, you don’t need to move banks to improve them. All you need is Curve.

Curve OS Limited FOUNDED: 2016 CATEGORY: Payments KEY PERSONNEL:

Shachar Bialick, Founder and CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: London, UK OFFICES IN: New York (US), Bristol (UK) and Vilnius (Lithuania) TEL: +44 (0) 203 761 2800 WEBSITE: curve.com/en-gb/ LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/curve-ltd TWITTER: @imaginecurve

WHAT WE DO One card. One app. Zero hassle THEFINTECHPOWER50

RON SHEVLIN

Non-financial brands are making a land grab for financial services. So how do the real banks build better? asks Ron Shevlin

EMBEDDED FINTECH v EMBEDDED FINANCE Embedded finance, sometimes also referred to as embedded banking, has become a popular term in banking and fintech circles. What is it? The integration of financial services into non-financial websites, mobile applications, and business processes. And, across a range of financial services, including payments, lending, and insurance, it is forecast to generate $230billion in revenue by 2025, a 10-fold increase from $22.5billion in 2020. There’s no doubt that embedded finance is a threat to incumbent financial institutions, but they don’t have to roll over and play dead. They can protect and grow their core products, e.g. payments and loans, by finding new distribution opportunities through embedded finance – although admittedly that might prove difficult for mid-size financial institutions that find themselves shut out of those deals by retail platforms that partner exclusively with large banks. Secondly, they can create new revenue streams from new products and services already created by fintech startups – a strategy called embedded fintech. The difference between embedded finance and embedded fintech is the direction of the service. While embedded finance is about enabling non-financial companies to provide banking services, embedded fintech is the integration of fintech products and services into financial institutions’ product sets, websites, mobile applications and business processes – such as subscription management, identity protection, cryptocurrency investing.

The digital products imperative Mobile banking adoption is approaching ubiquity among Gen Z-ers and Millennials, with 88 per cent of the two generations

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accessing their bank accounts using a mobile device. For many, a mobile app is the primary way they interact with their checking account. So, as far as these consumers are concerned, the app is the product. In order to remain competitive, then, banks need a digital product development and deployment capability that goes way beyond a digital platform for users to manage checking accounts. Historically, launching a new product was a multi-year, bet-the-farm proposition for institutions. The imperative now is to quickly conceptualise, test, launch and operationalise a series of smaller products and services for specific segments. Why do banks struggle to do this? ■ Economics The cost of developing, launching, delivering, and marketing new products has forced banks only to go for ‘home runs’ that will bring in millions (if not tens of millions) of dollars in annual revenue ■ Organisation Most mid-size financial institutions don’t have new product design and development departments. In effect, their technology providers are their de facto new product developers ■ Technology Relying on vendor-developed systems makes launching new financial products and services hard for banks because of the customisation and integration required

An embedded fintech factory Financial institutions don’t think of product design and development in a factory context – but they should. An embedded fintech factory consists of a digital products organisation, which requires a chief digital products officer with staff to create and instil a new product design and development process; identify and prioritise new product

opportunities; and be accountable for new digital product revenue and profitability. For most financial institutions, the existing digital banking department is simply focussed on keeping the online and mobile banking platforms up and running. An embedded fintech factory also needs a digital products technology platform that enables the rapid and cost-effective design, creation, plug in, and deployment of digital products and services. The platform must be component-based, API-driven and Cloud-native. Financial institutions could migrate to a new digital core system upon which to build this new platform, but in the short-term, few will. Instead, there is a growing list of tech providers to create a digital products platform for them. It’s not clear whether non-financial platforms and brands embedding finance are embedding new types of money management services as well. If not, they leave a way open for financial institutions to find a value proposition to fight back. And, if they do, the pressure on banks to come up with a competitive response is even greater. In either case, embedded fintech is the answer.

AT A GLANCE Ron Shevlin is Director of Fintech Research at Cornerstone Advisors and author of Smarter Bank: Why Money Management Is More Important Than Money Movement. He was ranked #2 on Bank Innovation’s list of 30 Innovators To Watch, is a weekly contributor to Forbes and publishes on his top-rated Snarketing 2.0 blog. TWITTER: @rshevlin

www.thepower50.com

WHY OPEN BANKING HAS BEEN SO TOUGH

GHELA BOSKOVICH

Ghela Boskovich reflects on lessons learned – and how it might all be made so much easier! I was recently asked by a veteran industry player why I thought the delivery of open banking has been so difficult. There is a litany of really good symptom diagnosis: from the debate on technical standards versus specifications, to certain players hesitating to embrace it, to the delay caused by the pandemic. But none explains exactly why open banking has yet to reach its full potential, despite being dragged along by various forces. Fortunately, history helped shape an answer. I thought back to ancient times – when I started my career. Back in the late 1990s, I was steeped in the deregulation of telecommunications in the US and Japan. I had a front-row seat, watching big telco being forced to open up its infrastructure so that new, challenger providers could piggyback on it in order to compete with big incumbents. This deregulation (not in terms of fewer rules, but in terms of promoting competition and evolving those utility revenues from assured ‘rate-of-return’ to whatever the market decided was deserved) was hauntingly familiar and I caught a glimpse of a root-cause answer. Open banking is not based on the same rental economy model, and therein lies the reason for misaligned incentives, which have meant a complicated, sometimes contentious, open banking journey that’s so difficult to deliver. In telco, incumbents had spent enormous amounts to build infrastructure, and their entire rate pricing structure was calibrated to recoup the cost of that build, plus a nominal amount of profit. When www.thepower50.com

competition was introduced, the incumbents were forced to crack open their infrastructure to allow the competition to ‘rent’ access to it until and if the competition built their own network. A number did choose to build for wireless rather than traditional copper wire, or even build for fibre optics, and thus both competition and innovation accelerated. But the telcos had rental income from letting competitors use their network meantime, and competitors didn’t have to sink funds into building infrastructure in order to immediately get in the game. Their incentives were aligned. Financial services also has big incumbents, competitors, infrastructure, and end customers. What is fundamentally different is that the infrastructure that competitors want to access is data. And the bank doesn’t own it; the end-customer does. This is where the rental model that allowed for a relatively smooth transition into telco competition breaks down for financial services: the desirable part of the infrastructure isn’t owned by incumbents, but by law they have to share it with the competition if the consumer so demands. The bank is merely a custodian of that (payment) data. It cannot rent it out to the competition while the competition builds its own consumer data base. There’s no rate of return to the bank for having captured all that data via its payment infrastructure and product offerings. Data custodianship becomes a burden, not a boon. So that’s my short answer to why it’s been difficult to deliver open banking in Europe and the UK. There’s also a short,

AT A GLANCE Otherwise known as G, Ghela Boskovich is one of the most compelling and thoughtful voices in fintech. A respected contributor to the fintech debate, she holds strong views, particularly on data – how it’s used, how it’s accessed and who owns it. WEBSITE ghelaboskovich.com/about/ TWITTER @GhelaBoskovich

two-part answer to how to realign those incentives. The first is a pure bank strategy: embrace the inevitable reality of open banking/finance and become a third-party provider; cannibalise existing revenue streams in order to future-proof market share. The second part is to accelerate the commercial API conversation in the industry. Open finance will carve out certain data sets beyond payments that must be shared at the end-consumer’s will – credit, savings, and investment data. That will be a reality. But there will be a set of extended customer attributes for each data vertical that third-party providers are willing to pay to access. This data does belong to the bank and can be rented out. Accelerate the timeline to make those payloads available. Commercial APIs will make the delivery of open banking and finance easier by realigning economic incentives; and for the time being they will lessen the existential crisis the incumbents are currently experiencing. THEFINTECHPOWER50

POWER TO YOUR PAYMENTS

Why do companies like Uber and Deliveroo no longer see payments as a cost centre and have instead given them boardroom status? Because successful businesses know payments can be their competitive edge – if you have the right data Despite the challenges it has created, the pandemic has opened the door to a host of exciting new business opportunities. Merchants of all shapes and sizes have a once-in-a-generation chance to seize upon a massive shift in consumer behaviour. Businesses that provide consumers with a deeply contextual digital experience will set the benchmark. Through an openness to experiment and meaningful partnerships with organisations that enable them to stay agile, merchants can capitalise on this new wave of digital consumerism. Those that can adapt quickly to these changing consumer demands will continue to grow their revenue exponentially.

BOOST YOUR BOTTOM LINE Digital payments are at the heart of this opportunity. With this accelerated digital transformation, payments have boomed as consumers have ditched cash for cards and digital payment methods. Almost 420

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billion transactions worth US $7trillion are expected to move from cash to cards and digital payments by 2023, and as much as US $48trillion by 2030, Accenture estimates. Even the smallest improvement in payments performance can significantly boost the bottom line. That is why companies such as Uber and Deliveroo have shifted their payments from a cost centre to a strategic function within the business, with a place in the boardroom. Payments performance can provide a true competitive advantage. Merchants that can use better data and gain deeper insight into their payment flows can unlock more revenue, launch innovative new products and deliver better customer experiences. Doing so requires using a payment service provider (PSP) such as Checkout.com, which has made customisable solutions, full data transparency and consultative service central to its offering, enabling clients to achieve optimal payment performance and revenue generation. Its clients have

included some of the most innovative and fast-growing companies, such as Farfetch, Coinbase and Klarna.

THE DATA DILEMMA "Data is the lifeblood of our operation,” says Emina Zahirovic, Head of Payments for North America at HelloFresh. “I cannot do my job and drive payments performance without it." However, even payments leaders at the fastest-growing companies continue to find driving these improvements a huge challenge. Most businesses are unaware of what happens once a customer makes a payment. Often, payments providers can’t give them that data or they only offer them the most basic insight. For a payment provider to be able to pass on full, robust data for insights and analysis, they must own the entire payments chain, acting as the gateway, acquiring bank and payment processor, all in one. That lack of access to actionable data is a significant challenge for many www.thepower50.com

C H E C K O U T. C O M companies. Forty-one percent of merchants don’t receive any actionable analytics from their payments data. “The data that is returned by third-party partners is critical for extracting the most value and increasing your ability to optimise conversion and, then, for reducing the cost of payments,” Andrew Row, former managing director of Uber Payments, said in a recent Checkout.com report. Knowing the value and nuance in the payments data is only half the story. If organisations can’t collect and visualise the data in a meaningful and timely manner, the value is just theoretical.

41 per cent of merchants don’t receive any actionable analytics from their payments data “The worst, most expensive mistake you can make,” Row says, “is to lose a customer when they initiate payment, when you’ve spent so much on customer acquisition.”

CHOOSING THE RIGHT PSP Payments data is equal in its power and complexity. Understanding payments data is as much an art as a science. That is why

businesses are increasingly leaning upon their PSPs to help them understand their data and determine what they should do to optimise payments performance.

THE VALUE OF A PSP PARTNERSHIP Choosing the right PSP is critical for any business that’s keen to get more value from its payments. Thus, your PSP must prioritise data visibility. Whether you need a payment platform to integrate into a broader suite of solutions or to operate on its own, your payments data must be accessible at all times. Yet many PSPs are unable to provide the data that organisations require to use their payments as a strategic lever for growth. They either can’t because they don’t have a direct scheme integration and direct acquiring or because they are not set up to focus on that depth of data, so they consolidate and simplify the data rather than help companies leverage it to make more informed decisions. And that’s true even of many modern providers. Businesses wanting to access their complete data therefore need to work with providers such as Checkout.com that own the end-to-end payments flow and offer access to the granular data businesses need. Businesses should determine whether

WHO WE ARE Checkout.com is a leading, Cloud-based solutions provider that helps brands unlock more value from their digital payments. Purpose-built with performance, scalability and speed in mind, our modular payments platform is ideal for merchants looking to seamlessly integrate better payment solutions, globally. Checkout.com offers improved acceptance, better and more actionable granular data, a modular product structure that merchants can adapt to their needs, combined with deep local expertise and a truly personal

their PSPs have the resources or expertise to provide this support. PSPs should be there when companies need them, to guide them through the data, and provide the insights they need to build their strategy and grow their business. Checkout.com provides a white-glove service with deep global expertise and knowledge of regional nuances, giving insights on local payment methods, regulation requirements and trends that enable organisations to create best-in-class checkout experiences. Without this data transparency and service, obscured payments data, such as consolidated decline codes and transaction costs, can stifle a company’s ability to optimise acceptance and drive more revenue. A provider such as Checkout.com gives the most transparent payments data, including more than 150 decline codes, and the expertise to leverage it. Today, payments are at the centre of business performance, revenue generation and providing the best customer experience. Forward-thinking business leaders will look to redefine payments as a competitive advantage that can yield a significant bottom line. Learn how Checkout.com’s platform and expertise can help you unlock more value in every transaction and deliver the best payments performance.

AT A GLANCE white-glove service. It’s why brands across the globe like Samsung, Deliveroo, Klarna and Farfetch trust Checkout.com. It is the dominant choice for organisations that are looking for the fastest, most innovative and reliable, global payments solution provider. Launched in 2012, Checkout.com now has a team of more than 1,000 people, working across 18 offices worldwide, offering local expertise where it’s needed. Our on-the-ground presence and deep knowledge of the regional payments ecosystem, makes Checkout.com the ideal partner for optimising your payments globally.

COMPANY: Checkout.com FOUNDED: 2012 CATEGORY: End-to-end payment services provider KEY PERSONNEL:

Guillaume Pousaz, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: London, UK OFFICES IN: Germany, Spain, France, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, US, UAE, Pakistan, Portugal, Brazil, Mauritius, Australia and Italy TEL: +44 (0) 7760267732 WEBSITE: checkout.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/checkout/ TWITTER: @checkout

WHAT WE DO Better payments performance for global success www.thepower50.com

THEFINTECHPOWER50

A SUBTLE DIFFERENCE… AN OBVIOUS ADVANTAGE Why a risk-based approach to compliance automation is good for fintechs and their customers While regulators haven’t been prescriptive around the risk models that fintechs implement to control compliance, there are key parameters or factors to consider that are required by law. These are the factors that will be important to ensuring you onboard legitimate customers, creating a great experience, while excluding fraudsters, money launderers, and ensuring compliance with relevant regulation. A risk model will always be bespoke to each fintech. It will depend on whether an individual or institution is being onboarded; what products and lines of business you are offering; where you are targeting to sell your products; what your risk appetite is; countries of operation… the list goes on.

Preventing unconscious bias Taking a risk-based approach to compliance is helpful to fintechs because

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it’s vital to exclude financial crime and equally important to give genuine customers access to financial products. There is a lot of nuance to consider in making evaluations about who to onboard and a risk-based approach deals with that. Take ‘country’ as an example of an important factor in risk modelling, because it can come with a lot of baggage. Some countries have a higher risk of being sanctioned or are at a higher fraud risk. However, automatically rejecting someone going through an onboarding process because they are from a particular country is potentially very short-sighted. Someone coming from a high-risk country might trigger enhanced due diligence to establish a level of trust and you might also want to carry out more stringent ongoing monitoring of transactions, but it doesn’t automatically mean exclusion. This is the beauty of a risk-based approach to compliance automation, it allows for greater flexibility and nuance. Rules can be too rigid or restrictive when it comes to dealing with people. Often rules fall short of accounting for complexities and all the variations associated with real people and what they do or how they behave – moving from place to place, getting married, taking new jobs.

Fintechs don’t want to find themselves making bad automated decisions about applicants or customers, based on rules that are too fixed. They could be excluding people from important financial products, or they could be inadvertently creating bias and this isn’t something you want to have to explain to the regulator.

Deal in subtlety and complexity The risk-based approach to compliance allows for much more subtlety. It concedes complexity in people and what may require a human eye for true judgement. Let’s give you an example. You get an application from an individual who has a Syrian passport. With a rules-based approach, that individual is likely to be rejected, as Syria is a country that’s on the ‘no’ list. Wait a minute, though. The applicant has a Syrian passport, but they have lived in the UK for 10 years. Then you might be making a different decision, right? That’s a risk-based decision, powered by rules taken from your risk policy. What a risk-based model enables you to do is make better decisions. It also enables you to build a picture of a customer and have a dynamic process. You can do more progressive profiling during the due diligence process. www.thepower50.com

For example, you might ask four questions up front of a new applicant. If they all sail through, the applicant gets a risk-rating in your ‘low-risk’ category and they are onboarded using straight through processing (STP); 100 per cent automation achieved. If you ask your four questions and there is a flag or a factor that bumps up the risk rating, you have an additional subset of questions that automatically appears in your onboarding form to get more information. Then, at any point you can also introduce humans into the process – compliance people – they are the ultimate machines in understanding nuance. While automation of compliance is certainly a great advancement – creating efficiency and helping to ease onboarding – people still need to be brought in and out of risk management processes at the right time, because their critical thinking can make the difference. Going back to our earlier example, a machine might make the decision to say no to someone with a passport from a particular country, but it might be better to kick that over to an individual who can review the application, trigger additional tasks, and complete enhanced due diligence.

The beauty of a risk-based approach is that it allows for greater flexibility and nuance… fintechs don’t want to find themselves making bad automated decisions about applicants or customers based on rules that are too fixed

The role of regtech When it comes to risk and compliance decisions, skilled people will always be critical to success. Certain tasks can and should be automated, such as data entry and data collection, automatic escalation and dynamic forms to ask questions. Automating tasks with regtech enables compliance people to focus on critical thinking, building trust and creating better experiences, using their skill, judgement and expertise to add most value. The weight of compliance activity should fall on technology automation and the risk engine, instead of on the

WHO WE ARE Founded in 2015 by Donald Gillies and Henry Irish and headquartered in London, PassFort has supported regulated financial services companies to automate more than five million customer journeys in 197 countries, then manage risk and compliance standards throughout the customer lifecycle. Born in the Cloud, PassFort’s solutions are designed for the digital economy: hardware-free, affordable, flexible to configure and easy to use, with constant feature innovation and a choice of deployment options. Our low- to no-code solution thrives on complexity, solving compliance challenges at scale without being costly to implement or evolve. We support multiple customer types and product lines, with effortless expansion across 211 jurisdictions. www.thepower50.com

PA S S F O R T compliance team – or worse, the customer. There’s less waiting, fewer touch-points, less friction – faster engagement with real customers who want to interact with your products – and less financial crime.

Conclusion Taking a risk-based approach enables fintechs to make the best use of their compliance people. It helps prevent unconscious bias. And it means decisions can be justified to regulators – you have clear reasons and proof why certain decisions were made. All the while, you are ensuring you create trust with real customers, and deal with complex financial crime, such as fraud and money laundering. A risk-based approach to compliance automation means you can onboard at scale and across a global theatre. You don’t have to waste time and resources checking high volumes of applicants and you can deliver better customer experiences. If risk factors have been modelled correctly, based on your policy, much of the friction can be removed. Automation bears the load for compliance, helping to make risk-based decisions with no compromise between compliance and great customer experience.

AT A GLANCE Our commitment to interoperability puts PassFort at the heart of customer operations; providing global access to datasets from any provider and syncing seamlessly with existing back-office systems. PassFort’s dynamic orchestration of customer due diligence, know your customer (KYC), know your business (KYB) and anti-money laundering (AML) work flows, puts the weight of compliance activity on our risk engine and automation, not on customers. We layer automation to speed up manual processes and remedial tasks that can’t be automated, bringing in compliance teams where they add most value for analysis, judgement and decision-making. PassFort removes the compromise between compliance and customer experience in the fight against financial crime. More efficiency. Great customer experiences. No compromise.

COMPANY: PassFort FOUNDED: 2015 CATEGORY: Regtech KEY PERSONNEL:

Donald Gillies, CEO (right)

HEAD OFFICE: London, UK TEL: +44 (0)20 3633 1761 WEBSITE: www.passfort.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ passfort-limited/ TWITTER: @PassFortKYC

WHAT WE DO Adding the human touch to compliance automation THEFINTECHPOWER50

F I N LY N C

FinLync’s apps sit within a company’s enterprise resource planning system, using open banking connections to give corporates on-demand, real-time visibility into critical daily functions While open banking is rapidly taking hold in the consumer market, open banking in the corporate and enterprise world – and most notably in the treasury world – is far behind. Simply, the relationships between enterprises and their banking partners are much more complex than the typical consumer/bank relationship; enterprises often have multiple global banking

relationships and run their operations on enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Given this, corporate treasuries have been relying on static, one-way file transfers of bank data for years, with the closest real change budding from global banks’ recent enthusiasm for building bank API services. To-date, the adoption of these technologies has been limited due to a lack of standardisation and substantial costs of one-off integration. Until recently, simple, turn-key solutions, enabling real-time integrated insight into corporate banking data from within ERP systems, did not exist. FinLync is here to change that. For the first time, instead of being hamstrung by third-party systems and weak links, treasury and finance departments can maintain interruptible connections to all of their banks, in one

centralised location: their ERP system. That constant connection means integrated insights across financial functions, real-time comprehensive visibility into cash positions, and advanced security and control over company data, among other key additives that FinLync provides. FinLync’s core offering is a suite of ERP-native treasury and cash management applications that work with our BankLync API Aggregator so that corporate treasuries and finance departments have complete, direct control of their data, instead of relying on third-party systems, like treasury management services (TMS), that sit outside of the ERP. So, how does it actually work? FinLync’s BankLync aggregator connects to all of a corporate’s banks globally, via banks’ API services, enabling a bi-directional flow of data between them and the ERP, without ever leaving the security of a corporate’s firewall.

A TURNKEY SOLUTION REVOLUTION FOR TREASURY 86 THEFINTECHPOWER50

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FinLync marries the data in the ERP with the data from the banks for total integration, giving corporates on-demand, real-time visibility into critical daily functions, such as monitoring payments, forecasting, reconciliation, and more – all over the world. By entering any of FinLync’s native-ERP applications – Balances, Status, Reconciliation, etc – treasury and finance teams have instant and complete control over their data and cash. FinLync gives these teams four core advantages: Integrated for insights To fulfil their actions, treasury teams must integrate accurate bank and cash data with enterprise finance data within the businesses’ ERP systems. Until now, bank data existed in isolation, requiring time-consuming manual labour or complex IT integration to centralise it and garner insights from it. As an ERP-native application, FinLync

Corporate treasuries and finance departments have complete, direct control of their data, instead of relying on third-party systems, like TMS, that sit outside of the ERP

‘lives’ within your ERP, linking relevant external and internal data together to give treasurers a complete data set for analytics.

Greater control through a consumer-grade experience You manage treasury for an on-demand world that requires simple ways to tackle complex financial issues. But your current means of bank data access is slow, manually dependent, and difficult to manipulate. FinLync enables enterprise-grade bank data management through a consumer-grade interface.

Real-time treasury Treasury must be able to deliver informed cash position insights at any time, yet most treasuries are dependent on bank batch-file processing that restricts statement updates to only once or twice a day. FinLync delivers cash position

Ready NOW Getting appropriate budgets and IT attention can be difficult for treasury to acquire. As a native ERP application, FinLync is easy to contract, install and implement, requiring minimal IT involvement.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

FinLync is a privately held, global fintech company, which is transforming the insights and functionality of corporate finance and treasury offices through its world-class products.

COMPANY: FinLync FOUNDED: 2015 CATEGORY:

FinLync’s ERP-native apps and API connectivity empowers treasurers to optimise cash, make better, faster decisions, save time and optimise the resources needed to manage complex finance needs. Its clients include Fortune 500 and Fortune 2000 companies. The FinLync team, headquartered in the US with offices in Singapore, Los Angeles, and Paris, is a brilliant and diverse group, representing more than 20 countries. Institutional investors include Point72 Ventures, NYCA, Communitas Capital and Acequia Capital.

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insights from multiple banks into one source of accurate insight that can be accessed at any time.

Treasury services

KEY PERSONNEL:

Phillip Klein, CEO & Co-founder (right) HEAD OFFICE: US OFFICES IN: New York, Los Angeles, Singapore and Paris TEL: +1 929 502 3550 WEBSITE: finlync.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/finlync/

WHAT WE DO A new era for corporate banking

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CLOSING THE TRUST AND TRANSPARENCY GAP As Founder of BNPL provider Zilch, Philip Belamant fundamentally believes regulation and technology are key to consumers’ long-term financial wellness Consumer relationships with banks and opinions on traditional lending options are changing. Since the global financial crisis in 2008, consumer trust in established banks is no longer a given. The pandemic further highlighted the incumbent nature of traditional financial providers and the overnight transition to a virtual world left some long-standing financial institutions vulnerable. A new wave of innovative digital fintechs, using sophisticated technology, has swooped in and is proving serious competition. At Zilch, we believe in putting the customer first, always. This entails a

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number of things, not least creating a transparent and easy-to-use way for consumers to manage their cash flow. This is only possible with the right technology and, by making the most of this to create new, innovative infrastructures and features, we are playing our role as part of a wider revolution in the world of finance. Technology is reshaping industries at lightning speed – everything from retail, hospitality and construction have seen long-standing business models evolve due to digital advancements. For financial services, technology is key to enabling providers to keep up with consumers’ changing expectations and demands and

businesses must embrace the tools available to remain relevant and attractive in a competitive market. Overall, fintechs are reshaping a traditional industry as a whole by providing simplified and transparent processes and products that are cheaper and more accessible to the masses, thus closing the trust gap.

OPEN BANKING – THE GREATEST SHAKE-UP TO FINANCIAL SERVICES Although for a while it seemed finance was falling behind, new technology is rapidly enabling a holistic and customer-first approach, challenging www.thepower50.com

ZILCH the status quo. For example, open banking technology is a groundbreaking innovation that enables a real-time view and a clear understanding of consumers’ spending habits and affordability profile. By allowing the secure sharing of financial information, cash flow tools review your credit history and provide a tailored service that suits your financial needs. At Zilch, we are one of the first buy now pay later (BNPL) providers to utilise this technology, which means we never lend a customer more than they can afford, thereby reducing the possibility of indebtedness. Consumers turn to credit providers for a variety of reasons and, so there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to lending that works. However, having an overview of consumers’ finances from the beginning of the credit process, enables responsible lending and spending. This also enables consumer financial wellness to be placed at the heart of operations, meeting consumer demand.

EASY-TO-USE APPS Gone are the days of reading multiple pages of confusing small-print information before we even have a chance to view our credit options. Now, thanks to consumer demand, more lenders are

striving to provide a fast, seamless and transparent experience that digitally savvy consumers demand. Apps are now a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Research shows that a key motivator for using banking apps is that they help consumers keep a continuous handle on their financial position. But many want a tool that goes beyond account balance checking to become a personalised service, too. Adding features such as instant payment notifications, repayment alerts

Having an overview of consumers’ finances from the beginning of the credit process, enables responsible lending and spending and advance notifications regarding overdraft charges, for example, also helps consumers to better plan and manage their weekly and monthly cash flows, encouraging more responsible spending habits. Not only does transparent, personalised lending improve financial wellness, but the convenience will, in turn, foster a positive user/provider relationship.

WHO WE ARE Zilch is one of the fastest-growing buy now pay later (BNPL) providers in the UK, with a unique offering that puts customers first, always. As one of only a few BNPL providers in the country to be fully regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, it enables customers to shop where they like, whenever they like, thanks to its unique over-the-top (OTT) platform and one-of-a-kind partnership with Mastercard – which also means it makes money from the transaction, never consumer interest. By using a combination of open banking technology and soft credit checks, Zilch has a real-time view and understanding of consumers’ affordability profile and is able to give accurate recommendations of what www.thepower50.com

A REGULATED REVOLUTION While you can have all the right technology in place, it’s important to note that the finance revolution will, and should, be a regulated one. The recently published Woolard Review highlights the need to protect customers and outlines commitments to undertake thorough affordability checks in their credit industry to ensure customers are treated fairly. At Zilch, we believe that regulation is key to ensuring long-term consumer wellness in the BNPL space. As such, regulation has been a core part of Zilch’s DNA from the very start. We worked closely with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for 12 months as part of its sandbox programme, making us one of the first fully FCA-regulated BNPL providers in the UK. It is my belief that suppliers must step up and provide an offering that falls in line with regulation. Zilch is at the forefront of a fight to ensure customers come first, always. If players in the industry hope to keep up, they must consider how to put consumer financial wellness at the heart of all operations and utilise the technology available to build empowering digital banking experiences for all.

AT A GLANCE they can afford to borrow. This personalised approach to lending reduces the risk of over-indebtedness and encourages responsible consumer spending habits. Zilch was created with Gen Z-ers and Millennials in mind and recently reached half a million customers. Its mission is to revolutionise the credit payment industry and create innovative products, such as Tap & Pay-over-time, which enables users to tap in-store and automatically spread the cost over six weeks, facilitating financial inclusion. Over the last two years, the company has raised more than $120million in funding and is now valued in excess of $500million.

COMPANY: Zilch FOUNDED: 2018 CATEGORY: Lendtech KEY PERSONNEL:

Philip Belamant, Founder and CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: London, UK TEL: +44 (0) 203 405 9775 WEBSITE: payzilch.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/payzilch/ TWITTER: @PayZilch

WHAT WE DO Pay over time. Anywhere THEFINTECHPOWER50

OONEX

THE FUTURE OF B2B PAYMENTS: A REVOLUTION WITHOUT COMPROMISE There is no question that we are living in a digital revolution. The massive disruption caused by the pandemic, alongside the advances in technology and digitisation of traditional services has created a huge shift in all world markets and completely transformed entire industries.

Of course, this was no sudden transformation. The world has been working to catch up by implementing changes in regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), and investing in technically-driven businesses. However, banks are still struggling heavily under the weight of outdated infrastructure and ways of thinking. This has created a huge opportunity for challengers – licensed fintech players, like Oonex, to help accelerate innovation in B2B payments and capture a big portion of the market.

B2B PAYMENTS – AN INDUSTRY ON THE VERGE OF INNOVATION Recent developments remove traditional barriers to innovation: government initiatives like Confirmation of Payee in the UK, the New Payments Platform in Australia, new standards (ISO 20022, SWIFT GPI, e-identities), and new tech acceptance (artificial intelligence, machine learning and distributed ledgers). We can already see movement with SEPA Instant, Visa Direct, Mastercard Money Send. Account Information Service Providers and Payment Initiation Service Providers

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How demands for instant, frictionless payments are defining the future of B2B payments and open banking are here, but people aren’t using them. So, if the regulatory landscape is not impeding delivery of services that meet B2B demand, what is the solution? The solution lies in tech. The innovation of B2B payments relies on banks and payment providers putting technology first and focussing on two key areas of innovation: B2B service specialisation and universal platform integrations using smart data.

IN 2021 FRICTIONLESS PAYMENTS ARE STILL A PIPE DREAM Payment friction is what hurts businesses the most. Points of friction associated with manual processes account for the largest pain points of accounts payable departments. B2B payments need to follow the path of peer-to-peer payments, characterised by speed and reliability. Businesses need to be paid on time to keep running, after all, and they need to know that whatever system they use is going to deliver as quickly as possible.

NO COMPROMISES Frictionless payments and reduced payment risk are the future of B2B payments. Technology will achieve the balance the industry needs

through innovation – full digitisation of B2B, integration of services for manual process automation, instant payments, new domestic and international payee verification systems to reduce fraud, profile and manage risk with data-intelligence. As a global payment services provider to payment and fintech companies, including the licensing, technology and legal services to support their vision, Oonex is committed to seeing the delivery of this.

FUTURE PAYMENTS: PRODUCT SPECIALISATION WITH SMART DATA Automated verification ■ Real-time payee validation ■ Digital identity tokenisation ■ Portability of profiles New payment methods ■ New scheme entrants for cross-border ■ Adaption of card products and B2B utility Machine learning & artificial intelligence ■ Profiling of credit scoring and transaction risk ■ Intelligence business decisions Instant payment methods ■ Adoption of peripheral tech as industry norms ■ Blockchain, QR codes, changing two-factor authentication methods, digital currencies Service-bundling ■ Rise of marketplace ‘banking’ www.thepower50.com

MOVE TO SMART DATA AND PLATFORM INTEGRATIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS Data unification – increased end-to-end through-puts for enhanced reporting, reconciliation, procedure to pay services, follow whole journey from invoice creation, through cross-border payment networks, increasing security and allowing for instant payments. B2B payments: platform partnerships and total integration; data unification/distributed ledgers ■ Heightened data through-put for traceability ■ Manual process automation ■ Data portability and centralisation Digitisation ■ Open, configurable APIs ■ Integration into business management systems for instant reporting Industry specialisation ■ Move towards specialisation of payment products for different industries Service consolidation ■ Convergence of utility, reg-tech, process automation, APMs ■ Delivery of unified services to reduce friction Universalisation of standards ■ Global messaging standards cross-borders

INTEGRATED PLATFORMS FOR FRICTION-FREE PAYMENTS Integrated products improve business efficiencies and reduce costs. www.thepower50.com

New product and smart data allow for instant payments without increasing payment risk. Open banking APIs ■ Instant payee verification ■ End-to-end data transmission ■ Machine learning & AI ■ Account Information payment services universal connectivity to payment networks: SWIFT, SEPA, BACS, DLT, SEPA Instant, UK Faster Payments and more.

SOLVING B2B PAYMENT FRICTION AND KEEPING BUSINESSES HAPPY Business payment flows are complex, clunky and slow. Lack of visibility during payment-transit increases uncertainty around treasury. In-time scheduling of payments reduces business cash-flow availability. Can delay delivery of services that heavily impact businesses. Makes reconciliation difficult.

Automated processes and fast speed Solutions – increased cashflow, instant payments, improved treasury, payment-flow transparency. ■ Poor data and lack of service consolidation – large resource overhead due to manual handling. Data inaccuracies – manual invoicing and reconciliations. Uncertainty around cash-positions and cashflow. High propensity for internal fraud or intermediary failure. Non-homogenisation of internal processes, accounting systems and banking services. Integration of smart data services ■ Solutions – automated accounting, end-to-end process integration, automated controls and decisionmaking, smart profiling for straight-through processing.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

Oonex provides global payment services to payment and fintech companies, including the licensing, technology and legal services to support their vision.

COMPANY: Oonex

Oonex is a Principal Member acquirer and provides access to Visa, Mastercard, Amex, JCB and Carte Bancaire acquiring. Additionally, we issue international payment accounts to businesses and individuals worldwide. Through our partner agents, your business can offer payment services in any country in Europe and the EEA.

EMAIL: sales@oonex.com

CATEGORY: Paytech KEY PERSONNEL: Daria

Rippingale, CEO (right)

HEAD OFFICE: Belgium WEBSITE: oonex.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/oonex

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ZAGGLE

SEIZE CONTROL OF YOUR SPENDING! An Indian fintech with big ambitions, we help companies get a grip on expense management by simplifying workflows and making payments and reconciliation less hassle and more, well, Zaggle! Zaggle is an award-winning fintech company focussed on unlocking business potential for its clients by digitising enterprise spends and modernising enterprise practices to drive business growth. Our vision is to become a global digital bank and our mission is to build state-of-art financial products and workflow solutions that help automate and empower businesses to increase efficiency, accuracy, transparency, and productivity, which will ultimately help us to achieve our goal. Zaggle began its journey in 2011 with the vision of developing proprietary tech platforms that would connect corporate entities and consumer needs with merchants with bespoke solutions. Over the years, we have adapted to evolving technologies and introduced platforms relevant to the current times. Arraying cutting edge

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technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and optical character recognition (OCR), which are instrumental in providing a smooth experience to businesses and users, our services are much in demand. We are currently working with RBL Bank,

IndusInd Bank and YES Bank, and with VISA, RuPay and Mastercard networks. Our bespoke product offerings include: EMS: An easy-to-use, expense management solution platform that facilitates the seamless storage of bills and expenses of company employees, which can be reviewed by employers in real time and reimbursed in a jiffy. The platform is powered by AI and ML, which can easily identify duplicate bills and helps companies save more yearly. Zaggle has partnered with several travel-centric entities and integrated the entire solution through API. In all, EMS has been successful in achieving 99 per cent efficiency and helps to save more than 10 per cent of costs in terms of accounting expenses and staff time. Zaggle has led the way in providing tailor-made solutions for corporates to handle their

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expenses coherently and designed an app to support the users, giving both a more seamless and hassle-free experience. Propel: A channel incentivisation programme that enables companies to communicate with their channel partners, such as distributors, partners and retailers. It solves the challenge of managing complete lifecycles of sales incentives, from the development of schemes to the presentation to end users, as well as analytics and reconciliation. Propel was designed as a configurable platform that would enable employers to choose from multiple modules, such as employee rewards, channel incentives, user management and redemption services, and loyalty schemes. The platform is developed in a way that enables them to announce their schemes to distributors through direct plug-ins. It also enables seamless collation of sales, calculation of incentives, and carries out business intelligence on the performance as a whole. It is a versatile tool with a striking return on investment for the platform. SAVE: An employee benefits and tax-saving platform that enables corporate employees to save on their taxes through the

purchase of meals, periodicals and books. The entire process is digital and facilitates complete transparency of the spend, ensuring it is in the correct expense category and making the process entirely compliant with the tax law. Edge: A prepaid product platform that enables corporates to manage their various spend needs, such as gifting and making payments in advance to contractors and employees. The system can effortlessly handle several million transactions per hour. Restrictions on card usage at select merchants is possible through in-built technology. Entities can also set spend limits on cards offline and online. Virtual versions of the cards are also available. Zaggle has issued more than 200 million cards since the inception of Edge and it has been fortunate to work with more than 4,500 companies. Our client sectors span manufacturing, IT/ITes, banking, FMCG, e-commerce, pharmaceuticals, the auto industry and many others. The platforms have all proved cost-effective tech tools in helping not just corporates, but also startups and SMEs achieve seamless business processing. Microsoft, Infosys,

WHO WE ARE Zaggle was founded in 2011 by Raj. N, a serial entrepreneur and an active angel investor, with a vision to become a global digital bank. With our experience and interaction with various business groups, we realised that businesses face lots of problems in managing their financial requirements and expense management. We figured out that payments and accounting in conventional ways is a bit broken, inefficient and sluggish. Some of the challenges which businesses come across are: ■ Complex and tedious workflow ■ Payments still made in cash ■ No real-time control or visibility over the business spends ■ Manual accounting and reconciling stacks of receipts and spreadsheets www.thepower50.com

Tata Motors, Dr. Reddy’s, Volkswagen, Amazon, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and Samsung are some of the companies we do business with. Zaggle makes continuous investment in its tech pipeline so we can develop products to meet the demands of a world economy and users who are increasingly looking towards digital solutions. That shift was starkly demonstrated during the pandemic. Before COVID, our ratio of

Zaggle has led the way in providing tailor-made solutions for corporates to handle their expenses coherently physical to digital card sales was nine to one; post-pandemic that ratio has been completely reversed. Since April 2020, we have seen our revenue grow by a factor of five as the world goes online, helping Zaggle achieve INR 14,500 crores GTV. We will continue to nudge consumers to go digital with Zaggle virtual cards while creating the tools for corporates to have complete visibility of expenses and take control of their spending.

AT A GLANCE ■ Lots of man-hours required ■ Risk of frauds and duplication All these called for a change – a revolutionary change. We spent months understanding and researching these pain points and ended up completely reinventing the business financial flow and expense management. We aspire to create unique products and services that solve the pain points of businesses and corporates by deploying world-class technologies. We endeavour to achieve this through the discipline of execution, innovation, and rapid product development. The team at Zaggle is extremely passionate and works relentlessly towards this vision, building one layer at a time. We are currently 200-plus employees across more than 10 offices.

COMPANY: Zaggle FOUNDED: 2011 CATEGORY: Digital bank KEY PERSONNEL:

Avinash Godkhindi, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: India OFFICES IN: Canada TEL: +9 (0) 198 2018 3489 WEBSITE: zaggle.in LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/zaggleapp/ TWITTER: @zaggleapp

WHAT WE DO Why haggle when you can Zaggle? THEFINTECHPOWER50

Doing the ‘heavy lifting’ to open up B2B cross-border payments Anders la Cour, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Banking Circle, explains how the tech-led bank is helping fintechs deliver added value for their customers in the challenging arena of B2B cross-border payments Banking Circle is a technology-led bank – we launched our banking licence in February 2020 – that is wholly focused on delivering a payments solution that will enhance fintechs’ customer propositions. Crucially, our objective is to deliver payments solutions for fintechs that are ‘investment light’. In other words, they do not require any upfront investment in systems or process changes.

FROM FIVE DAYS TO FIVE MINUTES A driving focus for Banking Circle is that cross-border payments take too long and cost too much. It’s at the heart of our mission to change that. Payments traditionally take five days and cost €50 per transaction. We are addressing this anomaly by providing fintechs with the back-office functionality needed for direct access to clearing in multiple countries. The result is faster and more cost-effective international payments. Our end game is to see cross-border payments cost 50 cents and take five minutes or, ideally, less. We’ve set out to make international payments feel like local payments and the key to achieving that is to reduce the number of stages of any transaction. We are, therefore, doing ‘the heavy lifting’, investing in the difficult job of integrating

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a vast network of local clearing and payments schemes to build a unique, super-correspondent banking network. No-one else is doing this on the same scale. Our intelligent payment rails offer direct near real-time payments and collections in more than 25 major currencies via SWIFT, including direct local clearing systems. We also offer 12 local payment channels across Eastern Europe and the Nordics, local collections in three currencies (EUR, GBP and USD), instant payment notifications and treasury management. Taking the complexity and cost out of managing a network of banking relationships is key. Supporting fintechs in being fast-to-market is also crucial. And, being built on a Cloud-first technology stack means we can deliver a cross-border payments solution that is nimble and flexible, responding to new market needs as they arise.

SIMPLE INTEGRATION Our payments API delivers automated payments all within a single, simple integration, providing international and local clearing. That’s one API designed to deliver payments to our clients’ various partners, reducing the amount of time spent executing multiple payments to multiple partners. Plus our de-coupled architecture means we can react quickly

to changing client demands, and provide ever-faster payments, particularly when compared to traditional banks that are anchored by legacy technology and processes. With the needs of the payments and banking industry right at our heart, the solutions we build are far better than would be possible if existing solutions were adapted and forced to fit industry needs.

VIRTUAL IBAN At the centre of Banking Circle’s international payment solutions is Banking Circle Virtual IBAN. It enables local B2B payments and collections across borders and eliminates the need for a physical presence or a relationship with a correspondent bank in that region. Again, it’s all about making payments ‘feel local’. It removes the need for fintechs to have a physical presence in each region, yet delivers payment costs comparable to those of local banks in the region. It is a game-changer. Unlimited multi-currency IBAN accounts can be issued to business customers in multiple jurisdictions, giving them access to a reliable and fully flexible cross-border payment system that was previously only accessible through larger banking institutions. And, with full transaction transparency, payments acceptance and screening time are reduced. www.thepower50.com

BANKING CIRCLE

We are investing in integrating a vast network of local clearing and payments schemes to build a unique, super-correspondent banking network

A NEW IMPERATIVE In the aftermath of the global pandemic, now more than ever, fintechs have a role to play in supporting businesses of every size with financial solutions that are fit for

WHO WE ARE Banking Circle is a payments bank, built to service the needs of financial institutions, which secured a full banking licence from the CSSF Luxembourg in 2019. Headquartered in Luxembourg and with offices in the UK, Germany and Denmark, Banking Circle is leading the rise of a new super-correspondent banking network. Banking Circle was launched to help banks, payments businesses and fintechs deliver a service to their business customers to be able to transact globally, more efficiently. Significant investment is being made to connect to the payment rails across all key geographies and jurisdictions, supported by a Cloud-based infrastructure, to provide direct access to clearing in multiple countries. Unconstrained by the legacy

purpose. The support needs to be convenient, accessible and, above all, valuable. And, for fintechs, that means solutions need to be investment-light yet deliver strong innovation that is flexible enough to meet rapidly shifting expectations and needs. Partnering with new Cloud-native specialist banks like Banking Circle gives fintechs that edge.

AT A GLANCE issues of correspondent banks, Banking Circle is providing a modern payment solution, enabling financial institutions to get as close to the clearing as possible. And that means the transaction will be faster and more cost-effective. Based on McKinsey analysis of the size of the global B2C e-commerce space, it is estimated that Banking Circle now settles six per cent of the world’s B2C e-commerce flow and €100billion of the point-of-sale B2B e-commerce flow. Through Banking Circle, financial institutions can access a range of banking services – multi-currency accounts, local clearing and cross-border payments, all underpinned by market-leading compliance and security – without the need to build their own infrastructure.

COMPANY:

Banking Circle CATEGORY: Cross-border banking services KEY PERSONNEL:

Anders la Cour, Chief Executive Officer (right) HEAD OFFICE: Luxembourg OFFICES IN: UK, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands EMAIL: info@bankingcircle.com WEBSITE: www.bankingcircle.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/bankingcircle TWITTER: @bankingcircle

WHAT WE DO Financial infrastructure you can bank on www.thepower50.com

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M I L LT E C H F X

TIME FOR A FRESH APPROACH TO FX EXECUTION Companies are routinely overcharged for FX, but the nature of corporate multi-banking relationships makes it difficult to put resource behind finding the best deals. What they need is an independent, comparative FX marketplace A vast amount of foreign exchange (FX) changes hands every day, and the currency market remains the largest and most liquid financial market in the world. According to the Bank of International Settlements' Tri-Annual Survey (2019), an estimated US$6.6 trillion (that’s US$6,600,000,000,000) worth of currency is exchanged daily. Thousands of businesses across the UK have exposure to foreign currencies; they may import or export goods and services or have an international presence. Large institutions, such as asset managers, may also have overseas assets in their portfolios across multiple jurisdictions or utilise FX risk management on behalf of their investors (share class hedging). Currency markets are notoriously volatile and unpredictable. Exchange rates move every second, so market participants must remain vigilant and familiarise themselves with currency products to develop an FX strategy so that they don’t get caught out should the exchange rate move against them. For businesses and institutions, it is standard practice to write FX strategy into policy. And yet, for such a significant marketplace, with so much at stake for its participants, the costs and charges associated with FX execution can be opaque at best.

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WHERE DO COSTS ARISE? Banks are the primary liquidity providers in the FX market and it’s best to think of them as currency wholesalers. As the name suggests, ‘interbank’ (or ‘midmarket’) rates are the rates at which banks trade with one another in large sums. If a bank can exchange pounds sterling (GBP) into euros (EUR) at a rate of 1.16 and offers its client a rate of 1.13, then the margin is approximately 2.5 per cent, and the cost to the customer is 2.5 per cent of the total amount of currency they trade. Depending upon the precise nature of the relationship, the pricing offered to each customer is typically tiered, according to a predefined set of criteria. These include creditworthiness, onboarding complexities, annual FX volume traded, and the type of currency products the customer uses. Once classified, a fee is levied to each customer in the form of a spread around the mid-market price to compensate the bank for the risks involved in making a market. There has been a focus on the quality of execution in recent years and increasingly so in the foreign exchange market since it has become clear to customers that they are excessively overcharged. After the global financial crisis of 2008, a series of lawsuits were aimed at some of the major FX counterparties who were charged with extracting exorbitant

fees from transactions and not acting in their clients’ best interests. Numerous studies highlight the problem. A groundbreaking survey of more than 300 asset owners (FX Transparency, LLC. Feb 2021) revealed that 66 per cent of those managers in North America and Europe still have no process in place to independently monitor whether they are getting fair FX rates from their global custody banks. Research in 2018 uncovered another shocking disparity. Carol Osler, a professor at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, analysed the cost of standing instruction currency trades executed through custody banks. The study found that, on average, investors were paying seven times more for currency when they relied on exchange rates through their custody banks, compared to what they would get if they negotiated at the market rate. So, what about the corporate FX market? In an International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper, Discriminatory Pricing Of Over-the-Counter Derivatives (May 2019), published in collaboration with the European Central Bank and Swiss Finance Institute, a study was undertaken of more than 500,000 EUR/USD FX forward contracts between www.thepower50.com

204 banks and more than 10,000 non-financial European firms. Overall, for European companies outside the EURO STOXX 50 firms, the paper estimated that bank dealers earned €638million annually from trades just in the EUR/USD segment of the FX forward market.

ALTERNATIVE PROVIDERS The foreign exchange portion of the banking industry is currently experiencing significant disruption as new entrants compete with existing bank market-makers of FX rates in offering prices to corporate and institutional customers. Many different business models have been created and the disruption comes in many forms. Some have cheaper onboarding protocols, some price credit risk more cheaply, many have user-friendly e-platforms so that customers can execute for themselves. They aim to undercut the spreads charged by the banks and so offer lower FX transaction costs. However, costs remain high and there is still a lack of transparency around pricing.

FUTURE OF THE MARKET The IMF study recommends a model where bank dealers are forced to compete with each other to eliminate price discrimination and proposes ‘multi-dealer RFQ (request for quote) platforms’ as a viable option. The study illustrates the clear benefits of trading with multiple banks in competition with each other. In simple terms, you might use a price comparison website to renew your car insurance or upgrade your mobile, and the same principle applies when trading FX. To get best execution, customers need the ability to stream quotes from a variety of counterparties. However, setting up FX trading facilities with multiple counterparties can be a long, hard task. When opening a new FX facility for a customer, any financial institution has to gather substantial know-your-customer documentation and perform credit checks. Respective legal teams may need to work through trading agreements before setup. Even then, there’s no guarantee a bank will accept a customer’s business – banks prefer www.thepower50.com

multi-product clients, the trading volume might not meet minimum requirements, or the customer might not be in a bank’s target market. When it comes time to trade, the process of price discovery can happen in many different ways – telephone dealing, onscreen quotes, chat messages and e-mails. With multiple counterparties at a customer’s disposal, it’s a time-consuming team operation to get the best price. For all of these reasons and more, the market is moving towards solutions that

To get best execution, customers need the ability to stream quotes from a variety of counterparties accelerate onboarding customers with multiple banking counterparties. Market participants might also consider more centralised, digitised solutions that consolidate price discovery in one place.

A FRESH APPROACH MillTechFX delivers a wholly new model – an independent, comparative, multi-bank FX marketplace designed specifically for corporate treasurers, fund managers and

institutional investors, with a focus on reducing the cost and operational burden associated with FX execution and hedging. It harnesses the purchasing power of Millennium Global, one of the world’s largest specialist currency managers with 25 years of FX expertise, US$600billlon in annual FX volume and US$2billion assets under management. This means customers using MillTechFX benefit from access to vastly preferential rates from more than 10 counterparty banks, all on one platform. Today, MillTechFX offers its customers: ■ Real-time wholesale FX rates from more than 10 of the largest banks ■ An intuitive best-execution engine to guarantee the best rate ■ Outsourced execution services for hedging requirements ■ Total price transparency and independent transaction cost analysis ■ A centralised reporting and execution platform to streamline operations This fresh approach may stop firms being routinely overcharged for FX. It also offers treasurers and traders the opportunity to unlock savings that even they might not have known existed.

WHO WE ARE

AT A GLANCE

MillTechFX is an independent currency specialist, delivering best execution. Our marketplace is accessed via our platform and outsourced execution services.

COMPANY: MillTechFX

We aim to significantly reduce FX and hedging costs by giving you access to our wholesale rates from more than 10 of the largest banks and enabling independent, transparent best execution. The service is designed for fund managers, institutional investors and corporate treasurers.

FOUNDED: 2021 CATEGORY: FX KEY PERSONNEL:

Eric Huttman, CEO (right) HEAD OFFICE: London, UK OFFICES IN: US, France TEL: +44 (0) 207 663 8900 WEBSITE: milltechfx.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/milltechfx/ TWITTER: @MillTechFX

WHAT WE DO Opening up the world of comparative multi-bank FX execution Disclaimers This document, including the information provided herein, is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute an invitation or offer to subscribe to or purchase any of the products or services mentioned. The information contained is intended for professional clients (or elective professional clients only). MillTechFX does not target retail clients as the products offered by MillTechFX are not suitable for, or made available to retail clients. The information herein is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, accounting, legal or tax advice or investment recommendations. You should consult your investment, tax, legal accounting or other advisors.

THEFINTECHPOWER50

CONTRUBUTORS' INDEX

OUR PARTNERS Moore Kingston Smith Sky Parlour Rise, Created by Barclays DLA Piper THE INFLUENCERS David Birch Ghela Boskovich Emmanuel Daniel Leda Glyptis Theo Lau Fernn Lim Lucy Liu Jim Marous Ron Shelvin Chris Skinner

4 5 6 7

62 81 44 29 45 13 63 28 80 12

THE FINTECHS Advance.AI AEVI Banking Circle Bottomline Technologies Bybit Checkout Contis Contour Curve Elliptic Embark Featurespace Finlync GPS IDNow IFX Payments Jumio Kani Payments Kuda Bank Marqeta McClear

52 76 94 46 26 82 42 40 78 10 16 14 86 74 56 32 22 70 36 8 54

MillTechFX Moneyhub nCino Oonex OpenPayd PassFort Radar Payments SaltEdge Sokin Tink Trade Ledger Vacuumlabs Vesta Volopa Vyne Wing Money Zaggle Zignsec Zilch

96 68 64 90 30 84 20 34 24 58 60 66 18 48 72 38 92 50 88

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