This year’s Fintech Power 50 cohort of companies is more diverse than ever – both in terms of which sectors they’re disrupting and where in the world they are disrupting them.
Our talented tech stars are pushing the boundaries in Asia, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Nigeria, the UK and the USA. They are having an impact in regtech, paytech, wealthtech, banking-as-a-service, insurtech, lendtech, core banking and open banking.
What that demonstrates to me is that the events of the last couple of years in terms of COVID – which forced digital transformation on folk who would have taken their own sweet time about it – has created a flywheel of innovation that is truly touching everyone and changing
every aspect of our financial lives for the better. That includes those who’ve not had access to a full range of financial services until now, limiting their own and even their country’s economic potential.
This sudden acceleration in innovation has, inevitably, crashed us into some fundamental walls – policy and regulation; exposed weaknesses in infrastructure; and shone a spotlight on attitudes and cultures that still persist within legacy institutions and which are holding back progress. We need a fresh perspective on all those as much as we do on products and their delivery.
While our lively cohort are busy at the coalface, spinning up ideas and technology to solve painpoints for customers and the industry, you’ll find writing in this issue of The Fintech Power 50, 10 finfluencers – people with years of experience and broad strategic awareness – who are taking a thoughtful approach to some of those structural issues.
»The events of the past couple of years have created a flywheel of innovation
Although many of them hold positions of real influence beyond the industry, we can’t leave it all to them. As Natasha De Terán writes on page 85, ‘it’s in the confluence of imagination, innovation and investment with policy, regulation and infrastructure that real transformation can really happen’. And she urges founders to take time to get involved with what fintechs perhaps see as dull, but are nevertheless deeply important, discussions that fundamentally affect fintechs' own operation and growth.
Dr Leda Glyptis, on page 70, believes that ‘we are at a moment of time in our industry where we get the opportunity to do more and make more of an impact on the societies we live in than ever before’. That feeling of urgency – not to let this opportunity pass – and fintechs’ responsibility to seize it, is reflected by many of her fellow finfluencers. We hope that this year’s The Fintech Power 50 accelerator programme will inspire and help its members to take that opportunity: to deliver on fintech’s promise – for everyone.
Mark Walker Co-founder, The Fintech Power 50
JASON WILLIAMS
MARK WALKER
FinTech Wales is a not-for-profit organisation that champions the country’s fintech community on the global stage.
Wales was named as one of the top 10 fintech clusters in the Kalifa Review Of UK Fintech, and is, in the opinion of FinTech Wales’ CEO Sarah Williams-Gardener, the place to start up, scale up and accelerate innovative fintech businesses.
We spoke to her about the Welsh fintech ecosystem and what FinTech Wales is doing to empower the country as a force in the fintech community worldwide.
TFP50: Can you tell us more about the FinTech Wales mission?
Sarah Williams-Gardener: Our strategy is to support innovation, create jobs and economic growth by developing an ecosystem that enables fintechs to flourish and succeed, thanks to the availability of talent, skills and investment.
We have the most incredible fintech businesses and professionals here, with so much to be proud of. We want to do our thriving community justice and empower individuals and fintech organisations to be successful on the world stage while being a major driver in the UK economy.
TFP50: What are your biggest challengers?
SWG: It’s no secret that the world
is seeing huge shortages in certain skills, which has a significant impact on organisations’ ability to develop and thrive. FinTech Wales has a highly-valued skills strategy, which comes in three parts:
■ Raise awareness of the fantastic career opportunities we have in fintech
■ Develop skills required now and in the future to support the rapid growth of our ecosystem
■ Retain and upskill the talent we have available in Wales
Through partnerships with our members, education providers, governments and other organisations, we have introduced a number of programmes to tackle all three objectives, all of which have a strong focus to encourage people of all ages and backgrounds into fintech.
TFP50: What are you most excited about in the Welsh world of fintech? SWG: Every day we’re seeing established organisations embracing innovation, scaling businesses raising funds to support their rapid growth, and all sorts of new ventures being launched. Our accelerator programme, The Foundry, alone has taken 16 startups through a 12-week, no-equity, mentoring programme and their success to date is extraordinary. They have collectively raised more than £20million in investment, and whilst some of these companies originated from outside of Wales, they all now have a presence here,
bringing jobs, innovation and even more talent to our economy.
Our ecosystem energises new ventures to thrive and encourages corporate partnerships to be established. I’m confident we’ll have another FTSE 100 in our community before too long.
TFP50: What would you say to encourage a fintech to start or scale here?
SWG: Wales has so much on offer for any business looking to grow. Whether you’re a startup, scaleup or enterprise business, you’ll enjoy a complete sense of belonging. Our ecosystem is inclusive, and boasts a community of leaders who sincerely believe that we are stronger together. This ecosystem benefits from established brilliant fintechs, truly inspirational leaders, and great universities and higher education providers, who are growing the talents and skills of the future. We work closely with the government, too, which has prioritised fintech for growth.
With enchanting beaches and mountains, Wales is also a beautiful place to live and work. The ability to take time out and reflect is essential for any business owner and their employees. Once you get a taste of Wales, it’s very hard to leave.
One thing that Wales doesn’t do well, however, is shout enough about what it has achieved, which is why promoting its successes is a key part of our strategy. We’re shouting from the rooftops how innovative and successful the Welsh fintech ecosystem is – and there’s still so much more to come from our Welsh fintech hub of excellence.
Enjoy the benefits of being a FinTech Wales member and join our community today
Rise Connect is a global, virtual network of fintech leaders shaping the future of financial services, with support from the Barclays network and key industry partners.
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Angela Yore and Kimberley Waldron, Co-founders of SkyParlour, discuss how PR is helping fintechs attract considerable venture capital, even in the midst of a funding ‘downturn’
At SkyParlour, we remember a time when fintech was only really understood by those working alongside traditional financial institutions and banks.
When we launched in 2009, the sector was still finding its feet, with some commentators doubting how much staying power the industry would have.
Fast forward more than a decade and things are now very different. The sector has reached a new stage of maturation.
In 2021, the UK fintech sector received more than $37.3billion in investment, according to KPMG. Despite some recent concerns about a funding slowdown, fintech industry body Innovate Finance believes the sector will see similar figures again this year.
Adoption rates of fintech solutions are also skyrocketing. In 2021, open banking platform Plaid found the use and adoption of fintech had reached mass scale in the UK, with up to 86 per cent of consumers using it.
This impressive growth has had a positive effect across the industry, including for smaller businesses. Thriving market conditions have created opportunities for exciting new businesses to get a start in the sector. Now that a path has been forged for them, innovators clearly feel
more confident about bringing forward-thinking fintech solutions to market. It’s a case of a rising tide lifting all ships. However, challenges remain. In particular, businesses, be they a stalwart of the fintech sector or a bootstrapped startup fighting for its first big break, still don’t know how to get the most out of funding, especially in moments of broader economic uncertainty.
Over our history, SkyParlour has partnered with numerous fintech companies through different stages of their investment journey. Despite reports of a slowdown, we have helped our clients to secure nearly $1billion in funding in the past two years alone. It might sound too good to be true, but it’s not; it’s just testament to the benefits of the well-organised, expertly planned PR campaigns we deliver.
If you’re unfamiliar with PR, you might ask why that is. Well, with the right PR approach, businesses in fintech can really showcase what sets them apart from their competition.
PR provides businesses with an opportunity to highlight areas of true strength and enables them to be amplified in the minds of angel investors and venture capital businesses who may be looking to invest. Our services help
fintechs to truly stand out from the crowd, which is more important than ever if investors are becoming more risk averse.
You only need to look at some of our recent results to see this in action. Whether its relative new starters, such as SEON (with whom we worked closely as it first secured a record-breaking Series A investment, and then a record-breaking Series B investment), or Finaro, which announced its acquisition by the American leader in commerce-enabling technology, Shift4, in a deal valued at US $575million.
What’s more, once investment is secured, a good PR company will generate even further value from it. Funding rounds come with huge PR potential and must be approached accordingly. For example, we recently helped our client, Weavr have its Series A investment round covered by leading sites, including Bloomberg and Business Insider. Gaining such notable coverage has helped to further grow the company’s profile and put it in an even better position ahead of its next round of investment.
Learn more at www.skyparlour.com
The financial services sector, in constant search of speed, efficiency and optimisation, is fertile ground for the emergence and development of automative and innovative solutions.
Often based on AI – in particular, machine learning – these solutions already have many applications in the markets and are experiencing a rapid and growing evolution.
Financial institutions are encouraged to use AI and machine learning to deliver a number of benefits: cost reduction, process automation, risk management optimisation, productivity improvement and an uplift in profitability. Meanwhile, new and innovative firms – fintechs – are developing technologies to not only optimise but also to entirely rethink the provision of financial services.
Many applications of AI are already a reality in financial markets, notably in relation to investment services (algorithmic and high-frequency trading, robo-advisors), banking services (neo-banks, credit scoring) and in financial crime management (anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism, fraud detection).
But, beyond the emergence of new business models, financial technology innovation also offers opportunities for regulated institutions in terms of compliance with regulatory and prudential requirements (regtech) and to financial authorities for regulatory, supervisory and control purposes (suptech). The rise of regtech and suptech has been driven by the substantial increase in the availability
and granularity of data, and by the development of technologies, as well as infrastructures such as Cloud computing and application programming interfaces (APIs), which make it possible to collect, store, and analyse large data sets more quickly and efficiently.
The application of these new technologies, however, affects the risks inherent in the financial system and itself introduces new risks; for example, in terms of data protection, market integrity, or in terms of cyber risks.
From a legal perspective, it poses a challenge to traditional regulatory methods. The fintech ecosystem, which brings new players alongside regulated financial institutions, is changing the dynamics of the financial system and challenging the application of existing regulations to new fintech activities.
Most European financial regulation is technology-neutral – it applies equally to regulated financial services, regardless of the type of underlying technology used. This approach should ensure that the emergence of new technologies that are developed to provide a regulated service won’t affect the need to comply with the regulatory framework applicable to the provision of that service. However, this approach may itself be a source of legal uncertainty because of the difficulty of applying traditional regulatory requirements to disruptive businesses.
Meanwhile, a particular challenge for regulators is to identify and monitor emerging new dynamics within markets, which also requires them to have a deep understanding of the technologies used to deliver innovative services or products.
Against this backdrop, regulators are trying to develop strategies to respond to developments and to improve their understanding of new fintech activities.
Various European member states have set up innovation facilitators, including regulatory sandboxes and innovation hubs. This approach allows regulators to develop their knowledge of technology at an early stage in order to confront it with regulation and their supervision methods. For innovative firms, it allows them to gain quicker access to market and to better understand the prudential rules and requirements applicable to their activities.
DLA Piper is a global law firm with a presence in more than 40 countries. It is a leader in the financial services and fintech sector, advising clients on the full lifecycle of financial regulatory matters. This includes authorisation and compliance, transactional and products advice, investigations and enforcement and litigation. It regularly assists clients with the development of AI-driven products and tools from a legal perspective. Clients range from multinational, Global 1000 and Fortune 500 enterprises, to emerging companies developing industry-leading technologies. DLA Piper also advises governments and public sector bodies.
CONTACT: Pierre.Berger@dlapiper.com
WEBSITE: www.dlapiper.com
Why do 5 of the top 10 global banks trust the Appian Low-Code Platform for building and running their most complex, mission-critical applications? Because Appian makes it easy to create powerful workflows with a unified platform for change. We discover, design, and automate your processes so you can punch above your weight class.
Why do 5 of the top 10 global banks trust the Appian Low-Code Platform for building and running their most complex, mission-critical applications? Because Appian makes it easy to create powerful workflows with a unified platform for change. We discover, design, and automate your processes so you can punch above your weight class.
Why do 5 of the top 10 global banks trust the Appian Low-Code Platform for building and running their most complex, mission-critical applications? Because Appian makes it easy to create powerful workflows with a unified platform for change. We discover, design, and automate your processes so you can punch above your weight class.
To learn more, visit appian.com/finserv
Modernize and deliver exceptional client experiences, fast.
To learn more, visit appian.com/finserv
Modernize and deliver exceptional client experiences, fast.
To learn more, visit appian.com/finserv
Modernize and deliver exceptional client experiences, fast.
When you’re in the market for a technology to help your business run better, you’re likely to hear solution and platform vendors make pitches that focus on their current features and functionality, as well as future capabilities on their innovation road maps. But will they really deliver the
When evaluating your options, it’s best to first define your needs, discover where opportunities exist, be brutally honest about where the challenges lie, and then gauge the available technologies against these requirements. This is the best approach to ensure the technology you invest in meets all your needs once your developers and users get their hands on it.
A low-code application development platform may not be the first thing you think of when you’re in the early stages of researching technology options. But, if the priorities and concerns listed below appear on your list of issues to address, then low-code may be exactly what you need.
■ My speed to market is critical
You operate in a highly competitive environment, so the faster you can stand up new applications to meet the business’ needs, the better.
■ My organisation/market requires rapid change and agility This is true for just about everyone now. It may prove to be the new normal.
■ I have complex business processes
By automating these processes, you will allow your staff to focus their energies on activities that will add value to your business.
■ Our routing and approval paths are cumbersome The path to the necessary approvals and input must be clearly defined and seamlessly executed.
■ We need to minimise coding errors, reduce security vulnerabilities, and/or increase data quality Whether you feel that your current, more manual efforts to achieve these outcomes are holding you back, or you’re lagging in these areas and putting the business at risk,
automation could be the solution.
■ We need to increase our developers’ productivity Rapidly changing business needs are putting pressure on your development team. You need a way to deliver applications faster to alleviate this pressure.
■ There are bottlenecks that mean we can’t make rapid and informed decisions If your stakeholders don’t have the data necessary to make the most informed decisions, there could be negative impact on the business.
■ We have multiple data sources but we don’t want to mess about with migrating data You have data stored in a variety of systems and formats, but it is all essential and should all be accessible from a single interface.
■ We operate in a regulated environment – we can’t afford to compromise compliance You need compliance and governance built into your technology. There's no room for surprises or workarounds when strict adherence to guidelines is a must.
■ We’re sitting on a large amount of tech debt Tech debt tends to create more backlog the longer it’s left unchecked. But there are technologies available that reduce it, not add to it.
■ IT spends a lot of time on maintenance, which detracts from innovation Your tech needs to be fast, agile, and easy to maintain, while still delivering the power to run processes.
A low-code platform satisfies all of these and many other requirements. By creating code in the background, according to the highest security and standards, it takes care of the (coding) details and automatically stays up to date with the latest technology. Low-code is:
■ Fast Development can be 10 times faster than traditional approaches.
■ Powerful Complete automation enables applications to easily integrate into core business systems.
■ Easy to maintain Because the vendor keeps the platform up to date with the latest security and device standards, those updates are automatically passed on to the application.
To help decide if a low-code platform is right for you, Appian has produced The Ultimate Low-Code Automation Buyer’s Guide, which provides an evaluation framework that helps business and IT leaders find the best platform for their needs. It can be accessed by visiting the Appian website at appian.com.
Appian is the unified platform for change. We accelerate customers’ businesses by discovering, designing, and automating their most important processes. The Appian Low-Code Platform combines the key capabilities needed to get work done faster – Process Mining + Workflow + Automation – in a unified low-code platform. Appian is open, enterprise-grade, and trusted by industry leaders.
WEBSITE: appian.com
Faced with an increasingly crowded marketplace of technology solutions, Appian's Marianne Elie says a low-code platform could be your best option
No matter what role you play in a user onboarding process – user, product owner, compliance, risk, fraud, sales, or marketing officer… the list goes on – it’s becoming increasingly demanding to meet exceptionally high standards.
Customers expect the best, most risk-appropriate onboarding experience; product owners, sales and marketing departments want the highest conversion rates; risk, fraud and compliance officers want the lowest fraud rates and losses – and all while complying with a myriad of local and international regulatory requirements. How can all these priorities be met?
The use of deep learning, neural networks and computer vision isn’t new. Every time, you make choices on Amazon or Google, that decision is fed into an engine to improve your experience. So, why shouldn’t identity verification be the same?
Many legacy solutions have relied on ‘hybrid’ solutions that combine some level of automation (mainly templating, but more on that later) with a human ‘super-spotter’ or call centre. This
approach has been the mainstay of the industry for some time due to technology limitations. But we have developed and rolled out the capability to leverage riches of deep learning in order to provide an identity-proofing experience that can satisfy all onboarding roles.
Can a human spot a change in watermark on a driving licence or a person’s heartbeat between video frames (photoplethysmography – try saying that three times, fast!) to give a 100 per cent liveness video fraud assessment?1
The role of people shouldn’t be limited to comparing a document with a photo or video. This is the kind of work that machines and technology were made for. Higher priority tasks, such as case investigations or strategic initiatives, provide so much more value to both staff and organisations.
Automation leads to predictable onboarding times for product owners, sales and marketing executives, while their colleagues in risk, fraud and compliance know that the exact checks and balances are being applied to every application with repeatable and reliable consistency.
At OCR Labs, we are incredibly proud that our technology can recognise more than 16,000 document types from virtually every location in the world, along with 142 languages and typesets. We do this through the power of neural networks and contextual analysis, not the traditional templating approach.
Templating identity documents takes great time and resources and is prone to user frustration, whereas using a contextual approach to detecting documents is more seamless and scalable.
We can’t expect humans to remember the intricate formats and security elements of thousands of official documents. Deep learning can detect these in seconds – and not just all of the visible factors, but the invisible changes, too.
Being able to rely on a system to automatically accept and reject documents does wonders for both catching fraud and the overall user experience. Knowing that each user, no matter the market you are serving, is
OCR Labs is putting a new way of developing and executing on identity proofing at the forefront of KYC – one that relies on machine learning and neural networks over human super-spotters
receiving an equal experience helps you to present a consistent brand experience.
Humans and algorithms don’t always see all faces equally, whether due to the data sets used for training or a cross-race effect (the tendency to more easily recognise faces in one’s own racial group).
Studies conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology have found that most algorithms have a harder time recognising people with darker skin tones. Facial recognition technology has been around for decades, but it is primarily focussed on whether an image contains a face and whether that face matches the face in another image.
To do this, most facial recognition systems measure the distances between certain facial features, like the space between the eyes for example. Skin tone has traditionally not been considered at all. As a result, facial recognition can be less accurate for different ethnicities and can cause a racial bias.
We’ve built our facial recognition technology ourselves and skin tone is one of the primary factors we consider when matching a selfie with a user’s identity document. Combined with a live photo, which considers three dimensions of a face rather than just two, we are able to take skin tone into consideration, with 99.9997 per cent laboratory-measured efficacy.2
Exactingly made, precision-engineered and meticulously tested, our end-to-end ID verification system has been built
OCR Labs makes user verification effortless through technology.
We build intelligent tools that protect users from identity fraud while enabling a seamless user experience. It removes the burden of identity verification for our customers, too, so they can focus on scaling their business without the compliance and operational overheads.
with an unerring focus, underpinned by cutting-edge research and rigorous continual testing against fraud. Building technology this precise allows us to create onboarding and verification products that are powerfully intuitive and natural – truly built around, and for, people. This ensures our products welcome your customers in, while powerful but invisible anti-fraud technology keeps fraudsters out. Deep learning, neural networks and big data have become part of our lives in the search for competitive advantage and societal gain. This applies to identity, too, as it becomes vital for access to goods and services globally.
1 iBeta/2BixeLab, both are NVLAP accredited biometrics testing labs, providing NIST accredited biometric testing services in accordance with ISO/IEC 17025:2017.
identity trust frameworks. These include Australian TDIF accreditation as an Identity Service Provider, SOC Type 1 & 2 and ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, 27701, 29100, 22301, 30107-3 (covering both PAD levels 1 and 2), 19795 and 9001.
OCR Labs is ranked #1 globally for detection of real and fraudulent ID.
COMPANY: OCR Labs
FOUNDED: 2018 CATEGORY: ID verification
»
Can a human spot a change in watermark on a driving licence or a person’s heartbeat between video frames?
Using advanced image analysis and deep learning technology we securely verify users in seconds with just their ID and a smartphone, from anywhere in the world. In fact, we verify more than 16,000 documents in more than 230 countries and principalities – more than any other identity verification provider.
Our verification solution is used by startups through to global enterprises, including Westpac and ANZ banks, the Australian government, Vodafone, ZIP and BMW.
OCR Labs meets the most stringent privacy, data protection, security, resilience standards and global digital
KEY PERSONNEL: Russ Cohn, General Manager International (right)
HEAD OFFICE: UK
OFFICES IN: Australia, Turkey and USA
EMAIL: hello@ocrlabs.com
WEBSITE: ocrlabs.com/
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/ocrlabs
TWITTER: @ocrlabs
Fighting financial crime in real-time has never mattered more for fintechs. From deep fake fraudsters to crypto cons, ComplyAdvantage spells out the risks
Fintechs are continuing to change the way consumers interact with their banks. Onerous trips to branches have been replaced by rapid transactions from mobile devices.
From the comfort of their homes, consumers can send money across borders, trade virtual assets and apply for a mortgage. This transformation has delivered tremendous benefits – a faster, more convenient customer experience and a more personalised service being just two. However, money launderers and fraudsters have also adapted.
Detecting and preventing financial crime means harnessing the vast amount of data that fintechs generate to act in real-time. Here are three key areas any fintech needs to consider as part of a risk-based, real-time response to risks.
Western governments have become increasingly reliant on sanctions as a tool of statecraft. As their populations have turned against the idea of military intervention abroad, sanctions have assumed a greater role. One example of this is in the field of human rights, where the so-called Global Magnitsky (GloMag) sanctions targeting human rights abuses – and corruption specifically – have become commonplace.
Since the Global Magnitsky Act was authorised in the United States in 2016, other similar programmes have become law in the European Union, United
Kingdom, Canada and Australia. As a result, sanctions are being applied more frequently than ever before.
Western sanction regimes accelerated still further with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Countries have sanctioned thousands of entities across a wide range of sanctions lists, with new measures being announced daily in the early weeks of the war.
The potential impact of sanctions breaches on individuals and organisations underlines the point that governments take compliance with their laws and regulations extremely seriously, and, therefore, so should fintechs. Although sanctions laws can seem arcane in places, it pays for firms to understand their significance, and act accordingly. In evolving situations, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this means acting fast, too.
Fraud is another area where the risks and typologies that fintechs must screen for are changing. One example is deepfake technology. In 2021, bank robbers stole $35milion from a bank in the United Arab Emirates using a deepfake to mimic a legitimate business transaction.
Currently, money muling is a key typology concern for fintech compliance professionals. But deepfake technology could one day supersede this. Why would a money launderer go to the effort of recruiting and managing a money muling network if they could simply overlay
someone’s face onto their own and use it to open accounts? The FBI recently issued a statement, saying deepfake technology is set to be utilised more by malicious actors in the near future.
Fintechs must ensure their anti-money laundering programmes – and wider risk-based approach – are calibrated to just such emerging threats, as well as existing challenges.
With 98 per cent of firms interviewed for our The State Of Financial Crime 2022 report, saying they’re either crypto-native, accept/work with crypto, or plan to offer crypto-based services in the future, cryptocurrencies are continuing to become mainstream. This means the regulatory and financial crime risks posed by cryptocurrencies should be a concern to all fintechs. While many of these concerns are similar for fiat-based services, some are unique to crypto.
Regulatory frameworks around cryptocurrencies are developing rapidly, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Firms should be agile to changing requirements related to licensing, taxation, reporting, customer onboarding, and much more. As a result, fintechs should conduct horizon-scanning exercises to ensure they’re monitoring events and incoming legislation.
They need to understand new requirements and their potential implications. Crucially, they should also
contribute to regulatory consultations whenever possible, to help shape the future of the industry.
Fintechs operating in the crypto space risk facing a simultaneous growth in their customer base, alongside a swathe of new regulatory requirements. This could lead to customers being onboarded who present a financial crime risk. Conversely, it could lead to significant delays in legitimate customers gaining access to the service, leading them to look elsewhere. Automated onboarding, screening and monitoring tools that help firms meet their regulatory requirements are critical to a proactive approach to this challenge.
Sanctions, fraud and crypto are just three of the many areas where fintechs are being required to think – and act – in real time to tackle financial crime risks and deliver a great customer experience.
By investing in smart, flexible, automated risk-detection platforms
– and hiring the right talent – fintechs can develop a proactive approach. As competition intensifies for new customers and business, such firms will surely reap the rewards.
ComplyAdvantage is the financial industry’s leading source of AI-driven financial crime counter risk intelligence.
Its mission is to neutralise the risk of money laundering, terrorist financing, corruption and other financial crime.
More than 500 enterprises in 75 countries rely on ComplyAdvantage to understand the risk of who they’re doing business with through the world’s only global, real-time database of people and companies. The company actively identifies tens of thousands of risk events from millions of structured and unstructured data points, every single day.
ComplyAdvantage has four hubs located in New York, London, Singapore and Romania and is backed by Goldman Sachs, Ontario Teachers’, Index Ventures and Balderton Capital.
COMPANY: Comply Advantage
FOUNDED: 2014
CATEGORY: Real-time risk detection
KEY PERSONNEL: Charles Delingpole, Founder and CEO (above)
HEAD OFFICE: UK OFFICES IN: New York, Singapore and Romania
TEL: +44 (0) 207 834 0252
EMAIL: contact.uk@ complyadvantage.com
WEBSITE: complyadvantage.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ complyadvantage
TWITTER: @complyadvantage
»Fintechs must ensure their anti-money laundering programmes – and wider risk-based approach – are calibrated to emerging threats, as well as existing challenges
Using a decentralised scoring engine and real-life data, Colendi is unlocking credit for millions and giving its partners access to a whole new customer base
Colendi is a multifunctional banking-as-a-service platform that democratises banking services for consumers, merchants, and financial institutions.
Its goal is two-fold: to overcome the limitations associated with legacy banking and to solve a chronic financial problem that directly affects more than three billion people who do not have bank accounts and
more than five billion people who cannot get loans.
Colendi enjoyed the highest Series A round investment in the Turkish fintech sector, raising US$38million in a round that valued the startup at US$158million. In only 12 months, its platform has been able to reach seven million unique customers, handling more than five million transactions.
Colendi develops services based on scoring algorithms, combining new-generation financial technology
solutions, artificial intelligence and big data. Together with its platform partners and strategic business allies, it provides fast and easy access to loans with a buy now, pay later (BNPL) model as well as other distinct financial services to millions of users.
Its decentralised scoring engine unlocks significant potential by using AI and big data to identify low-risk customers who were previously underserved by financial institutions. Its credit analysis system considers social data, mobile phone data, demographic data, bill payment data, merchant transactions, and other data points to make smart credit decisions, based on risk in real time. The Colendi agile credit scoring algorithm uses more than 3,500 data points to provide the most democratic credit scoring for individuals who cannot get loans through banks. Thus, Colendi creates equitable and unbiased financial passports for the underbanked, unbanked, and underserved population.
Colendi has already formed partnerships with the largest companies in the telecommunication, retail, energy and petroleum sectors in Turkey. Leveraging the joint venture mentality, instead of a single revenue stream, Colendi creates win-win mechanisms with its partners to optimise its presence in the financial ecosystem and expand its influence in the financial world.
Using the Colendi scoring engine, its partners can assess risk and provide funding to customers via their own resources. It allows them to make accurate lending decisions, track the status of lending and payments, and gain access to customers that were previously excluded from financial products. The BNPL feature, meanwhile, enables merchants to capture potential lost sales by allowing customers to gain instant credit at the checkout. This way, instead of downsizing their baskets, customers can use their credit to finalise their shopping and pay at a future date.
Partners can plug their existing financial
products directly into the Colendi platform and reach a large audience at a fraction of the typical acquisition cost and at a lower risk of default. Its embedded finance model matches consumers with financial products at the point of need in a less competitive environment, eliminating the need for search and evaluation.
In six quarters, Colendi has achieved a customer acquisition cost of $1.00, compared to a traditional retail banking acquisition cost of $350-1,500 – even better than the leading global fintech companies.
In a comparatively short period, Colendi has not only substantially built its user base and transaction flow, but it has also become a member of ACCIS (the global responsible data management organisation) and commissioned an active investor programme. An intense rollout of five new products and two new commissioned platforms, brought Colendi’s potential database to 111 million addressable customers in 2021. It continues to use
Turkey as the base from which to grow towards two billion end users, but it is also looking to expand to new countries and increase the size of its presence in the UK. Moreover, it aims to widen its already well-established joint venture partnership ecosystem, which grows exponentially.
Looking to the future, Colendi believes that settlement between customers, banks, and institutions will be part of decentralised finance (DeFi) and regenerative finance (ReFi) .
Colendi Co-Founder and Global CEO Bülent Tekmen says: “In today’s world, most companies, even those that have nothing to do with financial services, have changed the way they service their customers: they have begun to use alternative financial services as a means of staying competitive. In the recent past, the options for these services were limited and costly. We are aware of the need for alternative financial services and products along with privacy and security of data. So, Colendi offers a unique and frictionless integration of financial tools and services to any platform.”
He adds: “We believe that every company will be a fintech company in the not-too-distant future.”
Colendi’s goal is to solve a chronic financial problem that directly affects more than three billion people who do not have bank accounts and more than five billion people who cannot get loans, using its multifunctional banking-as-a-service platform to overcome the limitations associated with legacy banking. Colendi develops unique services based on the Colendi Decentralised Scoring Engine and Colendi Protocol, using artificial intelligence and big data to provide bank-free risk assessments. Its scoring engine unlocks significant potential by identifying low-risk customers previously underserved by financial institutions. Together with its platform partners and strategic business allies, Colendi then provides millions of users with fast and easy access to loans, including buy now, pay later, as well as other distinct financial services.
COMPANY:
Colendi creates equitable and unbiased financial passports for the underbanked, unbanked, and underserved
What’s the difference between the present world and the one from a quarter of a century ago? It’s the way things function.
Most processes are digitised and data is produced in quantities bigger than ever. With open banking regulations, the access to this data became the free pass to an infinite number of success stories. These stories will keep on growing, as long as data is properly handled.
And here comes the big challenge: it is literally impossible for humans to process so much information, so we turn to artificial intelligence (AI) with its machine learning (ML) capabilities to build up the era where almost everything becomes possible.
AI and ML are witnessing growing popularity among visionary businesses. According to a Dentons survey, published at the beginning of 2022, AI is already implemented by 12 per cent of big and medium enterprises, with another 48 per cent testing it.
But there’s still a big gap to be filled by the businesses that haven’t yet experienced the beauty of operations being improved with the help of AI and ML, so here are some ideas of potential use cases to explore in this direction:
A customer’s life-time value is a popular indicator of the profitability a business might get out of its interaction with customers. This is an important metric, since it allows creating and maintaining beneficial relationships with clients, thus increasing the profitability and growth of the company. Using the
available data on current profitable clients, a company can create several lookalike profiles and target the people falling under the criteria through various means. A clear picture on each client segment helps it focus its resources in a targeted, well-calculated manner, and this is where data science steps in.
There is a huge amount of available information, like a detailed overview of existing and lost clients, the products they use and the extent to which they use them, alongside other demographic and market indicators. Translating all that into straightforward insights, retrieved through secure APIs and analysed by AI and ML-based solutions like Salt Edge’s Financial Insights tool, comes in handy for institutions to understand what their customers want, and how they can fulfil their needs, thus successfully increasing their LTV.
2 Identifying fraud Machine-learning algorithms play an important role in identifying and preventing fraud in various areas, especially in the banking sector, including credit card usage, accounting, insurance, and others. Security is one of the most important aspects of financial services that banks pay attention to and the sooner they identify a fraud, the sooner they can limit the access to a bank account and minimise losses.
One of the most frequent applications of data science in fraud detection is the case when there are more transactions performed than usual and the bank’s system suspends them until the account owner confirms that it is them who
Automated data processing, and AI in particular, can propel a business across the commercial seas. Salt Edge is ready to help get them on board
initiated the transactions. The phases implemented by banks in fraud prevention with ML’s help are:
2 Evaluating the behavioural models
2 Testing the identified models
2 Preparing and adjusting the data sets by unifying, clustering predicting, and classifying them
Performing these steps with the help of AI and ML has managed to increase fraud prevention by 59 per cent in the banks implementing these systems.
»There’s still a big gap to be filled by the businesses that haven’t yet experienced the beauty of operations being improved with the help of AI and ML
Using AI in this context is a top priority, as it helps regulate financial activities and determine the rates for bank’s financial instruments.
With investment banking estimating a companies’ value in order to create the corporate finance capital, facilitate mergers and acquisitions, and investment scopes, banks and data experts found themselves in a state of uncertainty due to the dispersed huge amounts of data. To level-up their internal decision-making process, banks needed more automation, more forward-looking predictions, and faster conclusions. According to financial executives who have already begun solving these problems with AI and ML, their credit risk profiling accuracy has improved by 45 per cent.
We are writing history and the ship will soon set sail. It’s best to make the most out of this moment and start leveraging the technological progress in your business, whether it is a
bank or other financial institution. The data already exists internally, in your customer relationship management (CRM), for example, and externally, in data management platforms (DMPs). Here is how you can make it workharder for you:
2 First make sure you are collecting it 2 Segment your audience and data, based on criteria relevant to your business. It’s better to automate this process as it will shorten the time necessary for analysing and understanding the data. There are great services available for that, including Salt Edge Data Enrichment services. This phase is usually based on analytical showcases, built on various techniques, like neural networks or linear regression
We are a financial API platform providing PSD2 (revised Payment Services Directive) and open banking solutions for lenders, accounting companies, banks, and other institutions across the globe. 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.
2 Once the models are built, it is necessary to integrate them in a regulated process, to automate it.
Considering ever-changing internal and external factors, these models’ quality should constantly be tested and updated as necessary
Efficiency is the key factor to reaching success: the sooner a business masters the new technologies, the more benefits it will see and the better-positioned it will be, compared to the competition.
We are transitioning from open banking to open finance, with the final target being open data. Data is essential for all sectors. So, the best time to start working with it is now.
COMPANY: Salt Edge
FOUNDED: 2013
CATEGORY: Open banking
KEY PERSONNEL: Vasile Valcov, CCO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Ontario, Canada
OFFICES IN: UK, Italy, Romania and Moldova
TEL: +1 437 886 3969
WEBSITE: saltedge.com/
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/salt-edge/ TWITTER: @saltedge
How global identity verification puts financial services on a fast track to success
In a world where customers seek competitive digital solutions, the pillars of success are rapidly changing for financial institutions and fintech operators.
Between frictionless onboarding, evolving compliance regulations, and ambitious growth plans, they feel the pressure to provide services with the ease and convenience customers expect.
A study by Deloitte has already shown that 38 per cent of new customers will abandon the account creation process if they find that onboarding takes too long or is overly involved. Meanwhile, in that same study, 26 per cent of customers reported that ‘easy enrolment and login’ are essential criteria for deciding who to do business with.
As competition grows fierce, financial service operators must look for ways to keep up with – or, better yet, outperform – the rest of the market. Those prioritising innovative and competitive consumer technology will have the upper hand. Partnering with a global identity verification solution can easily achieve this.
As business operations in nearly every industry shift to grow their digital solutions, this increase in demand reinforces the need for a trusted, secure
and agile digital identity ecosystem. By leveraging a global identity verification solution, financial service operators will be better positioned to delight customers through ease of onboarding, remain compliant with regulatory requirements and expand into new markets. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done.
1
Deliver a quick and seamless customer onboarding experience
Did you know Gartner predicts that, by 2023, 75 per cent of organisations will be using a single vendor with strong identity orchestration capabilities and connections to many other third parties for identity proofing and affirmation? This is up from less than 15 per cent in 2021.
Why does this matter when it comes to attracting new customers? Given that businesses need seamless and secure onboarding with minimal friction, your identity verification process is often the difference between success and failure.
Financial service operators can benefit from a customer onboarding experience that balances security and speed with a global identity verification solution. Fast and automated identity verification processes allow for quicker onboarding with risk-based workflows that let organisations apply the right amount of friction, based on business needs and customer profiles.
By delivering a quick and seamless onboarding process, financial service operators can provide customers with a frictionless experience that increases customer confidence and trust while also building their organisation’s reputation.
Financial service operators need to create a smooth account opening process that satisfies anti-money laundering (AML), know your customer (KYC) and know your business (KYB) regulations – and this is where a global identity verification solution can shine.
Backed by the flexibility to adapt to changing regulatory requirements quickly and easily, financial service operators can ensure they are first to market with new products and services while simultaneously minimising risk.
Meanwhile, having good compliance processes can make it far easier to enter new markets in a fast and seamless way, rather than being held up by regulatory bodies and red tape.
3 Overcome global challenges and transcend borders
Unfortunately, many businesses fail to realise the additional verification challenges when venturing into unfamiliar markets. From region-specific data-handling best practices to finding reliable localised data sources that meet ISO security standards and more, organisations can easily find themselves scrambling to find appropriate solutions to address overlooked barriers.
However, a solution like Trulioo GlobalGateway is equipped to address these variances, more effectively helping financial service operators scale their compliance programmes when expanding into new markets. By working with a company that scales alongside you, financial service
operators can avoid the growing pains of international expansion.
Backed by more than 400 data sources and the ability to provide verification in countries with traditionally hard-to-match fields, Trulioo has the experience in multiple markets and multiple countries to get businesses where they need to go.
Achieving frictionless onboarding while maintaining compliance regulations and advancing ambitious growth plans was something many financial institutions and fintech operators have, historically, agonised over achieving.
But, by embracing change through innovative customer-centric and agile technology, they no longer need to be held back by antiquated or legacy technology. Rather than being bogged down by slow, manual processes, global identity verification holds the key to accelerated success.
No matter the size of your business, where you’re located or where you’re looking to go, Trulioo has the customisability to get you there.
To find out how your business can begin leveraging an identity verification platform that’s built for change, visit the Trulioo website today.
Trulioo is a leading global identity verification company, building trust online so that businesses and consumers can transact safely and securely.
Trulioo provides real-time verification of five billion consumers and 330 million business entities worldwide – all through a single API integration. Organisations rely on its identity verification platform, GlobalGateway, to help meet their business and compliance requirements and automate due diligence and fraud prevention workflows.
The Trulioo mission is to help provide every person on the planet with a digital identity to enable access to basic financial services and support.
COMPANY: Trulioo
FOUNDED: 2011
CATEGORY: IDV
KEY PERSONNEL: Steve Munford, CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Canada
OFFICES IN: United States, Ireland, Denmark and Romania
TEL: (+1) 888 773 0179
EMAIL: sales@trulioo.com
WEBSITE: trulioo.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/trulioo
TWITTER: @trulioo
The opening up of banking has placed embedded finance on the front pages, due to its potential to transform how people and businesses alike consume financial services.
But making embedded finance a reality is often far from straightforward for businesses that want to use it.
It’s the reason why, at Weavr, we launched our embedded finance solution, called Plug-and-Play Finance. Our mission is to make it simple, easy and cost-effective for any business to offer any financial service, wherever their customers need it.
Our ultimate aim is to create economic opportunities for the majority of digital businesses that have struggled with the complexity, and corresponding heavy lifting, associated with using current banking-as-a-service (BaaS) offerings.
In doing so, we have been lucky enough to partner with innovative businesses such as Ben, an employee benefits programme, and Troc Circle, an invoice-netting platform, to enrich their offerings with financial services that
their customers value and move their own businesses forward.
Many companies are reassessing their relationship with financial services and the opportunities they unlock for growth. They come to us with the key question ‘how can embedded finance directly benefit my business?’. Our answer is that, ultimately, any digital business stands to benefit from embedded finance, which is why it’s important they understand it.
In looking to explore the concept, it’s important to start by establishing the
possibilities. At its core, embedded finance enables businesses to integrate financial services into their digital applications without needing to become a fintech to do so.
Embedded finance reduces the build effort and, in some cases, removes the significant compliance burden associated with offering financial services through BaaS. Once embedded, digital applications can offer richer solutions and experiences for customers that add to the bottom line. Importantly, it strengthens innovative businesses’ chances of becoming vital everyday services that customers love and rely on.
Giants like Uber and Deliveroo would not be able to offer their seamless customer experiences without the financial services embedded within them. Hail an Uber or order a takeaway and the payment takes place seamlessly in the background. These kinds of businesses have introduced new
BaaS isn’t always the most convenient or cost-efficient way for a business to access embedded finance. So, Weavr offers them something different...
concepts to society such as ‘on-demand’ services that make our lives easier, save people time and money, and offer companies higher lifetime value from their customers. Likewise, they offer innovative businesses new sectors to disrupt with fresh technology offerings that are powered by embedded finance.
Bringing financial services into an experience makes it richer for the customer, leads to greater engagement and stickiness, and opens up new revenue opportunities. Embedded finance providers like Weavr typically reduce the need for build work, which shortens the launch timeline and resource required to achieve it.
Businesses have enough to worry about without financial compliance, regulation and data security. So, some providers, including Weavr, do that for them.
More than anything, embedded finance positions businesses to gain a competitive advantage within their respective fields. It is more than a strategic opportunity – it is an imperative for any digital business wishing to keep its edge sharp.
BaaS providers still don’t make it easy enough for businesses to incorporate financial services into their digital applications.
Banks have tried to make inroads into offering embedded finance solutions. However, progress has been hindered by legacy infrastructure and layers of technology that still underpin most banking operations. The result can be seen in solutions that are inflexible and place a huge burden on the businesses that look to embed a bank’s services.
While embedded finance offers the solutions of BaaS, it does so without the time investment required when working with banks, the compliance burden that a business might have to take on, and the cost of implementing banks’ solutions.
We are the next generation of embedded finance. We have built Financial Plug-ins
that are pre-designed sets of financial services, tailored to common use cases that require payments infrastructure.
These include B2B supplier payments, expense management systems, freelancer platforms and more.
Our solution is highly flexible – we have ready-made Financial Plug-ins or we can build new ones to bespoke requirements in under an hour.
experience by turning usage insights around spending patterns into new product enhancements.
Through what we call Plug-and-Play Finance, Weavr radically increases speed to market for the mainstream of digital businesses by reducing the heavy-lifting experienced with other traditional BaaS offerings.
By working with Weavr, companies can not only efficiently embed financial solutions to improve customer experience and build revenue, but they can also keep the entire transactional process within their brand experience, rather than sending customers outside, e.g. to log in to a bank account at a vital point in the journey. That opens up the possibility to further improve customer
Weavr exists to democratise access to financial services by bringing together the worlds of finance and digital. By disrupting the current BaaS model and offering a simpler and more cost-effective way to embed finance, we empower entrepreneurs to deliver relevant financial services as an integral part of their digital applications.
While the power of embedded finance technologies and their ability to connect people with financial services in the digital world is limitless, the solutions must be simple to gain mainstream adoption. Weavr’s ambition is to deliver that simplicity through Plug-and-Play Finance.
Weavr is the next generation of embedded finance for the digital economy.
We’re on a mission to enable any business to offer any financial service, anywhere their customers need it. We do that by providing everything to integrate those services seamlessly into a business’s mobile app or software-as-a-service (SaaS) application, safely, smoothly, and without the usual compliance burden.
Innovative businesses of all sizes and across diverse industries use Weavr to access a suite of ready-made Financial Plug-ins with in-built compliance.
With Weavr, businesses’ customers are empowered to collect, store and spend money, all in the context of their digital application. These applications, and the financial services integrated within them, are shaping the future of work, healthcare, education, real estate, and many other sectors.
COMPANY: Weavr
FOUNDED: 2018
CATEGORY: Embedded finance
KEY PERSONNEL: Alex Mifsud, Co-founder & CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: UK OFFICES IN: Malta
EMAIL: sales@weavr.io
WEBSITE: weavr.io
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ weavrpayments/
TWITTER: @WeavrPayments
Embedded finance is more than a strategic opportunity – it’s an imperative for any digital business wishing to keep its edge sharp
Anders la Cour, CEO of Banking Circle Group, on the benefits that this collaborative trend is likely to deliver in the banking and payments space
With the advent of the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and open banking, fintech businesses were empowered to tackle individual elements of the value chain in financial services.
They focussed on where they could do things differently from the incumbents in order to fix a specific problem or fill a gap. This led to an unbundling of banking services, as businesses and consumers accessed them from a wide range of providers rather than the one or two big banks with which they had always previously had a relationship.
Today, significantly boosted by COVID-inspired digital acceleration, financial institutions (FIs) are recognising the value of delivering not just one, but multiple solutions from a single online platform. By expanding their proposition and rebundling banking solutions, fintechs can solve more than one problem for their clients, enabling them to better serve their end customers. And, in collaboration with fintechs, banks can add value and expand their offering quickly and without investing in building new solutions in house.
For B2B fintechs, a multi-solution platform is great for giving their clients customer ‘stickiness’, by addressing the complete lifecycle of financial services that an individual or business might
require. To achieve that, FIs need to offer a range of financial services that their clients’ customers want and need – as well as those they may not yet realise they need – without those providers dissipating their brand values or service mission. Rebundling of financial services achieves this, not only delivering competitive advantage but also elevating FIs’ value as a whole.
Recent research from McKinsey (Global Banking Annual Review 2021: The Great Divergence) found that capital markets are anticipating the gap between valuations of banking industry leaders and followers will widen significantly in the next two to three years. According to McKinsey, fintechs are pivoting their value propositions and staying on the right side of this divergence by either doubling down on key value propositions and core markets or diversifying and collaborating to
» The culture of collaboration born in 2020 is inspiring a new ecosystem approach to deliver financial services for a marketplace that can’t afford for slow or high-cost processes to hold it back
build a platform of curated, rebundled services. Generally, they are working with a licensed partner who can deliver the regulated financial services needed.
Players of all sizes are rebundling financial services, creating platform businesses for growth through curated services rather than products, enabling them to expand into emerging and untapped industries. According to Hogan Lovells, this consolidation of financial services is predicted to increase still further in the coming months as businesses seek to deliver a wider range of solutions to an ever-growing customer base.
A number of high-profile acquisitions underline the value that rebundling is expected to deliver. For example, Visa has made several acquisitions in the last 12 months, including Tink, the open banking platform that enables financial institutions, fintechs and merchants to build financial products and services and move money; Earthport to expand its real-time payments network; and CurrencyCloud to provide foreign exchange solutions for cross-border payments. Buy now, pay later giant, Klarna, bought German payments
fintech, Stocard, enabling it to add the app for bundling multiple bank cards as well as deliver discount deals from a network of merchants. Rapyd acquired Icelandic payments solution company Valitor to extend its in-store and online payments acceptance solutions as well as card issuing for merchants.
And in November 2021 UK-based Paysafe, the leading specialised payments platform, acquired German fintech,
viafintech, to add digital banking apps that enable consumers to make deposits or withdraw cash from their digital bank accounts at a nearby retail store, using a barcode.
The culture of collaboration born in 2020 and maturing in 2022 is inspiring a new ecosystem approach to deliver financial services that are fit for purpose for a marketplace that can’t afford for slow or high-cost processes to hold it back. The financial ecosystem is coming of age. And that’s where Banking Circle comes in. As a next-generation financial technology platform for global commerce, we enable payment companies, banks, global marketplaces and online merchants to accelerate the digitisation of their customer and supply chain interactions with a suite of modern financial solutions. By accessing multiple solutions from a single ecosystem, FIs will not only be able to respond more rapidly to market opportunities, gaining a ‘first-to-market’ position, but they will also see significant cost savings as well as that all-crucial customer ‘stickiness’.
Banking Circle Group is a next-generation financial technology platform for global commerce.
It enables payment companies, banks, marketplaces and online merchants to accelerate the digitisation of their customer and supply-chain interactions with modern financial solutions.
At the centre of the Banking Circle ecosystem sits licensed bank, Banking Circle S.A., offering global cross-border payments, accounts and liquidity management through a global hub for real-time clearing and settlement with direct API access.
Banking Circle was launched to help banks, payments businesses and fintechs deliver a service to their business customers so they can transact globally
and more efficiently, without having to build their own infrastructure. It does this by connecting to the payment rails across all key geographies and jurisdictions, supported by a Cloudbased infrastructure, to provide direct access to clearing in multiple countries. Unconstrained by the legacy 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.
COMPANY: Banking Circle Group
CATEGORY: Technology platform for commerce
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: bankingcircle.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/bankingcircle
TWITTER: @bankingcircle
WE DO Financial infrastructure you can bank on
2022 is shaping up to be the year of the Big Fintech Sale. So, go buy yourself a piece of the future, says Chris Skinner
2022 is proving to be a challenging year – harder than anything we have seen since the pandemic began.
Markets are tightening, funding is harder to find and, for the first time, many fintech startups are experiencing a recession. If you’ve never been through one, what does this mean for your business and the future of our industry?
First things first, a recession means that everything becomes hard… unless you are cash rich. There are some who are still feeling flush and, if you’re one of them, then I expect you are prospecting. Many fintech startups – bear in mind there are more than 26,000 of them – have great ideas, strong vision, passionate leadership. But, if they don’t have funding, then their runway is leading to a cliff-top. That’s a great moment for a cash-rich competitor to step in and buy cheap. As they always say, when everyone is buying, sell; if everyone is selling, buy.
Second, we are seeing fintechs struggling, laying off staff, cutting back on excess. It’s a good time for management and leadership to learn new lessons. These are not new lessons for those of us who have been around the block, though. They are lessons that we learn every few years. When asked what’s a recession?
Jamie Dimon, chair and CEO of J.P. Morgan, said ‘something that happens around every seven years’. Nevertheless, this is a big one and, for all the newbies
out there, my only advice is to make sure you have liquidity and funding. Without that, the predators will circle.
Third, there are, actually, some fintechs who have seen a recession before. Remember 2008? Several fintechs were around for the Great Financial Crisis and are still here now. Ask them how they coped and learn from their experiences.
Finally, the fact is that there is still a bubbling and explosive market here, that is vibrant and cool. We are going to get through this, because we can.
I was struck by a comment that Cristina Junqueira, cofounder of NuBank – now the biggest challenger bank success in the world with almost 50 million customers – made when it started out. She said: “If banks are Darth Vader, credit cards are the Death Star.” Back in 2015, Nubank could not get a bank licence from regulators. So, it launched a credit card that charged a quarter of the fees that banks charged, in what was then a barricaded marketplace. Its approach blew that market open and now Nubank is worth more than most banks in South America.
This experience generally holds true for most successful fintech unicorns, due to the networked world we live in today. This does not mean that old banks die and new banks take over, but it does mean massive change. For old banks, the challenge is to create a
business that exists as though it was born digital; for new banks, the challenge is to have a business born digital that has traction.
My guess is the outcome of all this will be that new banks and old banks will acquire and merge over the next decade – as markets tighten, predators bite. Don’t be surprised if, before 2030, one of the new banks acquires an old bank. In fact, some already have (Lending Club/Radius Bank, FNZ/ Fondsdepot Bank, etc). Equally, don’t be surprised if fintechs merge or banks buy fintechs, as some already have (Tink/FinTecSystems, Truist/Long Game, Goldman Sachs/ NextCapital, J.P. Morgan/Global Shares).
Although we may be living through hard times, there are still huge opportunities out there. So, for those who can buy, buy now, as there are lots of firms that are being forced to sell. And, whether buying or selling, remember that tomorrow is the only thing we can change. You cannot change yesterday. So, look upwards, stride onwards and be the change you want to see. Did someone ever say that?
Chris Skinner is an independent commentaror on the financial markets and fintech, author and the voice behind the Finanser.com blog. His most recent book, Digital For Good, looks at how technology and finance can work together to address the big environmental and social issues of our time and make a better world. Chris is chair of Nordic Future Innovation, a non-executive director of the challenger consultancy firm 11:FS and on the advisory boards of many fintech and financial firms.
WEBSITE: chrisskinner.global
TWITTER: @Chris_Skinner
A Cornerstone Advisors’ survey of financial institutions found that 11 per cent of banks already have a banking as a service (BaaS) strategy, eight per cent are in the process of developing one, and 20 per cent are considering it.
Why the interest? Growth opportunities. On average, banks that currently offer BaaS have six partners and support nearly 1.3 million account holders. Overall, a sponsor bank supporting one million consumer accounts and 300,000 commercial accounts could generate more than $40million in revenue annually – roughly $15 per consumer account and $71 per commercial account.
Industry-wide, Cornerstone estimates that the BaaS market could grow to more than $25billion in annual revenue in 2026. This would go a long way to replacing the inevitable loss of overdraft fees that the banking industry will face over the next five years.
Banks can protect and grow their core products – e.g. payments and loans – by finding new distribution opportunities through embedded finance, which is the integration of financial services by non-financial actors, principally e-commerce. That might prove a difficult road, however, for mid-size financial institutions that find themselves shut out of those deals by retail platforms that partner exclusively with large banks. Instead, they can create new revenue streams from new products and services already created by fintech startups – a strategy called embedded fintech. There is often confusion between
embedded finance and embedded fintech. The difference is the direction of the service. A 2021 tweet from venture capitalist Merritt Hummer proclaimed ‘embedded fintech is old news’. In TechCrunch she wrote: “In 2019, Matt Harris coined the term ‘embedded fintech’ to describe how software-driven companies will embed financial services into their applications, from sending and receiving payments to enabling lending, insurance, and banking services.”
For sure, Bain Capital’s Harris deserves all the credit for being on the forefront of this trend. But a close reading of his 2019 article shows that – without mincing words – Harris was talking about embedded finance, not embedded fintech.
Embedded finance enables non-financial services companies to provide banking services. Embedded fintech, on the other hand, helps financial institutions to integrate fintech products and services into financial institutions’ product sets, websites, mobile applications, and business processes. So, what kind of fintech products are we talking about here?
Cornerstone Advisors has identified embedded fintech opportunities for banks that include bill negotiation services, subscription management, data breach and identity protection, wealth transfer management, and cryptocurrency investing.
Mobile banking adoption is approaching ubiquity among Gen Zers and Millennials with 88
per cent of the two generations accessing their bank accounts using a mobile device.
For many, a mobile app is the primary way they interact with their checking account (and, in essence, their bank). 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 that only enables customers to manage their existing checking accounts. Banks will face a hard fork, however, and pursue either an embedded finance (i.e. banking as a service) or embedded fintech strategy.
Ron Shevlin has been a management consultant and industry analyst for more than 25 years, working for leading consulting and analyst firms. He is currently the Chief Research Officer at Cornerstone Advisors, where his work focusses on banking and fintech trends. He is an advisor t o both established and startup financial technology companies.
Ron is ranked among the top fintech influencers globally, and is a frequent keynote speaker at industry events. He is a senior contributor to Forbes where he is author of the weekly Fintech Snark Tank.
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/in/ronshevlin
TWITTER: @rshevlin
a tough call, says Ron Shevlin, Chief Research Officer at Cornerstone Advisors
Mary Agbesanwa, Fintech Growth Lead at Seccl, explains why API technology is the key to driving financial inclusion when it comes to making money work harder
For the past few years, the UK government has stressed that it wants more ‘ordinary savers’ to start investing their spare cash. Specifically, it says, people should invest in funds that enrich society and the planet – what’s also known as ethical or impact investing.
There is no shortage of passion among my generation when it comes to environmental and social causes, and a 2020 study from European deposits marketplace Raisin found that the average person in the UK has around £10,000 in savings, so the cash is there. There’s no doubt that, since the start of the pandemic, there has been an increased consumer appetite for investing – but still, only 14 per cent of Britons are currently doing it.
We’re in the middle of a boom in wealthtech, and many UK startups are
targeting new and first-time investors. In recent months, on Seccl’s API-first platform, we’ve been lucky to launch a handful of these propositions, including ethical investing platform Circa5000 and DIY investing app Tillit. We also have a great deal more in the pipeline.
But there are still investing inequalities to address: there is still a substantial gender investing gap (where women invest at half the rate of men), and the monetary disadvantages faced by people of colour and the LGBTQIA+ community suggests there is more that fintechs can be doing to drive financial access and inclusion.
The first piece of the puzzle is enabling financial education – particularly for those underserved sections of the market. Companies like Your Juno are
»The key to financial inclusion is a change of narrative; for everyday people to view saving and investing as two sides of the same coin
already leading the charge on this, targeting women and non-binary people with financial education and investment guides through a free and simple app.
Another company taking users behind the smokescreen of jargon and acronyms is Tillit. Operating on a Seccl-powered platform, Tillit offers funds, investment trusts and ETFs across a range of asset classes, regions and investment styles – all while educating users and empowering them to make informed choices.
By integrating directly with our API, the DIY platform, they can provide a truly bespoke discovery journey, meaning users can make choices based on their own individual preferences rather than catch-all financial guidance.
Secondly, in the next few years, I hope to see more companies bringing embedded investments to the forefront. This means more non-financial services providers would be able to offer or blend finance products with their current customer offering to allow consumers to invest their spare cash.
Picture this: how much easier would investing be if every time you bought
something from Amazon you could round up your spend with an investment, or if you could send 10p to your investment portfolio every time you used your credit card?
There are studies that show this kind of collaboration drives consumer engagement and loyalty, as well as solving some of the distribution and access challenges with investing.
In the fintech space, so many things are called ‘transformational’, but it’s no exaggeration to say there is massive opportunity for embedded finance. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Embedded finance is predicted to be worth $3.6trillion dollars globally by 2030.
However, while consumers have a lot to gain from embedded finance, fintechs and banks potentially have a lot to lose – not all non-financial services providers will be able to offer or blend finance products using their current technology. Those incumbents who are slow to change will undoubtedly get left behind.
Where there are threats, though, there are also opportunities. Embedded investing is going to happen. The only question is who will benefit – fintechs and their customers, or the big tech giants who already reign supreme?
Companies need to get ahead of the curve if they want a piece of the pie.
With all of this in mind, it is Seccl’s view that the key to the future of financial inclusion is a change of narrative; for everyday people to view saving and investing as two sides of the same coin rather than opposing activities, and for financial services firms to ensure that their tech meets their requirements. Open API infrastructures enable this by allowing banks and fintechs to easily integrate and partner with providers, and build on top of tech stacks quickly and affordably. When it comes to financial equality, there is no silver bullet – but I truly believe that API-first technology is the closest we’ll get to one.
Seccl is a custodian and investment technology company that powers firms at the cutting edge of financial advice and wealthtech.
Technology-first businesses from all sectors can use Seccl’s publicly documented APIs to get plug-and-play access to the financial markets – helping them to launch new propositions more quickly and affordably than ever before.
Seccl's custody, trading and investment technology provides the key building blocks for a well-rounded investment proposition, with accounts and wrappers including GIA, ISA, SIPP and SSAS, and instruments including equities, ETFs and funds. It’s never been easier, faster or cheaper to launch a new investment or advice proposition.
In 2019, Seccl was acquired by Octopus Group, the £12billion group of companies that includes Octopus Investments, Octopus Energy and Octopus Ventures.
COMPANY: Seccl Technology
CATEGORY: Wealthtech
FOUNDED: 2016
KEY PERSONNEL: David Ferguson, CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: UK
EMAIL: hey@seccl.tech
WEBSITE: seccl.tech/
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/seccl
TWITTER: @seccltech
Retail, online gaming and the charity sector are just some of the environments in which Citizen is harnessing open banking to drive down costs for merchants and drive up security and convenience for customers
Every day, millions of debit and credit card transactions are processed in the UK. From tapping your card to get the bus or Tube to work, to topping up your HelloFresh subscription and getting that late-night order from Deliveroo, we use cards daily.
Most of these transactions involve very little work and we make them
automatically. But those transactions are not always as painless as we assume. Bank cards have been around since 1967 and their easy-to-use nature has made them universal and familiar. However, cards were not created for a digital world. Cards are fraud-sensitive when used online; they can be very expensive – with fees of up to 3.5 per
cent; and settlement of funds can take a couple of days. The addition of secure customer authentication (SCA), and the subsequent need to wait for apps or text messages to verify a payment, only adds to the hassle of using them.
From a merchant’s perspective, the downsides are more obvious. Those high fees are a clear direct cost, immediately
impacting margins. The friction for consumers of initiating and verifying card payments during a transaction impacts on conversion rates and the return on marketing investment. And fraudulent activity means more chargebacks to process (as well as distressed customers). Collectively, these issues can create a material impact on a business, especially in industries that are tightly regulated or where margins are narrow.
The appearance of e-wallets hasn’t managed to solve these problems – often, they just move cards from our pockets to our mobile phones.
together is crucial for industries that have know your customer (KYC) obligations to fulfil. A verified accounts feature means that businesses can feel comfortable enabling payouts or withdrawals to customer accounts with reduced risk of money-laundering activity.
In the charity sector, cost is obviously critical. A great example is our work with Wonderful.org, a charity platform that enables payments to more than 800 member charities. Wonderful was launched in response to mounting pressure over charity websites that earned a commission on donations. Instead, it aimed to become a truly
integration, Citizen’s PayBlox platform is a modular system that can be plugged into a merchant’s existing set-up in a matter of hours. But, as that may not work for everyone, Citizen also has plug-ins for shopping carts such as WooCommerce and Magento, and is part of PaymentIQ/ DevCode for even easier integration. And for adoption? There’s no denying that with a plethora of payment options at checkout, from cards and e-wallets to buy now, pay later brands, persuading a consumer to click on another option is hard. So, at Citizen
There’s no denying that with a plethora of payment options at checkout, from cards and e-wallets to buy now, pay later brands, persuading a consumer to click on another option is hard. So we’re investing heavily in getting this experience right
When open banking was introduced as part of the EU’s revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in 2018, it created opportunities to revolutionise payments. With banks obliged to open access to their data (subject to the customer’s consent) through central APIs, fintech companies, such as Citizen, were able to build software that merchants can use to initiate account-to-account (A2A) payments direct from the customer’s bank into their own account. This means:
■ Super-fast settlement of funds, usually in seconds
■ Super-secure transactions (with SCA built in) using the bank’s existing systems
■ Lower processing fees for merchants, with no cards involved
■ Reduced friction at check-out, improving conversion rates
At Citizen, we work with businesses across a wide range of industries to provide instant cardless payments using open banking.
For regulated industries, such as online gaming, crypto or foreign exchange markets, it’s not just the ease and rates that are appreciated. Citizen began as an identity management platform, and this focus on tying identity and payments
‘fee-free platform’. Wonderful has been using Citizen as the sole payment method for donations for several years, allowing it to reduce operational costs and – as these lower costs are covered by corporate donations – to pass on 100 per cent of the funds raised to target good causes. For many merchants, though, however attractive the lower rates of open banking payments might be, there are still two key issues: ease of integration and ease of adoption. With respect to
Citizen is a London-based fintech, founded in 2017 by former Worldpay CTO, James Neville. We became a regulated payment institute in 2019 and were one of the first companies licensed to provide payments and identity services using open banking. Now, we provide our instant, cardless payment solutions to businesses across the UK and Europe: super-smooth payments with built-in verification that reduces fraud, fees and friction.
we’re investing heavily in getting this experience right – including language and design and built-in incentives that reward the customer for choosing the cardless payment option – while preserving all of the benefits that the merchant has signed up for from open banking payments.
Every business that accepts or transmits funds can benefit from account-to-account payments. We’d love to show you how!
COMPANY: Citizen
FOUNDED: 2017
KEY PERSONNEL: James Neville, CEO & Co-founder (right)
HEAD OFFICE: London, UK
TEL: +44 (0)20 8138 0380
EMAIL: sales@paywithcitizen.com
WEBSITE: paywithcitizen.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ paywithcitizen
TWITTER: @PayWithCitizen
Money-laundering techniques have evolved significantly as criminals leverage technological advances. At the same time, increasingly stringent regulations and increased numbers of fines have driven the amount spent on global financial crime compliance ever higher.
According to a 2020 LexisNexis Risk Solutions global study, more than $180.9billion is being spent annually on fighting crime – but 62 per cent of that goes on labour in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.
In efforts to adapt quickly, banks have simply doubled down on existing systems. Anti-money laundering (AML) processes remain significantly siloed and manual, leading to inefficiencies and ineffective attempts to combat money laundering. Clearly, using traditional
methods to identify crime no longer suits the pace of activity today.
It couldn’t be plainer that siloed processes that lean heavily on manual tasks are slowing down banks, while open-source technology is enabling criminals to rapidly adapt and evolve their techniques.
It’s imperative that banks find better ways to look for vulnerabilities in their
systems and promote closer alignment between departments.
“Banks have always kept information restricted, sharing it on a need-to-know basis between departments. Consequently, they’re unable to gain a holistic view of their clients,” says Julian Dixon, CEO of Napier.
“They tend to have multiple teams for onboarding, client life-cycle management, transaction monitoring, and sales, which can also be split geographically, meaning they don’t interact well or share data and insights. Things are quite literally falling through the gaps. If suspicious activity has been detected, that information needs to be shared quickly to prevent recurrence. This isn’t happening because banks don’t have the systems, processes, or technology to share the information and get a truly holistic view.”
Julian Dixon, CEO of regtech Napier, outlines the imperative for automation in a rapidly evolving financial crimescape
“So, Napier built Continuum – an end-to-end, AI-enhanced financial crime compliance platform that connects data from various sources and delivers more than 80 per cent automation to organisations,” explains Dixon. “We want to help compliance officers sleep easily. With Continuum, banks can better understand how their data connects. Being able to see customers and their transactions in that single view really exposes any inconsistencies. But, to do this, you need a holistic, customer-centric approach, rather than just looking at isolated transactions.”
Continuum not only addresses siloed and sub-optimal tooling, but also encourages a proactive approach to risk assessment of customers, which helps banks to follow regulations more effectively.
The AI-driven platform delivers to banks a high degree of automation and configurability, reduces inaccuracies and false results, increases operational efficiency, and significantly lowers the ongoing total cost of ownership.
Its bundled and modular offerings cover the full AML customer lifecycle, while Napier’s AI-powered insights significantly enhance rules-based transaction monitoring and screening approaches to help eliminate false positives and spot truly suspicious activities.
Combined with the high level of automation that Continuum delivers, Napier’s AI provides a smart way to clamp down on criminals, while meeting regulatory requirements and driving business efficiency.
Its insights offer automatic pattern identification and risk assessment. This delivers two benefits – firstly, it helps teams focus banks’ resources and time on high-risk alerts; secondly, it surfaces evolving unknown threats.
“An AI engine can analyse customer activity much more efficiently and effectively than a human. It’s a completely independent set of lenses that can go through billions of transactions across multiple dimensions to detect anomalies – something that would
take humans years to complete at great cost,” says Dixon.
“The technology is powering better explainability, too. It’s not enough to say suspicious activity was flagged by AI. Analysts need the detail in a simple, digestible language so they can explain to regulators exactly what caused concern. Historically, AI has not been transparent here, with any outputs and metrics only understandable for data scientists.”
So, Napier’s AI raises alerts in plain English, explaining why a transaction was flagged as unusual without requiring a data scientist to interpret the data. The AI then collates that information into a simple summary
Napier is a new breed of financial crime compliance technology specialist. Our platform is transforming compliance from legal obligation to competitive edge.
Founded on broad experience and deep expertise, Napier uses industry knowledge and cutting-edge technologies such as AI and machine learning to help businesses detect suspicious behaviours and fight financial crime.
Our intelligent approach to financial crime compliance underpins organisational policy, process and procedure, so financial institutions can focus on being more effective at detecting suspicious financial activity in a more cost-efficient way.
Trusted by leading financial institutions, we design and build technology to help companies in any sector comply with AML regulations, detect suspicious transactions, screen potential customers, and predict customer behaviour.
of the top suspicious behaviours so that a human analyst can make better decisions. For all the power AI brings, it would be remiss not to point out that basic housekeeping is a must if organisations are to harness and benefit from this tool.
AI is, ultimately, only as powerful as the data that feeds it.
“Having AI is also not a replacement for, or a reason to neglect, a robust, rules-based approach to monitoring,” says Dixon.
“Good quality, effective rules must be in place to be sure that all the known knowns are captured, so that AI can learn from and enhance this activity.”
Ultimately, the way to get the most out of any automated system is by linking human intelligence with machine intelligence. The successful cooperation of human and machine is where the real power of AI lies.
COMPANY: Napier
FOUNDED: 2015
CATEGORY: AML, regtech, compliance
KEY PERSONNEL: Julian Dixon, CEO and Founder (right)
HEAD OFFICE: London
OFFICES IN: New York, Sydney, Singapore, Dubai
EMAIL: info@napier.ai
WEBSITE: napier.ai
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/napier
TWITTER: @napier_ai
WHAT WE DO Leading financial crime compliance solutions
In efforts to adapt quickly, banks have simply doubled down on existing systems… Clearly, using traditional methods to identify crime no longer suits the pace of activity today
Over the last decade, a number of digital banks have emerged in Africa that have been tailored to fulfil the needs of a digital world.
As significant as these neobanks are for growing the fintech ecosystem in Africa, still 90 per cent of transactions on the continent are carried out in cash, because 57 per cent of the population still doesn’t have access to any sort of financial service, including mobile money.
Currently, Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 21 neobanks and most of them are to be found in two countries: South Africa and Nigeria. Here and elsewhere, cash remains king for several reasons:
■ Limited access to internet, which in turn means less acceptance of card schemes like Visa and Mastercard
■ Low income – according to the World Bank, 17 of the 20 countries globally with the highest poverty rates can be found in Sub-Saharan Africa
■ With limited financial awareness, many people are prey to digital financial crime
Banks and other non-financial institutions who are looking to bridge this gap between real life and the digital world in Africa, need to follow the trends that are being set by the people of this continent. And while cash is still the dominant method of payment, the trend is definitely digital.
That’s because the population is mostly made up of young people, with a median of 19 years in West Africa and East Africa, 17 years in Central Africa, and 27 years in the South. And while cultures and language differ, they all have one thing in common; they are all mobile phone fanatics. They are also highly active on social media.
So, when it comes to money, they expect great interactivity and connection with banks and other non-financial institutions. That makes digital-only banks their first preference. Not only are those 21 existing challenger banks making person-to-person transfers, free deposits and withdrawals easy to conduct, but they are also proving to be a great cost-effective alternative to physical bank branches.
One of the most promising digital banks in Africa is TymeBank. Its digitally
smart, value-added services are proving a credible alternative to legacy banks in South Africa and since its launch in 2019 it’s bagged more than five million customers.
With the right technology and a vision of financial inclusion, Tymebank offers banking services with no monthly fees. Many everyday banking transactions are free while others are subject to minimal charges. Customers can also earn discounts and rewards when they use their debit card at partner retailers. They are able to open a bank account in less than five minutes and get cards issued to them instantaneously from a TymeBank kiosk. Improving access to financial services isn’t just about providing retail accounts; SMEs also have a role to play in increasing financial inclusion by adopting digital practices
While cash is still the dominant method of payment, the trend is definitely digital
will facilitate cross-border payments in local African currencies, which is expected to save $5billion a year in currency conversions for business. This more centralised payment system, it is hoped, will also reduce risk and fraud.
BPC delivers innovative and best-in-class proven solutions that fit with today’s consumer lifestyle in both urban and rural areas, bridging real life and the digital world.
With 350 customers across 100 countries globally, BPC collaborates with all ecosystem players, ranging from Tier 1 banks to neobanks, payment service providers (PSPs) to large processors, e-commerce giants to start-up merchants, and government bodies to transport companies.
BPC’s SmartVista suite comprises cutting-edge banking, commerce and mobility solutions, including digital banking, ATM and switching, payments processing, card and fraud management, financial inclusion, merchant portals, transport and smart cities solutions.
that build data points that fintechs and other players within the payment ecosystem can leverage on.
The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is raising hopes for improved digital economic development. The World Bank estimates that the agreement will lift more than 30 million Africans out of poverty, while positively impacting the incomes of another 68 million. Postponed due to the pandemic, the full effects of the trade agreement have yet to be realised in smoother trade between countries, but the pace is quickening. The AfCFTA will also allow entrepreneurs to do business across multiple states and, crucially, be financed across states, too.
Alongside the AfCFTA, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS)
For anyone looking to build a digital bank from the ground up in Africa, it’s important to understand that this is not one country, but several with hugely varied demographics. It is therefore vital to identify the right markets and the segments within them.
In order to serve a region that has low urbanisation and whose population has limited access to digital services, it is worthwhile working with a technology provider on the ground that understands the environment and can help players in the ecosystem build a proposition at lower cost that’s also attractive to users.
By striking the right balance between outsourcing responsibilities and working in-house to build revenue, we believe fintechs can successfully bridge the gap between real life and the digital world across the entire African economy.
BPC has produced a comprehensive guide to the state of digital banking in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is available to download via our website at www.bpcbt.com/report/digitalbanking-in-sub-saharan-africa
COMPANY: BPC FOUNDED: 1996 CATEGORY: Payments solutions
KEY PERSONNEL: Jane Loginova, Chief Strategy Officer (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Switzerland OFFICES: Worldwide WEBSITE: www.bpcbt.com EMAIL: info@bpcbt.com
TEL: +41 41 760 6470
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ bpc-banking-payments-commerce
TWITTER: @BPC_SmartVista
Banking, payments, commerce and mobility solutions providers; SaaS solutions
Fintech is a force for good. Over the past decade, it’s driven digital transformation in financial services and accelerated financial inclusion and wellbeing for millions of people and businesses around the world.
Thanks to fintech, more people than ever before are accessing game-changing personalised financial products and services. And the scale and pace at which this is growing and transforming means that today we are seeing it used in all walks of life. Big-name players are helping people pay for their everyday shopping, manage their income and bills, and even set up an investment portfolio.
Sadly though, there is one area of financial services where this scale and pace has not yet been realised – pensions. As a fintech workplace pension and savings provider, we’re on a mission to change this.
You only need to look at businesses like the German on-demand grocery delivery company Gorillas and streaming service Netflix to understand that today’s world is fed on a constant stream of instant access.
For years, people have expected on-hand service whenever they want,
wherever they want, and at speed, too. But the pensions industry is yet to experience this digital transformation.
In the year 2022, it’s astounding to think that Cushon is one of the few pension providers that offers members access to their account through an app. The industry has a reputation of being technologically averse. Some providers are even still using paper-based records for pensions and employing armies of people simply to join the dots between multiple legacy IT systems, because the technologies cannot talk to one another.
Pension providers are exceptionally good at presenting their high workforce numbers as a sign of quality and
success. When, in reality, it’s a smokescreen for how underdeveloped their underlying technology is.
So, why does it matter that the pensions space is so technologically averse?
Because in a world where digital rules and instant experiences are expected, people are completely disengaged with their pensions and, as a result, millions are missing out on future financial security.
What if people checked their pension as regularly as they checked their current account? What if they could see at a glance where their money was and whether they were on track for the retirement they wanted? As a fintech pension provider, rather than growing our business by employing more people to deal with outdated, decades-old processes that are unfit for the digital economy, Cushon has invested in talent and technology to build just such a pension platform, one that’s fit for the 21st Century.
When I founded Cushon alongside Phil Hollingdale, we wanted to create a company with a dual purpose – creating a pension that drives engagement for the benefit of savers and one that doesn’t
destroy the planet (a commitment that, in turn, drives further engagement). There is little point encouraging people to save for a retirement in a future that is burning. As such, in January 2021, we launched the world’s first and only carbon neutral pension called Net Zero Now.
The UK pensions industry has around £3.5trillion of assets under management. On average, these investments finance 23 tonnes of CO2e for every pension pot each year. Through your day-to-day life, you probably generate six to 10 tonnes a year – pensions are doing far more damage. Our research shows that, increasingly, people want to make a positive impact on the world. Fifty-six per cent of employees want to know more about how their pension is invested and whether it contributes to climate change – this increased to 62 per cent for those
aged under 25. The data-driven technology that underpins our investment strategy means we can answer those questions. We can make accurate calculations of the emissions our investments finance and adapt our investments accordingly. This means, in under a year, we have reduced our financed emissions from 80 per cent of the UK average, to well under half – buying high-quality carbon offsets to cancel the emissions we do currently finance.
years. The result is a pension that people can feel proud of. And when you do this, people engage with it more. Engaged savers are more likely to save more for retirement and are more likely to keep track of their pensions when they move jobs and keep their provider up to date with when they plan to retire – allowing their provider to adjust the risk accordingly. Ultimately, they get more for their money and are setting themselves up for a better retirement.
As we push down further on financed emissions, we are on course to end our need to buy offsets in the next five
At its heart, the pensions industry is a force for good by allowing people to invest in their long-term future. But it knows it needs to boost engagement; it also knows it needs to transition to Net Zero by 2050. To achieve it, it’s time this financial services industry got a fintech shake-up and caught up with the rest.
Cushon uses world-leading financial technology to engage savers and empower them to build a better financial future.
It offers a range of investment and savings products via an intuitive mobile app that provides a highly personalised experience and environmentally friendly investments, making it easy for customers to manage their money and invest in a way that aligns with their personal goals and beliefs.
With a solution that fully integrates with payroll and benefit platforms, Cushon’s products are delivered via the workplace to reach as many savers as possible. Employers use Cushon to enhance the financial wellbeing of
their workforce by providing employees with a simple and convenient way to save into ISAs and general investments products direct from their pay and from as little as £10 a month.
Cushon Group currently has more than 440,000 customers with £1.7billion of assets under management. Its corporate clients include 250 well-known blue-chip companies, including many of the FTSE 100, plus more than 7,500 smaller employers across the UK.
COMPANY: Cushon
FOUNDED: 2014
CATEGORY: Wealth management
KEY PERSONNEL:
Ben Pollard, CEO & Co-founder (right)
HEAD OFFICE: UK
TEL: +44 (0) 770 4422 612
WEBSITE: cushon.co.uk
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/cushon
TWITTER:
@WeAreCushon
WHAT WE DO
Creating financial futures worth saving for
There is little point encouraging people to save for a retirement in a future that is burning
Digital transformation of core banking systems away from last-generation platforms is underway globally. For many banks it has been stop/start and progress hasn’t been linear or steady. But progress has been made.
Every financial institution has some digital capability now, and a plan of varying ambition. But each has a very uneven estate internally: state-of-the-art, containerised architecture, sitting alongside mainframes that were built well before the turn of the century. Maintaining an estate of everincreasing complexity in an everaccelerating market is tough. And expensive. But unshackling banks from legacy has proven complicated because of technology, budgets and culture. Each year, however, the industry gets closer to making the hard decisions required of it. We don’t expect a stampede immediately, but we do expect this to pick up pace, and for
those hard decisions to be made closer to the heart of the business.
Digital capabilities were first built where they were most visible or less risky and went progressively deeper and wider where there was market opportunity.
That means a lot of the invisible estate underpinning and connecting these systems often comes with limitations.
investment and his/her reward is based on short-term performance of shareholder return. Any decision to undertake large-scale core migration would be committing the bank to a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar change project with a sizeable risk profile. So, what a bank often ends up with is an all-singing, all-dancing app for its current account, but a back-end that fails to give a single view of the customer across that product and services; a shiny payments API, but liquidity management that’s creaky.
Functionality that rests on multiple systems playing nicely with each other is the next frontier for banks. But, to get there, a true overhaul of the invisible plumbing of the institutions is required.
‘Data is the new oil’ was a phrase coined nearly 20 years ago. But the plumbing that allows data to flow freely so that it
TRANSFORMATION: IS IT FINALLY HAPPENING FOR BANKS?
This makes sense when a bank’s CEO has been focussed on 12-month return on
Banks have come a long way, but now it’s time to take stock and focus on the really tough stuff, says 10x Banking
can be refined and monetised is still a work in progress. As open banking and open finance mature, banks are getting creative and awaking to the art of the possible. It should be easy for a bank to provide targeted services to a consumer and ask, for example, ‘have you thought about buying a house in the areas where all your leisure spending is done, because you can afford a mortgage there, based on your finances?’. It should be similarly simple in transaction banking to provide a corporate treasurer with dynamic cash management, based on the business’ liquidity needs.
To do that, human creativity has to meet... pipes. That is, systems that are designed to talk to each across an organisation; systems that remove complexity for a bank and can be continually updated at little cost; systems that are developer-driven and enable smaller teams to focus on customer and business outcomes. Those systems have been a long time in the making. As with many other long-term trends, change doesn’t come when the work starts but when the tipping point is reached.
Hyper-personalisation and true user-centric (or industry-problem-centric) design will be increasingly possible as systems and regulatory frameworks foster an environment that allows people to creatively embrace the art of the possible.
Digital transformation is changing banks’ relationships with their platforms but also with their data. In this new world, data is a product that each business function produces and shares with other business functions to consume. Increasingly, banks are looking to partners that can solve for commodity across the value chain; platforms that remove complexity and remain evergreen in a landscape of changing regulatory compliance and that unlock data for the bank.
Next-generation, Cloud-based core banking systems that use an event-streaming approach enable different microservices within a bank to access data in real time by sending it to an easy-to-access integration point in a structured format that’s simple to read and use. Every time a customer performs an action, an event is generated and that data is made available to whatever business function needs it. Banks need to seek a partnership, not just a platform, from their vendors for this to be effective. A partner will ensure that their client gets the most value from their solution as well as work collaboratively with other vendors in the ecosystem.
We speak of incumbents as if they are an undifferentiated mass, but they are not. Some incumbents have done much better and gone much further on their digital journey than others. Some of the best banks in Europe are starting to execute on the promise of becoming data companies, and offering different products, based on customer behaviour. Previously, personalised products were the preserve of a select few. Now, banks with modern technology stacks can offer products based on very granular behaviours, and they create real competitive pressure.
Some incumbents are combining the hard lessons they have learned on this journey with the inspiration they took from the challengers, and their own competitive advantage (be it scale, brand, customer base, or balance sheet). Powered by fit-for-purpose core banking platforms, they have been able to focus on the differentiator, not the commodity, and create better experiences, improve operational resilience, and build trust.
A lot of banks paused or cancelled projects under the pressures of COVID-19.
Experiments and even ambitious 10-year transformation projects fell by the wayside because people needed to make budgets work, deal with the crisis at hand and, importantly, support their customers, communities and colleagues.
Looking forward, we trust and hope banks will retain this focus and show real intent. Changing the banks’ relationship with partners, platforms, and the data that they produce, and giving bank technology teams the tools they need to build value-added propositions, should go some way to achieving this.
We created 10x Banking to build better banks – banks that put the customer at the centre of everything they do.
Using our proprietary Cloud-native platform, SuperCore™, we enable providers of financial services to give their customers more timely and relevant experiences and insights when it comes to managing money.
With an end-to-end approach, our comprehensive operating system can transform banks globally.
COMPANY: 10x Banking
FOUNDED: 2016
HEAD OFFICE: UK
OFFICES IN: Australia
EMAIL: hello@10xbanking.com
WEBSITE: 10xbanking.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/10x-banking/
TWITTER: @10XBanking
»Functionality that rests on multiple systems playing nicely with each other is the next frontier for banks. But, to get there, a true overhaul of the invisible plumbing of the institutions is required
Anupam Datta, Co-founder, President and Chief Scientist at TruEra, explores why so few AI projects make it off the bench – and how it can help get them into production
AI is a rapidly growing discipline in banks and fintechs, driven by the advance of AI development tools, the growth of available data and the clear opportunities that AI offers to capture value through more efficient operations, new products and services, and improved personalisation of services and marketing. However, this enthusiasm for AI is being restrained by a harsh reality: not many machine learning (ML) models are making it to real-world use.
A 2019 survey, conducted by the Bank of England, suggests that while
two-thirds of financial company respondents had adopted AI in some form, the median firm had just two live AI applications. Another survey from 2017 by Rexer Analytics, showed that only 13 per cent of AI projects ever make it into production. This gap between development and deployment is known as the ‘AI chasm’, the unfortunate spot where most projects end up, never to be heard from again, leaving a significant amount of value unrealised.
There are multiple reasons for this AI chasm and some of them, such as the difficulty of reaching initial success in the lab, are already being addressed through improvements in development tools and training, as well as improved access to adequate data sources.
However, there is one major reason that many models don’t make it beyond the lab and into production, which deserves greater recognition – the problem of model trustworthiness.
Even when a model is regarded as
successful in the development and training phases, data scientists still often hit a wall when it’s time for approval to get their model deployed. This obstruction is due to several factors:
■ Data scientists or approvers aren’t confident about their model quality and accuracy, and lack the tools to be able to deeply and robustly analyse the model’s fitness and performance
■ Data scientists often cannot fully explain to regulators or internal stakeholders how the model works
■ There is no means by which to monitor models in production, which is necessary to ensure that they continue to work as intended, once deployed in the real world
It’s imperative that data science teams are equipped with the right tools to drive AI quality. While there are many options to choose from in terms of ML model development, many AI stacks are still missing a critical component – AI quality systems.
AI quality systems provide core capabilities that enable data scientists to easily explain how their models work, and can evaluate the fitness of any model and its associated data across
multiple key dimensions (for example accuracy, reliability, stability, and fairness). Only when capabilities like these are in place is a data science team equipped to cross the AI chasm, since they will be able to:
■ Deeply analyse model fitness and performance, and demonstrate that the model achieves its objectives
■ Demonstrate that the model is fair, compliant, or non-discriminatory
■ Show precisely how the model works (solve the black box problem) and indicate the key drivers of model results
■ Monitor performance of the model while it is in production, ensuring that it continues to meet its performance targets and compliance requirements over time
AI quality systems create the transparency and multi-stakeholder workflows that allow organisations to implement best practices in driving high-quality ML models. This, in turn, increases the trust in the models and
accelerates the path to production approval and long-term model success.
In all likelihood, AI quality systems are the most critical components of the technical bridge needed to cross the AI chasm.
And that will give companies deploying AI based on those systems a competitive edge.
As Will Uppington, TruEra CEO, says: “Organisations that adopt AI faster and are open to iterations will be in a better market position.”
The Standard Chartered team sought a solution that could accurately explain and evaluate the quality of machine-learning models, including fairness, conceptual soundness, reliability, and stability. It was crucial that the solution worked across the entire model lifecycle, including development, validation, and monitoring, and be easy to integrate across the different model development platforms in use by the Standard Chartered data science team. After an extensive search of available options, it selected TruEra as the best company to meet its requirements.
TruEra helps companies to build and maintain better models, faster, by providing the first suite of AI quality solutions that help enterprises analyse machine learning (ML), improve and monitor model quality, and build trust. Its solution has struck a chord with companies that need enterprise-class solutions to AI quality challenges.
Powered by enterprise-class artificial intelligence (AI) explainability technology, based on six years of research at Carnegie Mellon University, the TruEra platform helps eliminate the black box surrounding widely used AI
and ML technologies. This visibility leads to higher quality, explainable models that sustainably achieve measurable business results, address unfair bias, and ensure governance and compliance. TruEra offers both ML model evaluation and ML monitoring solutions. Its tools are purchased and loved by data scientists, ML engineers, MLOps teams, model risk and compliance teams. We serve organisations in financial services, retail, manufacturing, government, and other AI-heavy industries to tackle some of their most critical AI issues, such as drift, performance management and fairness.
COMPANY: TruEra
FOUNDED: 2019
CATEGORY: AI
KEY PERSONNEL: Will Uppington, CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: USA
OFFICES IN: UK, India, Switzerland and Singapore
TEL: (+1) 650 8154005
EMAIL: hello@truera.com
WEBSITE: truera.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/truera
TWITTER: @truera_ai
The technology exists, so why not take a more dynamic approach to personal data sharing – one that benefits both consumers and business?
I have spent the last three years campaigning against the conventional wisdom around authentication and consent management in open banking; working to prove empirically that the initial process design did not materially improve security, actually harmed the customer by cutting them off from their data, and meant that adoption and service usage experienced attrition at a rate that would kill the entire open banking experiment.
Some authorities agreed to re-examine the process as outlined under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2). Some authorities made changes, ranging from the time frame required to re-authenticate, to a fundamental shift to a consent model managed by the demand side (third-party providers/fintechs) rather than the supply side (banks).
These efforts proved that the consent journey itself is open to evolution; in fact, it demands it, in order to be effective and deliver on its intended promise. In the run-up to open finance, and to a fully-fledged open data economy, we need to evolve consent management yet again. Why? Because its complexity only increases in orders of magnitude as the number of consent-based relationships grows.
Depending on the market, consumers can have multiple fintech providers to whom they’ve granted consent to use their data. These relationships all have different consent parameters, purposes, and different expiry dates. Under open banking, the number of those relationships is relatively small, and
managing them at a one-to-one level is doable, albeit annoyingly tedious. But that one-to-one consent management is not going to be an option under open finance, let alone under open data. Moreover, the types of value propositions that will be available under these frameworks will have varying consent duration needs. Not every offering is going to fall within a typical 90-day or 180-day timeframe. No consumer should be granting 180 days’ worth of data access to a credit affordability provider, when a single snap-shot is sufficient; and no lending provider should be crunching a consumer’s data after the loan has been provided. At the same time, data access should not be cut off if there is a requirement to continually affirm that the consumer is getting the right product for the right outcome. Indeed, the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s new Consumer Duty that comes into effect in April, 2023, requires firms to focus on ‘supporting and empowering their customers to make good financial decisions and avoid foreseeable harm at every stage of the customer relationship’. Products and services have to be fit for purpose. And not every purpose has the same data access needs.
Consent is not cookie cutter, nor should it be, yet our industry continues to impose an artificial template onto it, to standardise its treatment for the sake of simplicity. But that simplicity comes at a cost to both end consumers and service providers. And simplicity is a strawman argument against putting a proper consent management
process in place. The technology exists to manage multiple, nuanced data consents.
Even more compelling, there is a business case for firms to adopt this approach: it gives a holistic view of the consents across all lines of business with which a consumer has a relationship, as well as a more nuanced designation of what data can be accessed. Consumers tend to grant access to more data if they have the option of fine-tuning what is accessed, but tend to restrict data when given a binary choice. To share or not to share is in fact the question, and if the choice is yes or no, the answer is often no.
The next phase of consent management needs to include an aggregated view of all the consumer’s consents in a single, intelligent dashboard that reminds them to renew or disconnect, with an option to give nuanced consent. Meanwhile, policy needs to re-evaluate the effectiveness of a standardised timeframe for all consents, now that those time frames can be flexible if the technology is in place to manage them.
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.
@GhelaBoskovich
WEBSITE ghelaboskovich.com
The platform era is drawing to a close – just when the party was warming up.
It created the social media platforms of our times, and financial innovation was being built on top of it. Digital banks, trading platforms, peer-to-peer lenders and payment applications were founded on the idea of onboarding millions of customers and monetising them. Well, that era is now beginning to give way to the next – one I call the ‘era of personalisation’.
All the applications being developed around Layer-1 and Layer-2 blockchain technologies and the advent of quantum computing are quietly moving the ownership of data, assets and identity firmly into the hands of the individual. This is already evident in gaming and supply chains, and it will become increasingly evident in finance.
Gaming is no longer a platform activity, it is a networked activity and the differences are subtle. It is not possible for any gaming company to dominate a platform and require gamers to accept the conditions laid out by the company. In fact, to survive, gaming companies have to leverage the ability of gamers to work a network of games, and buy and sell tokens on them. Interoperability is assumed, but it will mean much more as the industry develops.
Even if you don’t believe that the platform era is coming to an end, you would have noticed the backlash against the negative effects of the platform economy. Many of the concerns we have
today on privacy and blatant violation of user rights are justifying the investments in privacy features in current iterations of platform applications.
For a start, this means that all new business models must begin by assuming that the users as individuals will have more power in their relationships with platforms. Interoperability must be a given. The value or asset in the relationship,
Some business models that failed in the platform era, particularly the peer-to-peer ones, will see a revival in the networked personalisation phase
whether it is content or money, sits with the owner and not on the platforms. Platforms can only grow if they harness the network effect.
But it goes further. Some business models that failed in the platform era, particularly the peer-to-peer ones, will see a revival in the networked personalisation phase. The product in peer-to-peer platforms was never meant to be the same traditional loans or investments that existed in banking. A networked version of loans or equity might have elements of leases, shared utility and custodian in the way they are packaged and used. They will be ’asset-lite’ because ownership will not
be important in a networked economy. All these ideas are discussed in my forthcoming book, The Great Transition: The Personalisation Of Finance Is Here. As suggested by the title, the process is a transition. Some will recognise that a great transition is upon us; others will be oblivious to it. They will blame some of the operating problems that we are familiar with.
The most important feature of this transition will be that finance will move to the centre of all relationships, not just in financial transaction, in trade, and in payments, but also in society as a whole.
In a personalised world, the asset and value in all transaction will fit with the individual and this will have a tremendous impact.
Author and entrepreneur
Emmanuel Daniel is the founder of online platform
The Asian Banker, and also of Wealth And Society, a community of like-minded, high-net-worth individuals, families and founders who have the vision to transform society for good. His first book, The Great Transition: The Personalisation Of Finance Is Here, will be out in October 2022.
WEBSITES: theasianbanker.com, wealthandsociety.com emmanueldaniel.com
TWITTER: @EmmanuelDaniel
Emmanuel Daniel makes the case for a new epoch of personalisation, evidenced by the subtle shift of data ownership, back to the individual
Scaling or transforming a business while working within a regulated environment can be tough. But automating know-your-customer processes can bring unexpected dividends
Globally, compliance costs regulated firms an estimated $214billion per year, with nearly two-thirds of that figure allocated to people rather than technology.
Meanwhile, over the past five years, customer due diligence (CDD) and monitoring were among the most frequently cited points of failure associated with regulatory enforcement actions in the UK and Europe. Against this increasingly complex backdrop, know your customer (KYC) has remained a manual process.
Why? Because the rapid evolution of the global regulatory framework has left little time for many organisations to reflect on their processes, let alone find ways to improve them. This has meant they have continually been at risk of friction within their corporate client onboarding processes, of providing unsatisfactory customer experience, and of exposure to regulatory censure and heavy fines for anti-money laundering (AML) breaches.
Now, with these regulatory requirements evolving at speed alongside increasing customer expectations and business pressures, banks are looking to wholesale transformation of their KYC processes –with automation fundamental to creating more robust and efficient programmes that can drive powerful change.
With this shift, operational leaders are in the position to empower onboarding analysts with solutions that streamline the KYC workflow, shifting manual work
onto software and freeing up analysts to focus on more pressing priorities.
Trusting in KYC automation brings a range of benefits for internal and external stakeholders, namely:
■ Improved client relationships: The average corporate client onboarding cycle can last for as long as 60 days. Transforming the process with technology can significantly reduce this, while automation also allows compliance teams to be more focussed on high-risk cases and customer experience
■ Managing risk more effectively: KYC automation reduces the risk of human errors and missed steps, while also enabling banks to quantify risk more accurately by accessing a wider array of customer data points
■ Productivity and efficiency gains: Automation reduces the time spent on KYC data and document retrieval, collection, analysis and management by up to 98 per cent. This supports the scaling of onboarding and compliance functions without adding additional team members
■ Financial gains: Increasing levels of automation lower not only the costs of onboarding corporate customers, but also the long-term costs of KYC remediation and periodic or event-driven refresh
Given that KYC transformation touches every layer of an organisation, to be successful, it requires buy-in from
multiple stakeholders – and this starts with a considered business case. This should outline the precise requirements to achieve your transformation goals and set realistic expectations for the rest of the business about what will be achieved, as well as outlining timelines and costs.
Automation reduces the time spent on KYC data and document retrieval, collection, analysis and management by up to 98 per cent
Transforming KYC in this way is a holistic process and, to prepare, operations teams should consider priorities across the KYC and compliance landscape, focussed on:
■ Policies: Identify any policies that may need to be redesigned to meaningfully support the shift to greater automation, including how future policy changes will be managed when the programme is underway
■ People: Target the removal of organisational silos, as well as planning how job roles may change and what communications and training requirements might be needed as a result
■ Processes: Identify opportunities to improve and streamline processes, bringing relevant groups and stakeholders together to map out the new process design
■ Technology and data: Understand the data sources you need and why you need them. More data is not always the answer, particularly if it adds complexity to a process without necessarily improving risk detection
Transforming a KYC process is a journey based on incremental improvement rather than immediate change, and institutions should adopt an approach that is gradual, deliberate, and evolutionary, taking into consideration the same challenges associated with any large change programme.
A well-conceived and well-executed project of this kind combines short-term wins with long-term gains and choosing the right transformation partner to unlock the power of technology is key to achieving the goals set out, as well as evolving a project over time.
Encompass’ KYC automation platform helps financial institutions streamline KYC and AML compliance tasks with key features, including:
■ Trusted KYC data sourced via pre-built integrations with global primary and premium KYC data providers
■ Intelligent process automation for the smart retrieval and collation of data and documents
■ Streamlined corporate structure unwrapping including ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) verification and visualisation
■ A digital KYC profile – produced for every search, complete with full data attribute lineage and source documents. This provides the foundation for KYC refresh, KYC remediation and perpetual KYC (pKYC)
■ Full audit trail creation proving end-to-end AML compliance to regulators by dynamically tracking every action taken in real-time
By bringing in the best of the solutions available, firms can find long-lasting business and process efficiencies, while also ensuring they see continued, if not improved, levels of KYC compliance.
Encompass transforms compliance and customer onboarding for firms with know-your-customer (KYC) automation.
Our advanced technology, unrivalled data coverage and industry expertise help clients to safely grow their businesses and fight financial crime.
The Encompass platform reduces the cost of KYC and improves time-to-revenue by providing KYC due diligence on demand, powered by intelligent process automation.
Across the globe, our customers include leading global banks and financial institutions, including Wolfsberg Group members. We have strategic alliances with a range of trusted data, technology and service providers.
COMPANY: Encompass Corporation
FOUNDED: 2011
CATEGORY: Regtech
KEY PERSONNEL: Wayne Johnson, CEO & Co-founder (right)
HEAD OFFICE: UK
OFFICES IN: United States, Singapore The Netherlands, Australia and Serbia
TEL: +44 (0)333 7720 002
EMAIL: info@encompasscorporation.com
WEBSITE: encompasscorporation.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ encompass-corporation
TWITTER: @EncompassCorp
Would you drop your kid in the deep end of a pool for the first time and expect them to swim? Unsurprisingly, the majority of people would say no!
The reason I ask this is because, like swimming, money management – or financial fitness as I prefer to call it – is a vital life skill and one best taught young to ensure that when the next generation hits adulthood they don’t sink among access to fast-credit and plenty of temptations.
This is even more important as we move to an ever-increasing cashless society,
where people use the tangible resource of notes and coins less and less.
According to a Cambridge University study, children's financial habits are formed by the age of seven, with most young people developing core behaviours that they will take into adulthood. Additionally, research commissioned by GoHenry (conducted in partnership with Censuswide and Development Economics) demonstrated the impact that financial education can have on an individual’s future career prospects. British people who didn’t receive financial education as a child are more likely to be unemployed, or earning less now than the national average. With most children still leaving school without any money management skills and parents not always having the confidence or tools to teach it themselves, there is a big financial literacy gap to fill.
I founded GoHenry in 2012 along with two other parents after realising that there was nothing in society that could help teach my own children about how to be good with money in an increasingly digital world. I started chatting with two parents about how topping up iTunes and games accounts was getting out of control and how I had started pinning my iTunes bills to the fridge door to explain to my two kids why their £4 pocket money was now only 50p.
This is where our idea started: to create the world’s first service that would empower young people with the freedom and confidence to use and understand money in a safe and increasingly cashless environment.
We now have more than two million customers in the UK and the US, and, more recently, in France and Spain through GoHenry’s acquisition of French fintech Pixpay. Pixpay also believes that good money management is a vital life skill.
I’m a firm believer that learning by doing is the best way to acquire life skills.
You can’t just be taught the theory of swimming, you need to get into the
Louise Hill, Co-founder and COO of financial education app GoHenry, is on a mission to empower young people
water and do it for yourself. It’s the same with money management. But financial education isn’t as exciting to a child as swimming, so you need to find a way to make them want to get into that pool and keep training.
This is where fintech comes in. For kids to understand the value of money and how to manage it, they need real-life experience of the digital economy.
Children have been left behind in this area. They see their parents using
them the means to spend digitally in a safe way – and learn from their mistakes!
After all, a £20 mistake at the age of seven is better than a £2,000 one, aged 27.
cards, taking money out at an ATM and shopping online, yet, before GoHenry, they had no means to learn how to manage money in this way. We need to let kids experience financial independence, to think critically about money and give
Our focus is entirely on improving the financial fitness of the six to 18-year-old demographic. We do this by helping parents create positive conversations with children around the four pillars of money management: earning, saving, spending and giving. We empower young people to earn pocket money from household chores, then save it or spend responsibly by creating a safe environment to make mistakes with no possibility of debt, no overdrawn accounts, and the option for parents to jump in via their own GoHenry app to help out if needed. Ultimately, we want to make financial education fun and true to real life to help with the transition into adulthood.
Our customers tell us that there aren’t the practical resources out there to empower children with these digital life skills. This is why we recently launched
Money Missions, which are in-app, gamified money lessons, designed to motivate kids to hone skills that will improve their financial literacy. Topics covered include money basics, earning, saving, investing, responsible spending, credit and money safety. Kids watch animated videos and bite-sized stories, take quizzes, and earn points and badges, while gaining real-world experience with money through GoHenry’s card and app. With Money Missions, GoHenry is the only company offering kids the ability to learn both the theory behind money management (via its gamified money lessons) and the practice (with its prepaid debit card and app).
While more schools are working with fantastic bodies like MyBnk and The Centre for Financial Capability to bring financial education workshops to children of all ages, this needs to be supported by the hands-on practical experience that fintech apps offer if the next generation is going to stay afloat in adulthood.
A pioneer in financial literacy for six to 18-year-olds, GoHenry is a financial education app and prepaid debit card with in-app, gamified money lessons that are designed to teach kids and teens how to be smart with money.
Launched in 2012 in the UK, GoHenry helps young people learn about money by empowering them with essential money management skills, tailored to their age, that they can put into practise in a safe environment – all with parental oversight.
GoHenry’s in-app financial education lessons, Money Missions, enhance this real-life learning with an interactive, rewarding and fun way for kids and teens to build essential money skills for life.
*In the US, the GoHenry card is issued by Community Federal Savings Bank, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured and certified bank, pursuant to a licence by Mastercard International. In the UK, the GoHenry card is issued by IDT Financial Services Limited, pursuant to a licence from Visa Europe.
IDT Financial Services Limited is a regulated bank, licensed by the Financial Services Commission, Gibraltar.
Registered office: 57-63 Line Wall Road, Gibraltar. Registered No. 95716.
COMPANY: GoHenry
FOUNDED: 2012
CATEGORY: Personal financial management (for kids!)
KEY PERSONNEL: Louise Hill, Co-founder and COO (above)
HEAD OFFICE: United Kingdom
OFFICES IN: United States; Spain & France (via Pixpay)
TEL: +44 (0)33 0100 7676
EMAIL: help@gohenry.co.uk
WEBSITE: gohenry.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/gohenry
TWITTER: @gohenry
WHAT WE DO Making six to 18-year-olds smart with money
For kids to understand the value of money and how to manage it, they need real-life experience of the digital economy
A vast river of data flows in and out of banks’ back offices. Yet many firms, hampered by ageing IT systems and inefficient manual processes, neither completely understand nor exercise sufficient control over this deluge of information. As a result, firms are plagued by avoidable operational losses and also fail to benefit fully from their data.
Piling added pressure on banks’ operations is the explosion in digital payments, given extra impetus by the pandemic. Increasing processing speeds is a must, but many firms struggle to meet the demand for ‘instant’.
Skills dependency represents another headache. Important operational knowledge is often lost when staff leave, and tools are required to prevent the haemorrhaging of corporate intelligence. Freeing up staff from repetitive, low-value activities, in order to carry out higher-value tasks, is also essential.
Greater agility, efficiency, accuracy and cost-effectiveness are necessary if banks intend to achieve superior margin, increase business volumes and retain customers. At SmartStream, we believe that innovative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies have a pivotal role to play in helping firms meet these goals.
AI and ML are ideally suited to handling complex data sets. They can detect subtle patterns in huge volumes of data in a way the human eye never could, facilitating understanding. Their ability to tackle vast quantities of information also means they can inject much-needed speed into back-office processes. They offer banks the opportunity to unlock the true value of their data, turning what is currently a burden into a valuable asset.
SmartStream has created sophisticated, AI-enabled solutions that transform the way firms manage and reconcile data.
Our systems combine multi-year operational experience with AI to deliver actionable information. They boost automation, helping banks to improve service levels, stem operational losses, achieve superior margin management, and perform more accurate data analysis. These products are already in use and offer proven cost-efficiency benefits.
Three years ago, SmartStream founded its Innovations Laboratory. The purpose of the laboratory is to apply AI and ML to the specific business issues faced by our clients. It collaborates with customers – including Tier 1 banks –on proof-of-concept projects, to identify high-value business cases where AI can create proven cost and efficiency
Banks are inundated by data. Advanced technologies could help firms process and understand this information more efficiently, yet the industry remains cautious about adoption
benefits. By using our AI technology in combination with banks’ own data and processes, these institutions are able to see for themselves the incredibly positive results that AI can bring.
SmartStream Air is another important development for us. An AI-based application, Air transforms reconciliations onboarding and processing, reducing tasks that traditionally take weeks or months to a matter of seconds. SmartStream Air requires no training or configuration – users simply upload raw data to the application, in pretty well any structured format. SmartStream Air then matches the information, using unsupervised AI.
Transactions can be streamed in real time – a useful asset when processing digital payments. The application handles complex data sets rapidly and accurately, also lowering dependency on specialist skills, such as configurational ones.
platform, demonstrates Affinity’s ability to boost efficiency. The bank had high levels of automation but wanted to tackle a residual pool of complex manual matching. Affinity was used to deal with this final percentage of manual matching, creating potential savings. For large firms like this, handling huge transaction volumes, such an efficiency gain can save millions of dollars.
We have also developed an ‘observational learning’ component, Affinity, that learns from the manual matching behaviours of human users. As well as forming part of SmartStream Air, it is being embedded across our existing solution suite, including in the technology used by our managed services arm.
A recent project, carried out in collaboration with a Tier 1 bank, to integrate Affinity with its Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM®) Reconciliations Premium
Importantly, by learning from the matching activities of skilled operational staff, Affinity preserves vital corporate intelligence, preventing it from being lost or disrupted by events such as staff absence or holidays. Its ability to learn rapidly from human users also frees up staff to concentrate on higher-value tasks.
In conclusion, AI and ML offer banks a potentially transformative way of overhauling their operations. Yet the pace of adoption remains slow. Given the many and relentless pressures they face, banks can surely no longer afford to hesitate. With reliable, powerful solutions now available, the financial industry must overcome its reservations and embrace these new technologies, taking advantage of the benefits they create.
SmartStream is a recognised leader in financial transaction management solutions that enable firms to improve operational control, reduce costs, build new revenue streams, mitigate risk and comply accurately with regulation.
Helping its customers through their transformative digital strategies, SmartStream provides a range of solutions for the transaction lifecycle with artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies embedded – which can be deployed in the Cloud or as managed services.
More than 2,000 clients, including many of the world’s top 100 banks, rely on SmartStream Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM®) and Reference Data Utility (RDU) solutions to deliver greater efficiency to their operations.
COMPANY: SmartStream
FOUNDED: 2000
CATEGORY: Transaction management
KEY PERSONNEL: Haytham Kaddoura, CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: UK
OFFICES IN: Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Singapore, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, UAE and USA
TEL: +44 (0) 207 898 0600
EMAIL: info@smartstream-stp.com
WEBISTE: smartstream-stp.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ smartstream-technologies/
TWITTER: @smartstream_stp
With reliable, powerful solutions now available, the financial industry must overcome its reservations and embrace these new technologies
Subscription management is 2022’s most in-demand consumer banking feature. And Minna Technologies gives banks, fintechs and merchants the embedded solutions for customers to review accounts, problem-free
The nature of a banking account has changed. Customers expect a richness to their account feature set, a frictionless experience, and transparent, instantaneous access to their finances. They expect actionable insights and want it to be self-service.
Digital-first fintechs, empowered by the next generation of open banking, are nimbly responding to the market shifts that this creates, such as the rise of the subscription economy.
The global market for subscriptions is currently valued at $650billion and is growing at 18 per cent CAGR. The market is forecast to be worth $1.5trillion by
2025, and Gartner predicts that, by 2023, 75 per cent of all B2C businesses will offer subscription services. These businesses are seeking additional channels, particularly set against the backdrop of the rising cost of living. This is where Minna’s technology can enrich other fintechs’ capabilities, boosting in-app engagement, supporting customer acquisition and creating new revenue streams.
The wave of subscription adoption, accelerated by COVID and projected to
continue, has forced banks to integrate self-serve, digital tools for management. The ‘subscription tax’ has also had a derivative effect on the banks’ balance sheets. Forrester research in January 2022, shows subscription-related disputes are costing a bank, on average, $136million per annum with three-quarters of banks saying that they have seen subscription-related dispute volumes increase by more than 10 per cent in the past 24 months.
Negative customer experience and increased risk exposure is on top of that cost. End-to-end solutions are the top or a critical priority for 82 per cent of banks
and 77 per cent are actively improving the user experience in digital channels.
Banks reflect that 75 per cent of their customers welcome self-service capabilities to keep control of their finances. A self-serve process means customers can easily manage their subscriptions in one place – their mobile banking app. This simplifies things for customers, improving overall app experience, but has also been shown to reduce call centre volumes. The solution is a win-win for the retail client and the bank.
Digital-first, nimble challengers with tech stacks and product bundles that complement each other, are bringing best-in-class technology together to accelerate the overall offering to consumers.
By embedding Minna’s subscription
management solution into neobanks, personal financial management apps (PFMs) and wealth management solutions, we are enabling an enriched experience for consumers.
This integration of fintech solutions illustrates the power of the next generation of open banking. Open
experience for their customers. By keeping the channel open, businesses have the chance to evolve the relationship with the customer and re-acquire them. To enable subscription businesses to more personally re-target these consumers with suitable offers and to keep the channel open, Minna gives merchants the chance to delight them with a seamless subscription management experience.
banking in its first iteration was a matter of banks opening up their data to fintechs and other players, as well as to each other. Today, we have a new body of transactional data that further enriches our ability to understand the market. Historically closed to each bank, the unlocking of this new data set allows us to create value that sits on top of these data sets. The future of this is multi-directional.
The final piece of the infrastructure is the engagement with the merchant networks who are offering subscription services. It is more important than ever to diversify and bolster digital channels and functionality to retain users, grow your customer base, and prevent unwanted churn.
In the United Kingdom and United States consumer protection regulation ensures that banks support subscription payment management, particularly on unidentified or unintended payments. However, when customers cancel, their bank card can also be blocked, which is done to protect the consumer from future wrongful payments being taken from the card.
Not every cancellation is a desire to sever ties with the merchant, though – often it is a call for increased flexibility or personalisation. In fact, according to Experian insights, nearly 80 per cent of those who do try to return, do so within three months of cancelling, but can’t due to the blocked card. This creates friction for subscription businesses who want to provide the best possible
Minna Technologies is a Swedish tech company established in 2016, which is on a mission to help retail banks deliver powerful digital experiences within subscription management.
Partnering with top-tier banks, fintechs and merchants globally, and backed by some of the biggest financial companies in the world, currently around 20 million people benefit from Minna’s subscription solutions.
COMPANY: Minna Technologies
FOUNDED: 2016
CATEGORY: Embedded finance
KEY PERSONNEL: Joakim Sjöblom, CEO & Founder (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Sweden
OFFICES IN: Sweden, UK and US
TEL: +44 (0) 776 9706 352
WEBSITE: minnatechnologies.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ minna-technologies/
TWITTER: @minnatech
Gartner predicts that, by 2023, 75 per cent of all B2C businesses will offer subscription services
The e-commerce world is borderless, payments should be, too. That’s the philosophy of TrustPay’s CEO David Rintel. Here, he shares his vision for providing innovative payment services and greater payment choice.
TFP50: What’s driving localisation at the checkout?
DAVID RINTEL: COVID has pushed more consumers online and accelerated e-commerce growth. It has acted as a catalyst for mobile and desktop payments and created demand for more ways to pay, especially for the unbanked and underserved. It’s also democratised selling and opened up new markets globally. In this environment, traditional card and bank payments are no longer enough. Shoppers want more choice, and fintechs and banks are eager to provide it. Generous funding has seen an explosion of payments innovation – from e-wallets,
Online businesses with cross-border reach are putting their faith in TrustPay. CEO David Rintel explains why local payments are in its DNA
super-apps and prepaid cards to SEPA bank transfers and local schemes.
TFP50: How has the role of payments evolved?
DR: With countless initiatives each year, the payment space is becoming more fragmented. In Europe, we have seen the emergence of ‘domestic champions’ – new payment methods that have quickly come to dominate their respective markets, such as MobilePay in Denmark and Blik in Poland, as well as account-to-account (A2A) payment providers and schemes (e.g. Ideal in The Netherlands or Europe’s MyBank), domestic cards schemes, and a multitude of buy now, pay later (BNPL) providers. It’s a similar story around the world.
The payment landscape, especially for merchants active in multiple markets, is becoming increasingly complex.
of this is supported by our highly skilled team of recognised payments experts.
TFP50: Is it enough to provide choice?
DR: It’s not about having the most payment methods – too much choice can create friction at the checkout. It’s about having the right mix. Customer demographics, geography, sector and risk all play a part in determining this. Speed, security, and ease of use are also factors that must be considered. Having a provider like TrustPay, which combines choice with a wealth of knowledge and expertise, can help merchants choose the right path and achieve their sales targets and operational KPIs.
TFP50: Businesses also want more convenient ways to meet their payment needs. What is TrustPay doing for them?
DR: Today’s businesses want global business accounts with more convenient
part of a merchant’s go-to-market strategy.
Technically advanced, reliable and responsive payment providers like TrustPay are now seen as important partners in meeting those growth ambitions, as well as by those looking to enhance customer experience and boost sales with access to localised payments solutions and global reach.
TrustPay was one of the first financial institutions in the region to be licensed to provide secure e-commerce payments across Europe.
We focus on providing innovative payment services for online businesses with cross-border reach through a wide variety of payment solutions.
Our portfolio includes worldwide online card payment processing, modern accounts for online businesses and innovative reconciliation tools.
»
It’s not about having the most payment methods – too much choice can create friction at the checkout. It’s about having the right mix
With constant innovation in online payments in mind, we are committed to continuously improving and expanding our offerings and reach.
TFP50: What makes TrustPay best-placed to help merchants easily navigate their options?
DR: We offer unprecedented payment choice and flexibility to support shoppers’ preferences, to improve conversion and gain better access to new markets. We provide our clients with everything they need to support domestic and international online payments, from processing cards and local digital wallets to risk management and reconciliation tools.
Our customisable multi-currency platform delivers insight, too, with premium features like our AI-driven authorisation ratio optimiser, which analyses approval ratios for countries and bank identification numbers (BINs) and gives tips on how to improve them. All
ways to pay, more modern interfaces and the option to give staff alternative payment methods, like prepaid cards.
To help them, we launched Ibanize, a stand-alone product that streamlines and automates reconciliation using virtual IBANS and sort codes. With Ibanize, they can onboard remotely and choose how to manage their accounts – via the internet or through their back office, using API banking. They can issue virtual and prepaid cards and facilitate multicurrency, instant, Faster and SEPA payments. It also affords 360-degree visibility across their users and accounts.
TFP50: What’s the significance of a good provider relationship?
DR: In the past five years, we’ve seen payments pushed up the boardroom agenda. It’s now a key
COMPANY: TrustPay
FOUNDED: 2009 CATEGORY: Payments
KEY PERSONNEL: David Rintel, CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Slovakia
TEL: +42 (0)123 2168 450
EMAIL: sales@trustpay.eu
WEBSITES: trustpay.eu ibanize.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/trustpay linkedin.com/showcase/trustpaycorporate-account/
To truly gauge the success of fintech, we have to move the discussion about financial inclusion beyond access and beyond borders.
Are the individuals, businesses and communities better off and more connected? Is banking better able to deliver the basics of our global monetary system and empower under-represented economies to become part of an increasingly digital and global future? What areas of financial technology can be seen as the most successful in this regard?
‘Look toward the East’ is what we say when people ask what fintech has done for society. This is where real economic impact has been felt the most. From digital payments, to cross-border remittance, to enabling new forms of commerce, what is happening throughout Asia and Southeast Asia is changing how we think about financial inclusion at scale.
It is worth noting that Southeast Asia is not a monolith; rather, it comprises 11 countries, each with their own language and culture. Micro, small, and medium-size enterprises (MSMEs) are the backbone of the economy, accounting for 97 per cent of all businesses in the region and employing 67 per cent of the working population, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB). They empower a digital economy that is key to improving the well-being and growth of local economies. But without connecting commerce to consumers, and without expanding digital payments from cities to rural areas and across borders, our work is only half done.
Imagine the power of an ecosystem,
interconnected with an array of mobile payment platforms that allow consumers to pay in a way they are familiar with, regardless of where they are, while merchants receive payments in local currency in real time.
In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of fintech apps throughout Asia and Southeast Asia that cater to the needs of the unbanked and underbanked. The digital economy is quickly becoming the norm in many parts of the region, propelled by e-commerce and on-demand platforms. In 2021, 69 per cent of consumers across the six largest Southeast Asian countries by GDP had made online purchases in the previous 12 months. More importantly, such digital ecosystems help to provide crucial payment and financial services for MSMEs who previously had no access at all. Fintech’s positive impact on these business owners – by providing applications that enable saving, lending and investing – cannot be overstated.
According to the Global Payments Report from FIS, in 2021, 44.1 per cent of all APAC point-of-sale (POS) transactions were carried out by mobile wallets, which are expected to outpace all other POS payment methods combined by 2023.
It is no surprise that local governments, from China to Malaysia, are leveraging such massive ecosystems to disperse electronic credit vouchers to their citizens as a means to encourage spending and to boost cashless payment adoption.
But the true power of the platform extends beyond the border. As mobile payment providers expand, localisation becomes more crucial and partnerships will play a more central role. A great example is the success of Alipay+, a new open-ecosystem solution from Ant Group that provides a single connection for accepting all relevant mobile payment types, enabling any-size merchant to better serve consumers from all over the world.
Integrated with more than 10 local leading e-wallet providers, Alipay+ seeks to expand consumer and commerce activity to millions more users across more than 55 countries, with partners from GCash and TrueMoney Wallet to Klarna.
This is where the impact of fintech is found – within the interdependence of individual needs and economic activity.
Theodora (Theo) Lau is the founder of Unconventional Ventures, a public speaker, and an advisor. She is the co-author of Beyond Good, and 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 Journal Of Digital Banking.
WEBSITE:
LINKEDIN:
Theodora Lau argues that payments beyond borders is the next evolution if fintech really wants to change the world
Virtual worlds in which assets are exchanged by economic avatars are an exciting prospect for the industry, says David Birch. But how to explain it in a way that wins people’s trust?
A March 2022 Wunderman Thompson Intelligence survey of more than 3,000 people between the ages of 16 and 65 in China, the US and the UK found that while three-quarters had heard of the metaverse, only 15 per cent said they could explain the concept to another person (and half of them were probably wrong).
When asked what their main concerns about it were, children's privacy came top, followed by other data protection, privacy and safety issues. Their answers illustrate a challenge to the digital financial services industry: how can we explain what the metaverse is and how can we give people confidence in it?
In terms of explaining, a good starting point is virtual worlds, which have been around for many years. The Financial Times defined the metaverse as a collection of shared virtual worlds, which people can navigate using their digital identity and their digital assets. This strikes me as a very straightforward and practical description. This is a world where transactions take place between what American futurist Jaron Lanier called ‘economic avatars’ (that is, virtual identities that can own property).
So what, then, are these digital assets? That’s a relatively easy one to answer:
they are tokens, and the protocols for moving them around is what is known as decentralised finance (defi for short). Digital assets and decentralised finance are together loosely known as Web 3.0. Frances Zelazny of Anonybit believes the metaverse is dependent on Web 3.0 and that users can expect ‘increased democratisation, inclusion and user control, instead of having big tech and centralised gatekeepers’ as a result.
So, you might say the metaverse is virtual worlds plus digital assets/Web 3.0 plus digital identity. It’s the last of those where we need some new thinking if the metaverse is to be of any use to business.
We already have the tools and techniques needed to implement digital identity in the form of private keys, digital signatures, etc. What we need now is a way of using them in a secure manner. This is where credentials come into play. They are the missing piece of our jigsaw: relationships that enable transactions in what you might call ‘the reputation economy’. Here, the fundamental enabler of economic activity is not the identity of counterparties but their credentials, not who they are but what they are – be that a regulated financial institution or a rideshare driver with five stars.
Credentials, and more specifically verifiable credentials (VCs), have a crucial role in resolving the clash of the Titans – between the emerging metaverse and the growing demands for data privacy.
A combination of virtual worlds, Web 3.0 and verifiable credentials is a potentially very creative combination, in my opinion – a platform for amazing new products and services.
The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, points to the field of zero-knowledge proofs – the idea that you can verify that
something happened without receiving any private details about it, which is a powerful technique for delivering both privacy and security in a decentralised system. He is absolutely right. There is groundbreaking work going on now to bring zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable credentials together.
Another visionary in this area is Philip Rosedale, who founded Linden Lab (the home of Second Life). He went on to launch a VR startup that is now investing in Linden Lab. He told The Information recently that persistent pseudonyms are at the heart of the metaverse ‘ because not everybody wants to use their true name or true face’.
When you put all this together –virtual worlds where people want to do business, decentralised finance moving tokens around, and persistent pseudonymous identifiers with verifiable credentials as the token owners – I think we have a consistent definition of the metaverse – one that also gives the financial services sector a strategic outline for managing customers’ digital assets and digital identities in order to keep them safe in this new world.
A fintech author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services, David Birch argued that Identity Is The New Money
as far back as 2014 in a book of the same name. Based in the UK, Birch is also a venture partner at 1414 Ventures, a US-based fund that invests in early-stage startups in the digital identity market.
WEBSITE: 15mb.ltd
TWITTER: @dgwbirch
Mitek takes biometrics beyond onboarding to put identity verification at the heart of enjoyable, secure experiences
Identity verification marks the start of any financial business relationship. But for decades, identity verification has been associated almost exclusively with banks’ know your customer (KYC) processes.
As consumers around the world gravitate even more to digital lifestyles, identity verification is no longer only about preventing risk at the start of a relationship, it's now an opportunity to create enjoyable, secure customer experiences at every step of the journey with a brand.
Mitek is the leader in helping fintechs harness identity verification to deliver rewarding customer experiences – and gain a competitive advantage.
Widespread use of mobile banking and fintech technology has drawn bad actors that target all points of every transaction, seeking to exploit the trust customers implicitly put in their financial providers.
That trust is easily broken. Fintechs and financial firms must earn it anew with every interaction, protecting legitimate customers from imposters.
To guard against the omnipresent threat of account takeover, continual verification is required, based on knowledge that criminals can’t easily obtain through theft or social engineering. Identity verification is the answer, conducted in a way that’s nothing like old-fashioned KYC.
Simply put, friction is fractious. Strong, strategic use of identity verification
throughout the customer lifecycle makes the process remarkably seamless and creates user experiences that win customers’ hearts and wallets.
A good identity solution serves as a barrier to fraudsters and an enabler for legitimate customers at every step in the customer journey. Today’s passwordbased identity solutions are built to allow customers to easily and securely access their money and accounts and transact with confidence. But they are vulnerable.
A better identity solution allows customers to opt into using the biometric data they supply during onboarding for ongoing account access. This approach goes above and beyond consumers’ demand for fast and convenient access, and for their accounts to be secure.
Biometric-based authentication is superior to passwords in three ways:
■ ‘Good’ passwords are not good enough. They prove nothing more than the person who is trying to gain access has obtained the ‘keys to the house’ – not whether they are the true owner
■ Knowledge-based authentication is vulnerable to social engineering. Poor password hygiene is a fact of life, and this information is relatively easy for fraudsters to extract
■ Biometric-based authentication meets consumers’ historically duelling demands for convenience (frictionless login) and security (strong authentication methods). Legacy authentication approaches are giving way to methods that establish something the user is (such as biometric identifiers) and something they have (such as a known mobile device)
The ultimate identity solution allows individuals to own and manage their
personal digital identity – one based on credentials, biometric information, behaviour, documents, and all the personal identifiable information (PII) that makes them unique. This private data can be securely stored in an identity wallet, enabling previously verified identities to be anonymously reused.
When a fintech or bank asks to verify a user’s identity, the customer can use the wallet to share their verified identity, or certain elements of it, based on the level of assurance required.
IDV is no longer only about preventing risk at the start of a relationship
In this way, biometric-based authentication gives customers the ideal digital experience: fast, frictionless access, coupled with utmost security.
Numerous factors call for reverifying a customer’s identity. A multitude of fintech apps on customer phones can result in sporadic access, making re-verification prudent. Sanctions and anti-money laundering (AML) regulations can shift quickly and dramatically. An account holder’s
identity or beneficiary may change. Even seemingly small requests, such as change of address and mobile device rebinding, can signal illicit activity, as can transaction inconsistencies or unusual financial behaviour. Ideally, all these events should trigger reverification.
Just as customers should be empowered to share their identity credentials in a situation-specific way, the identity platform should be equally flexible. The best identity platforms offer:
■ Plug-and-play deployment with easy configuration and control
■ Customised journeys, tailored to use cases and risk levels
■ Easily built workflows that optimise the user experience
■ Low- or no-code deployment to speed implementation without an army of developers
Mitek’s identity verification solutions allow fintechs around the world to take biometrics beyond onboarding, to reach new heights in customer experience.
Mitek is a global leader in digital access, founded to bridge the physical and digital worlds. Trusted by 7,500 of the world’s largest organisations, it helps companies reduce risk and meet regulatory requirements. Mitek’s advanced identity verification technologies and global platform make digital access faster and more secure than ever, providing companies with new levels of control, deployment ease and operation, while protecting the entire customer journey.
WHAT WE DO Digital IDV trusted the world over
COMPANY: Mitek Systems
FOUNDED: 1986
CATEGORY: Identity, KYC and AML solutions
KEY PERSONNEL: Max Carnecchia, CEO
HEAD OFFICE: San Diego, US OFFICES IN: London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris and New York
TEL: +44 (0) 20 3800 8086
WEBSITE: miteksystems.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/miteksystems/
TWITTER: @miteksystems
The emergence of open banking has created an inspiring environment of innovation and collaboration.
In the very recent past, banks were responsible for building and delivering most, if not all of the services they provided. Today, financial institutions are partnering with fintech and software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to offer a diverse range of services that are enabled by APIs and fast and secure data-sharing.
The partnerships between traditional financial institutions and fast-moving open banking players are already creating innovative products and services. What is truly exciting about this revolution is the
fact that it is unprecedently easy to leverage the benefits.
Trovata, a data-driven enterprise fintech platform and global provider in corporate banking APIs, is a leader in the fast-developing open banking space. It works closely with banks, empowering them to provide an entirely new cash management experience for commercial clients and drive digital transformation.
“The wave of open banking is moving from consumer and small business into the mid-market and enterprise,” says Brett Turner, Founder and CEO of Trovata.
“We offer banks a tech platform for their clients that goes a long way beyond what any traditional online banking portals can provide.”
In the UK and EU, open banking originally emerged as a method of promoting competition in the payments and banking industry. However, the
impact of open banking has already been much more significant and far-reaching than this founding goal, leading to the establishment of a new data-sharing infrastructure that has set the foundations of a rich, diverse ecosystem of financial services and products.
Unlike legacy bank data exchanges and file formats that were introduced back in the 1970s, open banking enables banks to transmit data to customers quickly, directly and securely using APIs. It is fast becoming a leading method for bank data, such as balances, transactions and payments, to be transmitted dynamically with low latency and richer metadata.
Open banking not only boosts security and performance, it also unlocks automation opportunities and
»We’ve built the largest library of corporate banking APIs in the world
gives users and developers access to innovative, intuitive digital experiences. Trovata enables these experiences and is a leading provider of open banking services for banks.
On June 6 2022, Trovata announced that it had closed a $27million Series B funding round and opened offices in London and Amsterdam to fuel European expansion. Just three years old, it is now the fastest growing treasury platform in the US, with hundreds of enterprise and mid-market customers that manage more than $100billion in cash and manage in excess of 50 million bank transactions.
Banks that use Trovata’s open banking platform can access thousands of other banks using corporate and open banking APIs, enabling them to provide API-based payments to customers, gain
access to multi-bank, normalised data across banks and regions, and develop open banking connections on the fly by utilising an extensive library of curated APIs.
“We’ve built the largest library of corporate banking APIs in the world and an entirely new end-to-end platform that is an operating system to manage cash better, faster, and smarter,” Turner adds. “We enable businesses to grow and optimise, which is critical in today’s fast-changing marketplace.”
The platform offers finance and treasury professionals a modern user experience and provides developers with the ability to build custom applications. Trovata is natively built on open banking and pioneered fast-connecting direct API integrations for wholesale banking that streamline setup and deployment times with no IT support required. This allows Trovata to power its web and mobile apps that automate multi-bank cash reporting, reconciliation, general ledger entry, cash flow analysis, and cash forecasting.
Trovata is a single gateway that connects
thousands of open banking and corporate APIs across the UK, EU, US, Australia, Singapore and Japan.
From bank data normalisation and categorisation to account-to-account (A2A) payments, Trovata enables banks and corporate clients to unlock the power of open banking across geographies.
The key functionalities that Trovata offers include multi-banking aggregation and account-to-account payment, which can be delivered almost instantly. If customers wish to offer A2A payments, a pay-by-bank option can be embedded into the checkout process. When a user wishes to complete a purchase, they simply select that option, choose their bank and then initiate a payment, after which they will be directed to their banking portal for authentication and authorisation. Once this has been completed, customers return to the checkout flow and the order is completed.
This is just one example of the kind of fast and seamless experience that customers will soon come to expect. For incumbents, delivering open banking-powered experiences may look daunting. In fact, it is now easier than ever. By using the power of Trovata, banks can truly revolutionise their commercial and corporate financial services today and power the growth of tomorrow.
Trovata makes it easy for businesses to automate cash reporting, forecasting, analysis, and money movement.
By bridging the gap between banks and accounting systems, Trovata helps companies gain powerful insights into their cash flows and facilitate better, quicker business decisions.
As an end-to-end fintech platform for managing cash, Trovata collaborates with the world’s largest financial institutions to deliver next-gen banking services.
Redefining how cash is managed
COMPANY: Trovata
FOUNDED: 2019
CATEGORY: Cash management
KEY PERSONNEL: Brett Turner,
Founder & CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: San Diego, US
OFFICES IN: Europe and UK
EMAIL: marketing@trovata.io
WEBSITE: trovata.io/
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/trovata-io/
TWITTER: @Trovata_io
UNBUNDLING BUSINESS FINANCE: WHY IT MATTERS TO MILLIONS
Richard Prime, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Sonovate, explains how it’s taking the stress out of paying us for the work we do
Technology has changed banking at every level, transforming the way that both businesses and individuals engage with the financial system. Customers are moving away from single, monolithic banking institutions with outdated, legacy IT systems that evolved along product lines and customer channels and that are now at odds with how
customers, especially Millennials and Gen Zers, think and behave.
In the consumer space, where customers are unbundling their consumption at a pretty fast rate, they want the flexibility to pick and choose their financial services as well. This disruption is evident throughout the financial ecosystem – from PayPal and Google Wallet disrupting traditional cards, cash and cheques, to services such as Currensea, which allows people to spend abroad from their bank account without any foreign exchange fees.
In the business space, too, we have seen small businesses turn away from banks (many of whom turned off their normal lending taps during COVID), towards more specialised providers, where they no longer have to accept a raft of services they don’t want or need and where they have a nimbler and more flexible experience.
Fintechs, such as Sonovate, are unburdened by legacy technology and can focus directly on customer needs and expectations. By having a micro-service platform, multiple solutions and tools can be made
As flexible workers become more important in the world economy, they need a fast, agile ecosystem that helps them get paid easily so they can focus on doing a great job
available, configured to each and every customer’s unique needs.
This isn’t just about instant gratification, however. The flexibility for businesses to pick and choose which services they need is more crucial than ever in the current environment as they emerge from the pandemic and try to make long-term strategic decisions. This resonates particularly for our key vertical – the recruitment sector – for whom, without a steady stream of cash and access to finance,
agencies simply can’t operate at their full potential or grow and scale. But this is also the case across other sectors, too. This is where fintechs come into their own: with less friction and superior user experiences, the industry is making business finance as flexible as personal finance, bringing greater access for businesses at a lower cost.
Flexibility is needed in the context of people, too – on top of macro-economic uncertainty, businesses are also dealing with the future of work preferences. Our regular market research shows that people want to work more flexibly and businesses know that, but they don't necessarily have the mechanisms to make it possible. Fintech tools enable businesses to be agile and adapt to the changing world.
One of our reports found that nearly a third of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) consistently pay their freelancers and contractors late. And half of freelancers said these late payments have impacted their ability to pay their own bills on time. Businesses with freelance and contract workers are crying out for access to simple, flexible finance on demand to grow and pay their workers on time. The booming market of influencers and content-creators is also a major opportunity for businesses to use embedded finance to meet the needs and expectations of younger people who expect to get paid immediately.
As flexible workers become more important in the world economy, they need a fast, agile ecosystem that helps them get paid easily so they can focus on doing a great job. And, as traditional banking institutions are failing to meet their needs, so services are becoming unbundled and fintechs are taking market share.
Sonovate’s business purpose is to create a support structure that gives businesses and individuals the security and flexibility they need to thrive. Unbundling matters because, ultimately, it means businesses are only paying for what they need, with targeted solutions, better products and improved customer experience.
Sonovate is a leading provider of embedded finance and payment solutions for the contingent workforce.
The company offers finance and technology services to recruitment businesses, consultancies and labour market places that engage contractors and freelancers across the world. Its global technology platform takes the hassle out of managing contractors’ appointments, assignments and payments. It enables companies to get back to growing their businesses, confident that funds are in place to help meet payment deadlines.
Since it began funding organisations in 2014, Sonovate has lent more than £2.75billion to 3,300-plus businesses in 40 countries to ensure more than 30,000 people are paid in full and on time for the services they provide.
COMPANY: Sonovate
FOUNDED: 2014 CATEGORY: Payroll finance KEY PERSONNEL: Damon Chapple (above) and Richard Prime, (right) Co-Founders and Co-CEOs
HEAD OFFICE: United Kingdom
TEL: +44 (0)20 7112 4949
EMAIL: hello@sonovate.com
WEBSITE: sonovate.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/sonovate
TWITTER: @Sonovate
Delio is building the end-to-end digital infrastructure that streamlines how institutions connect their clients with private markets
As private markets continue to scale, it’s become increasingly clear that not only are more financial institutions turning to alternative assets, but they are also growing their focus exponentially.
Yet, as shown in McKinsey’s Global Private Markets Review 2022, that scaling has brought new levels of operational complexity. Firms that are looking to establish themselves at the forefront of the sector are trying to overcome this challenge by digitising their strategy.
According to the report, private markets assets under management (AUM) have grown by 19 per cent annually since 2016, with specialist firms increasing in size by 60 per cent over the same period. The drivers behind this growth of private markets are frequently touched upon; increased investor demand, more promising returns, and a chance
to diversify investor portfolios. It is not surprising, then, that scale is on many institutions’ agendas. But, while most industries see the benefits of scale through improved operational efficiency, in private markets it adds a new level of complexity that needs to be proactively managed. One way of overcoming this complexity is through digitisation.
“Increased operational complexity – driven by additional asset classes and geographies, more fund vehicles and separate accounts, and a larger and more diverse set of limited partners (each with a growing set of bespoke reporting demands) – has mitigated the extent to which large GPs [private equity general partners] benefit from scale economies.” – McKinsey’s Global
While private markets remain in the infancy stage of digital maturity, there is a notable shift in technology adoption as a small number of leaders are allocating more resources to digitise and stay at the forefront of industry developments.
Automating repetitive tasks has been a critical driver for digital tools. It not only helps speed up the investment process but also frees up substantial
time that can be better used elsewhere.
Simultaneously, online portals enable limited partners (LPs) to create a better client experience that offers investors more active control. Among the solutions that early players turn to, are:
■ Data warehouses to share and manage all documents in one digital hub, serving as a single source of truth for professionals
■ Real-time analytics from which professionals can generate data-led insights
■ Automated data input processes, such as geospatial analyses, allowing professionals to concentrate on higher value analyses and more intricate parts of the due diligence process
■ Natural language processing tools that enable professionals to capture information on the performance of their portfolio companies. This, ultimately, leads to faster reporting
»One of the main pitfalls facing firms is often investing in technology blindly and hoping that it will solve all operational complexities Gareth Lewis, CEO
David Newman, Chief Commercial Officer at Delio adds: “Next to automation, we also noticed a growing need for customisation among our clients in the private markets space.
By implementing technology that complements and enhances their existing processes, financial professionals can free up their own time, work more efficiently and offer a more targeted client experience.”
While technology offers many solutions, digitally-led projects still require a lot of input to ensure they deliver against their objectives. McKinsey identified a few key learnings but emphasised that anyone who wants their digital strategy to thrive needs to get the basics right. This means clearly articulating what you hope to achieve through digitising, as well as considering the different use cases and their implications.
Gareth Lewis, Delio’s CEO, agrees. “One of the main pitfalls facing firms is often investing in technology blindly and hoping that it will solve all operational complexities,” says Lewis.
“Companies need to have a thorough understanding of what they would like to achieve in the short and long term to make the best use of the digital solutions available. After all, digitising your private markets offering will trickle into your
wider business operations. To take a holistic approach to digitisation, it needs to be seen as a wider operational shift and requires early buy-in from decision-makers.”
It is important to note that digitisation alone is not a ‘silver bullet’ for financial institutions looking to scale their private market offering. While increasing their digital maturity is a major step in the
Most financial institutions try to connect their clients with alternative assets in the same way; inefficient distribution models, manual processes, siloed data, and fragile regulatory frameworks.
This isn’t a viable long-term strategy, so Delio has rewritten the playbook. We combine highly configurable technology with unconflicted expertise to create the end-to-end digital private markets infrastructure for the world’s most respected financial institutions and new entrants.
More than 90 banks, wealth managers, angel networks and other organisations trust Delio to power their private market propositions.
right direction, significant care and consideration needs to be given to how digital tools are integrated into existing business models, or used to enhance them.
That said, when managed effectively, technology has the potential to offer financial institutions a significant advantage as they offer clients greater access to alternative assets.
COMPANY: Delio
FOUNDED: 2015 CATEGORY: Wealth management
KEY PERSONNEL: Gareth Lewis (top), Co-founder and CEO & David Newman (below), Co-founder and Chief Commercial Offficer
HEAD OFFICE: Cardiff, UK OFFICES IN: Europe, North America, APAC and Middle East
TEL: +44 (0) 29 2105 1370
WEBSITE: deliogroup.com
EMAIL: team@deliogroup.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/delio
TWITTER: @DelioGroup
James Allum, SVP Europe at Payoneer, sets out how fintechs can support small and medium-sized businesses and help contribute to a better society
Innovation in financial services – or fintech – has caused a significant shift in how businesses operate around the world. Growth in these digital services give us the tools to both drive economic prosperity and reduce global inequalities.
Countries with deeper, more developed financial systems achieve higher economic growth, faster reductions in poverty and better income equality. In the UK for example, the fintech sector contributes more than £6billion to the economy each year.
Recent economic shocks have underlined the key role played by small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in economic development. These companies create meaningful jobs, foster local economies and support communities. Across the UK, SMBs make up 99 per cent of businesses, employing millions and adding £2.3trillion to the economy in 2021. If the fintech industry is going to truly make a meaningful difference to society, SMBs must be at the heart of that mission.
In the past, trading across borders for SMBs involved a lot of complexities, but
the push into the digital world has represented a shift for businesses. Cross-border commerce has emerged as a significant growth opportunity and payments solutions have evolved to facilitate that growth.
All businesses are now able to quickly accept overseas payments and transfer money abroad with minimal cost and little time wasted. Removing payments friction has introduced SMBs to new audiences and markets, resulting in growth and expansion.
Companies like Payoneer can help facilitate fast and simple global payments for businesses. Payoneer’s global network of banking and financial partners enables SMB customers to receive funds in almost any currency via local bank transfers, rather than international wire transfers, saving them up to 70 per cent on payment fees, compared to traditional correspondent bank wires.
More broadly, Payoneer has enabled small businesses in 190 countries to open global, multi-currency accounts and pay across borders just as easily as they do locally. It is with this technology that businesses have been able to expand their opportunities, without needing to grow to the size of a large enterprise.
A frequent barrier for SMBs is access to lending. Financing is critical in driving growth, and loans play a key role.
Research has found that almost one in two small businesses (48 per cent) would be unable to grow without added capital. Previously, they were faced with stringent in-person review processes, which often resulted in a rejection for funding. But financial technology has facilitated online lending and innovative digital-first cash flow solutions, simplifying and accelerating the process. Data has put power in the hands of SMB sellers with new digital marketplaces, providing access to better seller data. This simplifies the underwriting process for lenders and means SMBs can access capital funding to help their business grow.
Payoneer offers a working capital solution of up to $750,000 in instant funds, which enables market sellers like Westend Toys, a small e-commerce business in the United States, to seize expansion opportunities.
“For small growing e-commerce businesses like us, easy and cheap access to growth capital is essential to our success,” says Westend Toys. “Payoneer’s Capital Advance programme is easy to
understand, quick to get cash in your hand, and offers very competitive rates.”
It is through this fintech boom that barriers have been removed, and expansion has been made possible.
Innovation is moving at pace. The emergence of the metaverse has demonstrated a further shift into the digital world. E-commerce is at the forefront of this movement, with giants like Amazon incorporating early metaverse technology into its marketplace.
Over the coming decade, how businesses interact with customers will become entirely digital, and fintech companies will play a crucial role in helping SMBs navigate these new spaces.
Given their inherent digital nature, the importance of financial innovators will continue to grow to ensure SMBs can continue to drive economic growth and contribute to a brighter future for society – and we are extremely excited to go on that journey with them.
» Companies like Payoneer can help facilitate fast and simple payments for business
Payoneer (NASDAQ: PAYO) is the world’s go-to partner for digital commerce, everywhere. From borderless payments to boundless growth, Payoneer promises any business, in any market, the technology, connections and confidence to participate and flourish in the new global economy.
Since 2005, Payoneer has been imagining and engineering a truly global ecosystem, so the entire world can realise its potential.
Powering growth for customers who range from aspiring entrepreneurs in emerging markets to the world’s leading digital brands like Airbnb, Amazon, Google, Upwork and Walmart, Payoneer offers a universe of opportunities, open to you.
COMPANY: Payoneer
FOUNDED: 2005
CATEGORY: Payments
KEY PERSONNEL: James Allum (right), SVP Europe
HEAD OFFICE: New York
OFFICES IN: 25 countries
WEBSITE: payoneer.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/payoneer/
TWITTER: @Payoneer
Ahon Sarkar, General Manager of Helix by Q2, looks at how embedded finance is putting a human face on financial services
Companies know more about us and our shopping, eating and watching habits than at any other time in history.
If you use a streaming service like Netflix, you already know this because the service uses all that data to customise your entertainment offerings. And streaming services are amateurs compared to the sophisticated personalisation practised by Amazon and social networking companies like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
As consumers, we've come to expect that all the tech products we use are built around our unique needs. In fact, all of these products are built around us. They use what they know about us –context – to constantly serve up content or products that we want, which keeps us coming back for more.
But there’s one industry that has failed to harness the vast amounts of customer data to customise our experience: banking. Think about it. When you first opened your accounts, you were probably given just a few options, based on how much money you had. The problem with this model is that it assumes wealth (or lack of it) determines needs, which is absurd.
So, regardless of your particular circumstances, your bank serves up a limited menu of products, and those products don’t change over time, which is even more absurd. A single 30-year-old who makes $60,000 a year will have different needs that are very
different to a 40-year-old parent earning the same salary. Yet those two people will see exactly the same content when they log into their bank accounts.
I’m not blaming the banks. Their legacy core systems make differentiating customers cumbersome and prohibitively expensive. In the past few years, however, there’s been a massive transformation, driven by new technology that allows almost any type of company to build bespoke banking products around the consumer.
Q2’s Helix is a Cloud-native core, banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that’s purpose-built for embedded finance. We give clients the basics of banking (accounts, cards, payments, data and controls, admin tools and monetisation solutions) so they can create and offer differentiated and personalised banking products that are unique to their users.
With Helix, fintechs, tech companies and consumer brands can embed banking solutions into their ecosystems. The result is that companies are solving different problems for different audiences, and we’re finally seeing differentiated products built around people. Most exciting to me is that our Cloud architecture has drastically reduced the cost of servicing user accounts, so companies are incentivised to create products that cater to customers who have previously been underserved by traditional banking products, including the underbanked and the unbanked.
To put it simply, Helix is making finance human. Take a look at innovators such as Acorns, Betterment, Credit Karma and Gusto, each of which is using Helix to solve a problem and deliver personalised banking services.
Acorns, the first micro-investing platform in the US, worked with Helix to add an embedded bank account to its investing solution. The result is a unique all-in-one (banking, investment and retirement) account for as little as $3 per month, tailored for those just starting to grow their wealth. The company uses context to help customers make financial decisions.
Betterment, one of the first digital investor advisors in the industry, delivers customised, automated investment portfolios to its core customer base of millennial professionals. It used Helix to offer a Visa debit card and mobile-first checking account.
Credit Karma, once primarily known for providing credit scores and curated financial offers, now has banking services that include a high-yield savings account and a no-fee checking account with a debit card.
Gusto, the HR payroll platform, recognised that millions of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck and often have to use credit between paydays. Using Helix to embed banking into its app, it launched Gusto Wallet, available to anyone who gets paid through Gusto. Not only can users with automatic deposit access their pay earlier (interest-free), but there’s also a debit card that helps employees track their spending behaviour.
Helix gives innovative fintechs and brands the building blocks of banking – accounts, cards, payments, data and controls, admin tools, and monetisation solutions – to make it easy to embed personalised financial experiences that easily integrate and scale.
COMPANY: Helix by Q2
FOUNDED: 2022
These companies are in the vanguard of making finance more human. They’re using data and context to mitigate risk and offer consumers tailored products at lower costs. Customers are benefiting by finally being offered products designed to meet their specific needs. And, importantly, the product offerings progress as the needs of the customer change. This evolution creates stickiness. It’s all about the ‘sunk cost fallacy’ – the more time, energy and effort you put into something, the less willing you are to leave it. Chances are, if a customer spends five or 10 years building up context and unlocking new features along the way, they’ll be in no hurry to go elsewhere.
CATEGORY: Banking-as-a-service
KEY PERSONNEL: Ahon Sarkar, General Manager (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Austin, Texas, USA
EMAIL: info@helix.q2.com
WEBSITE: helix.q2.com/
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ showcase/helix-by-q2/
TWITTER: @helixbyq2
We give clients the basics of banking so they can create banking products that are unique to their users
Cross-border contentment is within our grasp – a world of painless, real-time payments for any business, anywhere
Nirvana – understood in Buddhism as the final goal, a transcendent state of existence without pain or suffering.
So, what’s ‘payments Nirvana’ – which is something we talk about a lot at OpenPayd? It’s a state where every payment is frictionless and instant, no matter the sender, no matter the recipient, no matter the currency.
In this state, money would be transferred from one person to another in real time. No huge fees, no three- to five-day wait, just a seamless, painless experience. We’re already feeling Zen!
At OpenPayd, payments Nirvana is something we very much believe is
worth attaining and we’ll pursue it with everything we’ve got.
Make no mistake, this will be a long journey, but the destination is ultimately assured because more than 55 countries are already offering real-time payments.
Why can’t all of them be so easy? Well, to begin with, each country has its own specific infrastructure and capabilities, along with its own regulatory requirements. Creating real-time payment rails takes time – when it comes to handling people’s money, there are no shortcuts. Even so, accessing those rails in different currencies can still be clunky, especially if there is an
foreign currency conversion involved.
What’s the solution, then? We see it as being two-pronged.
Firstly, you need a global network of banking partnerships. This is what allows you to connect to different real-time payment rails in different currencies.
Then there are the technical requirements. Enabling high-speed currency transfers, 24/7, requires highly robust financial infrastructure. Luckily, this is our area of expertise.
We’re not talking about one giant, global payment rail. Payments Nirvana, to us, means people should be able to send and receive money in multiple
ways – cards, bank transfers, blockchain. Payments Nirvana will be ‘rails-agnostic’, not ‘one rail to rule them all’.
All of this can help promote businesses and individuals across the globe, because a reliable, fast payments network gives everyone access to their funds faster. There are plenty of examples of it today.
» People should be able to send and receive money in multiple ways… Payments Nirvana will be ‘rails-agnostic’, not ‘one rail to rule them all’
When OpenPayd partnered with Bitfinex, for example, we were able to give its customers access to our network of rails and licences, meaning that its European customers could purchase cryptocurrency via bank transfer and convert their crypto back into fiat, and withdraw it in real time. This radically cut the cost and time involved for Bitfinex customers to top up their accounts.
The regulators will also play a key role in this journey. Global payments have undoubtedly improved in the last decade and the G20 made their further improvement a key priority in 2020. So, we can hope for even greater speed in cross-border transfers.
If you want to see the future coming into focus, then look at what’s happening in the Nordic region. P27, a partnership between several Nordic banks, which is set to launch fully in 2023, will allow the instant flow of money in and between Denmark, Sweden and Finland for individuals and businesses. It’s the world's first real-time, cross-border, multi-currency payment system.
While it’s important to always have the universal real time end goal, in sight, developments like P27 that happen along the way will do much to improve and enhance global business.
Meanwhile, we’ll continue to strive towards Nirvana because we believe so strongly in its value and we invite any business to join us on this path to enlightenment.
OpenPayd builds embedded finance and banking-as-a-service infrastructure that powers business growth.
With OpenPayd’s financial services infrastructure, innovative companies are building new products, streamlining their operations and managing their payments on a global scale.
The OpenPayd platform delivers a suite of banking and payments infrastructure – accounts, FX, international and domestic payments, card acquiring and open banking services – all via a single API.
With a growing network of licences across the UK, Europe and North America, OpenPayd is providing the banking infrastructure that digital businesses need to thrive.
COMPANY: OpenPayd
FOUNDED: 2018 CATEGORY: Payments
KEY PERSONNEL: Iana Dimitrova, CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: UK OFFICES IN: Turkey, Bulgaria, Malta, France, Belgium, and the US
TEL: +44 (0)20 8194 5050
EMAIL: contact@openpayd.com
WEBSITE: openpayd.com/uk
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/openpayd
TWITTER: @openpayd
There’s no denying that financial services have a lot on their plate. But that’s precisely why they need to step back and make some fundamental decisions, argues Dr. Leda Glyptis Chief Client Office for 10x Banking
When we all agreed that ‘change is the new normal’, we didn’t mean it like this. We didn’t mean we would need to comply with open banking standards in a number of jurisdictions with different flavours of the regulation, while also wrapping our heads around embedded finance; while also coming up to speed with various faster payments regimes; while also trying to stay one step ahead of cyber terrorists, hacktivists and garden-variety infiltration; while also trying to work out whether we can afford to not upgrade our loan origination platform for another budget cycle since money has to go into the liquidity management platform this year; while also handling compressed margins; while also struggling to attract and retain a new type of talent; while also trying to work out where we stand on digital identity assets, and on CBDCs and what handling programmable financial assets will mean…
Frankly, it was already too much before we even started having to think about the ethics of programmable money and what fail-safes you would need in place in order to protect citizenship and individual self-determination or what our purpose as financial services provider may be on the metaverse. And yet, here we are.
It is all happening at once. And it is all happening in context. In the context of the business you are running, right now. In the context of the
legacy systems you are still carrying. In the context of your varying and various regulatory regimes whose demands will only get greater. In the context of your competitor just going live with an embedded commerce partner while you are still struggling with mainframes. In the context of several programmes of work ongoing – and maybe going wrong.
And in that context, you have to make choices. Not the choice of what to do. Sadly, you have to do it all – the world waits for no man and no banker. The choice is not even to double down on one thing and leave everything else to others, each neatly focussing on a
In this moment in time, in our industry, we get the opportunity to do more and make more of an impact on the societies we live in than ever before
vertical until we ‘do them all’. Because things are not just all happening at once, they are also inter-dependent. What you do with embedded payments is linked to how you think about your security architecture and linked to how you think about identity assets and linked to how you think about tokenisation and linked
to whether you put the consumer at the centre of things or not, and what it is you put them in the centre as – a person with a life and loved ones and worries and fears and hopes… or as a wallet?
The point is, whether we become human-centric or customer-centric is a choice. Whether we protect our societies from the potential for inequality and the loss of freedom that certain ways of managing identity – or, indeed programmable money – entail, is a choice that cannot wait till after you have built most of your identity management infrastructure, even though the big questions aren’t here yet.
How we embed financial capabilities in a fully immersive reality cannot wait until after you’ve enabled payments and done a bit of advertising on the metaverse –because that comes out of the marketing budget so you don’t need to be as rigorous in your whys and wherefores. But we still can’t wait because whether we think about financial wellbeing or just payments and loans in this new immersive reality is a choice.
All of it is a choice. A choice we get to make. A choice we are not currently making. A choice we must make.
In this moment in time, in our industry, we get the opportunity to do more and make more of an impact on the societies we live in than ever before.
What impact we choose to make is – you got it – a matter of choice.
Leda is the Chief Client Officer for 10x Banking, a Cloud-native core banking provider, enabling banks to fully compete in a digital economy.
Leda is a recovering banker, writer and speaker on transformation, digital capability-building, embedded finance and open banking.
TWITTER: @LedaGlyptis
It is no longer enough to have an easy-to-use mobile banking app or friendly customer care professionals to answer questions or handle complaints. Today's consumer expects their financial institution to anticipate their needs, provide intuitive engagement and improve their financial health.
The positive impact of a good customer experience is undisputed. In fact, companies that invest in improving customer experiences outperform those who don't across multiple metrics. The challenge is that the expectations of consumers have increased exponentially in the past few years. Beyond simply avoiding errors and enabling fast and easy transactions, they expect their bank to use data and insights to help them save time and money and improve their financial wellbeing.
Unfortunately, as the demand for digital engagement continues to increase, most banks and credit unions are missing opportunities to build deeper relationships because of slow deployment of automation and modern technology, and the lack of leveraging customer insights to partner with customers for a better financial future.
The bottom line is that customers want financial services that are easy, transparent, intuitive and empathic across the entire customer journey. Missing this opportunity will result in banks opening the door to alternative financial providers.
In a world where consumers can purchase a car on their mobile device and plan an entire vacation on a single platform, ease and transparency are foundational expectations for banking customers. The easier and more transparent the engagement, the greater likelihood of trial and adoption.
Many financial institutions lose potential customers to competition simply because of the time and effort required to open a new account or apply for a loan. Most fintech and big tech firms have mastered
this early-stage engagement
by simplifying processes and reducing the time to complete them to less than three minutes (as opposed to around 15-plus at traditional financial institutions).
Consumers cite easy and fast setup, verification, onboarding, an intuitive user interface and navigation as reasons to test out non-traditional providers’ apps.
When a driver uses a GPS program, they expect it to inform them about congestion down the road and to determine the fastest way to reach their destination.
Similarly, customers expect their financial institutions to go beyond fulfilling requests to anticipating and delivering what they need next to reach their financial goal. This is increasingly being done with predictive personalisation, based on unique insights from both primary and secondary data.
But, according to research by the Digital Banking Report, less than 20 per cent of banking customers strongly agree that their financial institution is looking out for their financial wellbeing. A similarly small percentage think it anticipates their financial needs. And yet consumers are willing to share data and have AI used to improve their experiences, so long as they have transparency as to how it’s done.
More than ever, automation and the use of modern technology will differentiate the winners from the also-rans. They can improve both the speed and accuracy of back-office processes and transactions as well as provide the easy and transparent digital experiences that customers want. The focus should be on the customer experience, as opposed to cost-reduction efficiencies, with an incremental approach.
With automation, financial institutions can also create reports informing data-driven decisions to avoid inefficiencies in the customer experience.
Organisations must be able to pinpoint when a customer is satisfied or disappointed, when they move part of their relationship to an alternative provider, and when a customer has challenges with a process they want to perform. This requires tracking of all types of interactions, not just transactional, including logins, website engagement, human and chatbot sessions, content views and competitive engagements.
To achieve this level of data collection, analysis and engagement enhancement at speed and scale requires partnerships. Third-party solution providers can assist with organising data, sharing insights across an organisation, building an effective customer engagement process and leveraging previous partner engagements to generate ROI faster than if an organisation was to 'go it alone'.
Likewise, creating contextual engagements and continuously fine-tuning the priorities and processes usually requires a specialist – especially during a time of economic uncertainty, when the allocation of resources must be on opportunities with the greatest chances of success.
A leading fintech influencer, Jim Marous is co-publisher of The Financial Brand and owner and publisher of the Digital Banking Report. He is also host of the Banking Transformed podcast.
WEBSITE: jimmarous.com
TWITTER: @JimMarous
Incode’s proprietary identify verification technology is rewriting the playbook on privacy and trust in financial services
Incode Technologies is the identity company that is reinventing the way humans authenticate and verify their identity online to power a world of trust.
Its identity proofing solution, Incode Omni, delivers the highest standard in security, user experience and regulation with a set of Incode-developed, machine-learning, computer-vision, anti-fraud, and digital-onboarding components. Incode’s end-to-end fully automated orchestration platform enables seamless access across multiple channels with products focussed on onboarding, authentication and payment
verification, which increase conversion and reduce fraud.
Incode Omni supports the needs of financial institutions such as banks, credit unions, wealth management firms, brokers, lenders, and fintech services. It also supports the needs of other organisations that depend upon identity in the public sector, hospitality, gaming, and other areas.
Incode Omni offers four benefits to financial institutions and their customers:
1 Fraud prevention Incode Omni stops bad actors from opening or taking over accounts across devices,
geographies, and platforms, making sure customers are protected at all times.
Incode Omni offers more than 50 modules that organisations can orchestrate to meet their individual fraud prevention needs, including the stringent requirements of financial institutions.
Among other things, Incode Omni modules verify the validity of presented identity documents such as driver’s licences and passports, compare live faces against those in identity documents and government databases using an algorithm tested by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, and confirm faces are not spoofed by
applying a liveness detection algorithm validated to conform to the ISO/IEC 30107-3 Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) standard.
2 Regulatory compliance Incode Omni meets anti-money laundering (AML), counter terrorist financing (CTF), and know-your-customer (KYC) requirements in real time and across borders. Incode’s identity verification is highly customisable and delivers a high-speed service to enable fintech companies to implement the technology fast, maximising time-to-revenue. Incode Omni’s modules support searches of government systems of record (SoRs) to comply with EU, US, and other regional regulations. In the US, these include the Bank Secrecy Act, the USA Patriot Act, Foreign Assets Control Regulations, and New York State’s Transaction Monitoring Certification (504) requirements.
» Incode Omni was designed from the outset to ensure that fraud prevention and regulatory compliance do not increase customer friction
3 Quick onboarding Incode Omni eliminates friction with automated, accurate and fast digital workflows and locks in customer loyalty with a seamless first impression. It was designed from the outset to ensure that fraud prevention and regulatory compliance do not increase customer friction. Incode Omni’s automation features, present both in onboarding identity verification and in post-onboarding authentication, allows financial institutions to drastically improve their customer experience with lower risk and cost. Removing onboarding friction at scale and streamlining the authentication process results in greater customer satisfaction, higher conversion rates, and improved brand loyalty – a definitive competitive edge.
4 Organisational and customer privacy by design At Incode, we take a fundamentally unique and differentiated approach to privacy. It begins with a platform that eliminates the need for human analysts to access data, to an architecture that minimises the movement and enhances the controls over data residency. Customers’ personal data is handled in accordance with partnerships formed with governments across the world.
■ Incode Omni is fully automated, requiring no manual intervention during identity verification. A fully automated solution saves time since customers do not have to wait hours, days or weeks to have their identities verified. A fully automated solution also preserves privacy since no reviewer has access to the applicant’s personally identifiable information (PII).
■ The critical algorithms in Incode Omni are Incode-developed Unlike other identity solution providers who depend upon third parties for critical algorithms, such as face recognition, Incode is the developer of the facial recognition and other essential algorithms used in the Incode Omni platform.
Incode is used by some of the world’s largest financial institutions, governments, marketplaces, hotels and hospitals to authenticate and verify users’ identity online.
Its Incode Omni solution delivers the highest standard in security, user experience and regulation with a set of proprietary machine-learning, computer-vision, anti-fraud and digital-onboarding components. Fully-automated, it preserves privacy since no reviewer has access to the applicant’s PII.
■ Incode Omni data processes at the edge, reducing transmission time, and minimising the need to store PII in centralised servers.
■ Incode Omni includes powerful orchestration to allow organisations to tailor their digital onboarding process to their needs. Incode offers over 50 software modules to manage digital onboarding. Organisations can orchestrate workflows with the specific components that they require for their own digital onboarding process. The result is a simple workflow that saves customer onboarding time.
■ Incode Omni is flexibly deployed Depending upon organisational requirements, Incode Omni can be deployed on-premise, in the Cloud, or as a hybrid solution.
■ Incode Omni employs secure partnerships with governments and enterprises to validate applicant data. For example, Incode Omni can rapidly confirm with the relevant government authority that it has issued an ID card in the applicant’s possession, and that the card is not fraudulent. These verifications involve transmission and reception of a minimum amount of data, thus ensuring the protection of the applicant’s privacy.
COMPANY: Incode
FOUNDED: 2015
CATEGORY: Identity verification
KEY PERSONNEL: Ricardo Amper, CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: United States
OFFICES IN: United Kingdom, Mexico, Spain, Serbia and Singapore
TEL: +1 (650) 446 3444
EMAIL: contact@incode.com
WEBSITE: incode.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ incode-technologies/
TWITTER: @IncodeIdentity
BUILDING BETTER PAYMENTS EXPERIENCES
Cards are yesterday. Businesses and their customers should expect so much better – and TrueLayer is delivering that, says Till Wirth
Consumers want to pay in the way that’s most convenient for them, and they expect to feel safe doing it. Unfortunately, there’s a gulf between that expectation and the reality of what they’re getting.
In a world of instant payments and borderless commerce, cards have been retrofitted into online checkouts, creating an invisible web of hidden costs and unwieldy payment structures. They’re slow, they’re insecure and they’re prone to failure.
Here, I outline the biggest issues and how account-to-account payments from TrueLayer offer a better experience for the consumer and deliver significant benefits to businesses.
If you’re paying with a card or a manual bank transfer, you need to enter sensitive information manually (or trust a website to store them). Not only is that a slow and cumbersome process, but it’s also prone to errors that can cause payments to fail.
To address security concerns, regulators across Europe have been rolling out added strong customer authentication (SCA) steps for online card payments. Unfortunately, this has added friction to an already long, drawn-out process.
We analysed a number of SCA payment flows and found that
consumers typically have to go through more than 10 steps to complete a purchase. Some studies suggest SCA could reduce conversion on online card payments by 30 per cent, and businesses could stand to lose billions in sales.
Despite being crucial for many companies, online payments are neither cheap nor simple. With cards, merchants are on the hook for steep interchange fees, processing costs and chargeback penalties. For those with average order values that often exceed £500 (e.g. luxury goods, travel, electronics and furniture), chargeback costs can be a significant financial burden. The average annual cost per retailer is an eye-watering £235,000.
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is another popular option, but its merchant service charges are substantial, even compared to cards. Other methods, such as standing orders, also involve manual processes that raise operational costs.
As digital commerce has accelerated, methods like card payments continue to lag behind.
Card transactions, in particular are inconvenient. They can take up to 10 days to settle, which makes them less than ideal for modern services. Take trading
Till Wirth is TrueLayer's Head of Product for Core Banking. An alumnus of Oxford University and NYU, he previously served as a Lead Product Manager at GOV.UK/Pay.
apps, for example. If users top up their accounts by card, they often can’t access their pay-ins until their funds settle.
These delays are problematic for both customers and businesses. TrueLayer research shows that slow deposits have caused a quarter of European investors to miss out on opportunities. And nearly 50 per cent of investors surveyed said they’d switch trading platforms if the new provider offered instant withdrawals.
The opportunity and need to create an experience where payments aren’t just retrofitted for the online world is huge. The value of TrueLayer Payments is in fixing the original flaws of legacy methods: cost, speed, and security. By leveraging this method, businesses can offer a faster, safer experience that benefits them and their customers alike.
As a payment method built for the mobile era, TrueLayer Payments lowers the cost per transaction. Unlike cards, it doesn’t incur interchange fees or chargebacks. And since it allows merchants to automate processes like
reconciliation, it removes the operational costs of things like standing orders and manual transfers. In short, it makes accepting payments less expensive.
Speed is also an important factor. With TrueLayer Payments, businesses and customers alike get access to their funds immediately. Remember those trading apps we mentioned before? With TrueLayer Payments, their customers can start investing their deposits right away. Likewise, e-commerce firms can then ship goods with peace of mind, knowing they’ve received payment.
»The opportunity and need to create an experience where
payments aren’t just retrofitted for the online world is huge
TrueLayer Payments are also authenticated directly with the customer’s bank, making them more secure. There’s no need to manually
enter a 16-digit card number, expiry date and CVV code or fill in forms. Payment can be made in a few taps with face recognition or a fingerprint, making them SCA compliant. This creates a smoother and more secure experience that protects users from fraud.
The ability to process refunds or withdrawals promptly and seamlessly, without the need for customers to jump through hoops, has become an increasingly important part of the customer journey. Although not a native feature of open banking, instant withdrawals are a key part of TrueLayer Payments. They remove friction and make refunds as fast as the initial payment.
A better customer experience isn’t just about speed, though. It’s also about building trust with users. Unlike other payment providers, TrueLayer enables businesses to customise the payment flow with their own branding. This approach means consumers stay on the websites or within the apps of our customers and their banks.
This makes consumers more comfortable with the payment method and helps boost conversion rates. The data bears this out: businesses offering payments through TrueLayer typically find it achieves 30 per sent share of checkout within just a few months. In some cases, it even rises above 80 per cent.
Ultimately, TrueLayer Payments gives businesses and consumers exactly what they want: a smooth and efficient experience.
TrueLayer is a global open banking platform that makes it easy for anyone to build better financial experiences.
Businesses of every size use TrueLayer to power their payments, access financial data, and onboard customers across the UK, Europe, and Australia. Trusted by millions of consumers and businesses around the world, our vision is to create a financial system that works for everyone.
COMPANY: TrueLayer
FOUNDED: 2016
CATEGORY: Payments
KEY PERSONNEL: Francesco Simoneschi, Founder (right)
HEAD OFFICE: UK
OFFICES IN: Australia, France, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden
EMAIL: marketing@truelayer.com
WEBSITE: truelayer.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/truelayer/
TWITTER: @TrueLayer
When Yann Turcios and his brother Stephen raised the capital to buy a well-established remittance business in their home country of Costa Rica in 2015, South American fintech was still in the cradle.
LatAm’s most famous startup, now the world‘s most valuable digital neobank, was yet to grow its unicorn horn; the value of the entire region’s fintech market was put at less than $50million.
Today, that’s laughably small change. The market value has grown to more than $2billion and in Costa Rica alone digital-first companies like Ridivi are genuinely challenging the financial system with innovative solutions that promote inclusion and drive down cost.
Ridivi’s roots were in the fundamentally important service of personal remittances – which flowed mainly to Nicaragua and Colombo – where it began by tackling the complexities surrounding the transfer of physical money with digitisation.
It’s since broadened the company’s remit to offer a range of personalised financial solutions that adapt to the needs of the customer, rather than forcing the customer to adapt to the banking industry. It offers companies integration to its platform through APIs that plug directly into the enterprise’s ERP or CRM system, or any accounting software or database, and allows them to use that information to communicate via chatbot with customers, using whichever channel they prefer.
In 2018, it was particularly keen to layer a payments platform over social messaging channel WhatsApp.
Costa Rica payments platform Ridivi is changing the way companies communicate with customers
IT’S GOOD TO TALK
“Here in Costa Rica, we have Sinpe Móvil, developed by the Central Bank of Costa Rica. This platform allows you to integrate your phone number to your bank account, allowing you to send an SMS text with a phone number and a certain amount of colones (local currency) to any other number on the Sinpe system,” explains Yann Turcios. “But we realised people are not using SMS texts as not everyone is on the Sinpe system. We decided to tap into the largely used communications platform, WhatsApp, something that everyone is accustomed to, and layer a payments transfer platform over that to make it accessible to everyone. Using WhatsApp, we have latched onto something everybody uses, but we are making it robust enough to substitute having to physically go to the bank because you can do every transaction right there and then.”
After two years of work with WhatsApp owner Facebook (now Meta), in 2020 Ridivi launched a product for companies to handle automated regular payments, deal with customer inquiries and arrange credits through the WhatsApp channel. A year later, consumers were able to access it themselves for a wide range of transactions. Anyone registered with the service is able to transfer money to individuals or organisations, pay for products or services, receive money and even recharge the phone at no additional
cost, using their personal WhatsApp number and all within the channel.
It’s easy, secure and fulfils Ridivi’s mission to ‘transform payments into personalised digital experiences’, in effect, taking banking services to where the customer is in their digital journey, rather than imposing the banks’ idea of where they should be.
Tamara continues to refine that user experience, by, for instance, using the mobile camera, in-app, to strengthen know-your-customer.
“Comparing what the camera sees, the system will be able to validate if the user making the transaction matches the user’s ID,” explains Turcios.
“Additionally, we are looking to make it possible to open your bank account directly through WhatsApp. We want to integrate every type of service into the platform: hotel companies, for example, will be able to chat to their customers through WhatsApp and customers can pay for whatever they need, whilst also providing feedback, all in a single location. We created an all-in-one payments experience: you communicate with your clients through WhatsApp, you charge your clients through WhatsApp.”
Enabling cryptocurrency transactions are next on the agenda.
“We have implemented a service that allows users to buy and transfer crypto through WhatsApp ,” says Turcios.
“Costa Rica has always been a very crypto-friendly country. In fact, I believe we were one of the first countries in LatAm to have a Bitcoin ATM. The extent of the country’s crypto savviness can be seen in the fact there are various groups moving more than $20million a month.
“We have had five or six different coins established here too, including Nimiq and Divi. {But} Costa Rica’s legislation doesn’t acknowledge it as a substance of value or money, only as an asset. If you could do the whole transaction on WhatsApp, that would be great. This is something that we are developing.”
A country of just five million people, nothwithstanding the huge remittance traffic, has its limitations for an ambitious fintech. So, next stop for Ridivi is Mexico.
“We’re planning to open there by the end of the year, where we can tap into a bigger market,” says Turcios. “We want to expand to Brazil, too, but currently the Mexican market is what we are looking to break into first.”
Ridivi deploys state-of-the-art technology to change the way the industry uses and views financial transactions, and addresses the tedious inconvenience of current financial processes.
Using our API-driven intelligent platform allows companies to reap the benefits of automation and create personalised, exciting experiences for their customers by meeting them where they are, which is, increasingly on social media channels.
The Ridivi Chatbot, launched in 2020, is a solution for companies looking for a combined payment collection, service, management and sales tool that can be used over conversational platforms including WhatsApp Messenger, Telegram, WeChat and more.
Our API can be integrated into any system, be it ERP, CRM or accounting software or database from which it can consume the necessary information for the chatbot to communicate to the client in an agile way, using conversation flows bespoke to the company.
COMPANY: Ridivi
FOUNDED: 2015
CATEGORY: Transaction solutions
KEY PERSONNEL: Yann Turcios, Co-founder (right)
HEAD OFFICE: San Jose, Costa Rica
OFFICES IN: Panama, Brazil
TEL: +506 4002 2774
WEBSITE: ridivi.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/ridivi/
»Using WhatsApp, we have latched onto something everybody uses
Pent-up demand from businesses wanting simple and modern solutions to their cross-border frustrations drives Airwallex's pledge to build a
Airwallex is one of the most successful and exciting fintechs to come out of Asia Pacific in the last decade.
Founded in Melbourne, Australia in 2015, it was inspired by the real-life experiences of two of our co-founders, Jack Zhang and Max Li. As owners of a café, Jack and Max recognised first-hand the impact that high FX fees and banking costs were having on their profit margins, and sought to build a better solution for businesses operating across borders.
They teamed up with friends from the University of Melbourne, Lucy Liu and Xijing Dai, and, using their collective backgrounds in technology and finance, started building a solution from the ground up that step-changed payments, and which has now grown to become a financial infrastructure for global businesses.
As the world continues to digitise, there are expectations that services should be delivered instantly, regardless of time or place. Text messages can be received in seconds and a world of information can be searched online and is immediately available at the click of a button.
When it comes to cross-border payments however, things get more complicated. Managing money is highly regulated, the global financial system is fragmented, and making payments across jurisdictions continues to be expensive and inefficient. The multiplicity of parties involved in a transaction can also hinder the process. This is where Airwallex comes in.
Having built one of the most powerful payments and banking infrastructures, Airwallex removes the challenges of managing money across the world, empowering businesses of all sizes to accept payments, move money globally, and simplify their financial operations.
The financial support and needs of today’s modern businesses are different and wide-ranging: an e-commerce food and beverage startup offering curated menus
for epicureans; a digital brokerage looking to receive, convert and pay out funds in multiple currencies around the world; a new financial service offering that aims to provide small and medium-size businesses highly competitive FX rates; a local T-shirt maker looking to better manage its finances, from receiving payments to paying staff wages. These are just some examples of the wide range of needs customers seek from Airwallex.
have built proprietary technology from the ground up, ensuring our tech platform is fast, relevant and agile. This means that we can scale as quickly as needed to support our customers’ ever-changing requirements. We are directly connected to local clearing systems and have direct partnerships with schemes (for example, we are a principal issuer of Visa and Mastercard) to facilitate quicker payout. Our FX engine offers electronic pricing and execution with no manual intervention, via API and web platform.
Ultimately, what Airwallex does is simplify and streamline international financial processes for our customers, and unlike others, we can scale quickly to meet the needs of any customer and provide a ‘one-stop-shop’ cross-border payments, collections, FX and other value-added solutions for SMEs as well as an API for larger businesses requiring customisation.
As an infrastructure-first company, we
Airwallex is a leading financial technology platform for modern businesses who want to grow beyond borders.
With one of the world’s most powerful payments and banking infrastructures, we empower businesses of all sizes to accept payments, move money globally, and simplify their financial operations in a single platform.
Our purpose is to connect entrepreneurs, business builders, makers and creators with opportunities in every corner of the world. And, at a time when many are still recovering from the pandemic, our technology allows us to be flexible, enabling us to support their bespoke needs.
Established in 2015 in Melbourne, Airwallex today has a global footprint across the Asia Pacific region, Europe,
We live in a global economy, where the ability to make cross-border payments is essential to businesses. Airwallex strives to close the gap, removing the risks, complexities and inefficiencies that have long been pain points for doing business globally. With a vision to become the global financial Cloud for businesses, Airwallex is empowering businesses of all sizes to grow beyond borders.
and North America with a team of 1200-plus in 19 locations, supporting more than 20,000 customers of all sizes, worldwide.
COMPANY: Airwallex
FOUNDED: 2015
CATEGORY: Payments
KEY PERSONNEL: Jack Zhang, Co-founder & CEO (right)
OFFICES IN: 19 locations, globally
TEL: (+44)80 8196 7574 (UK office)
EMAIL: inquiries@airwallex.com
WEBSITE: airwallex.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/airwallex
TWITTER: @airwallex
»Airwallex has a vision to become the global financial Cloud for businesses
Why smart fintechs are embracing end-to-end platforms – because fighting fraud and financial crime doesn’t end at onboarding
When you think of know your customer (KYC), you probably think of banks fulfilling a compliance mandate during onboarding. But any company that allows money to exchange hands must prevent fraud and financial crimes such as money laundering – and not just at onboarding, but throughout the entire customer journey.
There’s a problem with point solutions, though. Traditionally, firms would 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 it simply doesn’t work.
Furthermore, firms can’t rely on the standard risk signals anymore. Modern solutions look at a variety of factors to catch fraud and assess the person’s risk to your business. Does their ID say they live in New York but their IP address indicates they’re in a different country? Is their stated home address actually a liquor store? Did they just create this email address a few days ago? Is their selfie really a live person, or did they just hold up a photo in front of the camera?
Orchestration allows you to run multiple KYC checks like these and dynamically adjust the workflow, based on real-time inputs. For example, you might start with a device check, and if the user’s cell
phone has already been used multiple times to open accounts, a more rigorous set of checks will be initiated. Orchestration allows companies to provide a frictionless experience for their legitimate customers and increase scrutiny for higher-risk individuals. The result is both higher conversions and higher fraud deterrence.
Onboarding is just the start of the compliance journey. You need to make sure your customers remain trustworthy and that they don’t use your business for financial crimes. Orchestration is useful in this scenario as well, as it allows for continuous authentication and risk-based monitoring.
For example, if a customer logs in from an unusual location, simply checking their password might not be enough. Instead, your workflow can trigger the user to take a selfie and compare it to the one they took when they created the
account to ensure it’s the same person. And you can run screening checks periodically to ensure your customers remain suitable to do business with, such as verifying that they haven’t been sanctioned or put on other watchlists.
If your company allows people to exchange money, either fiat or cryptocurrency, 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 flag a suspicious transaction – analysts must be able to quickly identify related parties,
WHO WE ARE
Jumio, is the leading provider of AI-powered end-to-end identity verification and eKYC solutions. 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
transactions, accounts and payment sources to follow the money trail. The right investigation management tool will explain why the transactions were flagged, help your analysts connect the dots and make it easy to report the suspicious activity to your sponsor bank or regulatory agency.
Fraud and financial crimes have evolved, so that KYC is just one piece of the puzzle. Instead of using separate solutions for fraud detection and AML, smart companies are embracing end-to-end platforms that let them orchestrate workflows to meet their exact needs.
While, technically, an orchestration tool could allow you to connect to multiple data sources from different
vendors in your workflow, a single platform provides huge advantages:
■ You only have to sign a contract and maintain a relationship with one vendor, saving time and resources
■ Integrations to different data sources are pre-built, and orchestration requires no coding, so you can focus on your business and not on fighting fraud
■ When regulations change, or if a data source no longer meets your needs, you don’t have to worry about finding and implementing a different data source – the platform vendor handles everything for you
The result is frictionless onboarding, higher conversions, streamlined compliance throughout the entire customer lifecycle – and, ultimately, greater trust between your customers and your company.
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 500 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.
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
Fraud and financial crimes have evolved, and KYC is now just one piece of the puzzle
Embedded insurance is the future of distribution, says Penni.io
By 2018, it was estimated that almost 50 per cent of online insurance in Europe was sold via aggregators. In fact, Deloitte reported that insurance products accounted for 75 per cent or more of aggregators’ total revenue, even though their scope had by then broadened beyond insurance to include a wide range of financial products. It warned that the implications for insurers were significant. Aggregators
helped insurers dramatically expand their customer reach, yes, but at a predictable cost.
By far and away the biggest market for insurance aggregators in terms of sales value is the UK. And yet, by 2020, it had one of the least profitable insurance industries, with a combined ratio of 101 per cent in non-life and 130 per cent in life, according to Statista, and with one of the lowest retention rates in Europe, according to the OECD.
What does that tell us about the insurance distribution model?
According to UK-based insurance platform, Penni.io the lesson for insurers is that they need to regain control – not necessarily by withdrawing from aggregator relationships but by developing a strategy that builds loyalty directly with the customer. And the best way to do that, it believes, is by being thoughtful about where and when a customer might need its products. In
the united strength of the brands – insurer and the vendor in which it has embedded its services – delivers convenience and promotes trust, thus the price of the insurance become less relevant to them. So what is Penni.io’s role in achieving that?
Its white-label embedded distribution solution, Penni Connect, puts insurance clients in control of the way their services are integrated into other providers’ channels, and in such a way that they don’t lose their identity and can capture the client for the longer term.
More than 20 years of experience within digital sales went into building the solution, which continuously builds on and improves the data.
and can easily do so since they can see their personal price and click the buy-now button by completing just a few steps within the transaction process.
Cross-device checkout even allows customers to complete the purchase in different sales channels. Once done, their policy documents can be attached to an email and sent with the purchase confirmation to their email.
other words, embedding them into a customer journey that an insurer doesn’t own but can add a lot of value to. In this context, price – which has driven the aggregator model in a race to the bottom for insurers – is not the most important influencer of choice. Penni.io believes embedded insurance is a counterwave to the aggregators’ market power: it makes insurers independent from aggregators, without compromising on transparency and overall customer experience. Customers get the chance to buy their insurance along with the product or service they desire The proximity to the customer and
Via Penni Connect, insurers can embed and create widgets that match their brand’s look and feel within the partner’s channel. The widget is the path to strong, user-friendly and safe customer journeys since it’s connected to analytics, checkout, relevant APIs, cookie consent and is General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)-compliant. Customers have confidence that they’re in good hands when buying the product
If your customers want to mull over the insurance offer, they can ask to get it by email (helping providers stay top-of-mind with customers). It’s easy for the insurer to adjust layout, text and pictures and add new partners since both the content, design and purchase flow are configurable without needing to code. A widget can do without integrations to set up partners, meaning it can be done in a few minutes.
Many insurers and brokers are not able to sell digitally through partnerships due to constraints on internal IT-systems, lack of APIs for digital collaboration and not knowing how to establish customer journeys for online sales through other’s channels.
Thus Penni.io acts as a strategic partner to insurers, brokers and distribution partners in the transformation process towards digital distribution.
Penni.io was conceived as a global player from its founding and its ambition is simple: to become the leading platform for digital distribution of insurance.
Penni.io enables insurance providers to offer more convenient, relevant offers by taking advantage of digital partnerships.
Our white-label platform allows insurers to tap into the digital customer journey and embed and sell insurance anywhere.
We take an otherwise time-consuming process and make it easy and fast to implement, so insurers can start reaching and engaging with customers where those customers are in just days, and scale their business in a simple, future-proof way.
The Penni Connect platform helps identify digital sales opportunities and build conversion-optimised customer journeys that support human thinking, needs and decision-making. That is, customer journeys that are based on customer behaviour analytics.
For insurance providers looking to put the customer first, our team of experts – specialised in tech, insurance, and behavioural psychology – help design the future of insurance, making it accessible for everyone, anywhere.
COMPANY: Penni.io
FOUNDED: 2016
CATEGORY: Embedded insurance
KEY PERSONNEL:
Jeppe Klausen,
Founder & CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Copenhagen
WEBSITE: penni.io
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/penni/
Penni.io acts as a strategic partner to insurers, brokers and distribution partners in the transformation process towards digital distribution
Digital identity – the ability to prove you are who you say you are – is the foundation for trusted access to financial services, travel, health care, employment, marketplaces, payments and more. But digital transformation began without an easy, secure, and reliable solution for sharing identity; instead, fragmented solutions and inconsistent user experiences emerged.
This has resulted in individuals frequently abandoning onboarding processes, having upwards of 100 single-use digital identities with passwords and secrets to remember, and identity fraud rising precipitously in the last decade. Our approach to digital ID needs to be re-imagined to be simple, fast, consumer-centric, and more secure.
The good news is that reusable digital identities are here – and they are frictionless and secure. The concept is simple; a reusable digital identity mimics the physical wallet we carry, and it is owned by the individual, putting power back into the hands of the people who matter most, the consumer. It is anchored in a government-issued ID and can have other credentials, such as a certificate that proves someone is a licensed practitioner or a student at a university. Payment credentials are part of the same wallet, so people can pay with their digital identity.
But reusable digital IDs go well beyond the possibilities of a physical wallet, as they enable individuals to share their identity using a consistent user experience via any digital channel as well as in person. A well-formed digital identity ecosystem utilises de-centralisation and biometrics, protecting individuals and businesses
from identity fraud. In addition, reusable digital IDs unlock enhanced consumer experiences that allow for more personalisation and seamless and secure cross-channel interactions.
We’re seeing a rise in the use of reusable digital IDs, driven by several factors. First, governments are innovating to provide digital access to services and are augmenting physical identity documents with digital IDs. Extending the utility of these government-issued credentials, as well as the coinciding deeper access to root-of-trust checks, is leading to an uptick of reusable digital IDs in the commercial market. Liminal, an identity-focussed analyst firm, estimates that the total addressable market for reusable identities in 2027 will reach $267billion, with 60 per cent attributed to commercial use cases for account opening, re-authentication, transaction verification and account recovery.
Governments across the world are defining trust frameworks to enable digital IDs for regulated use cases and creating opportunities for public/private partnerships to drive growth. For example, Mastercard became the first private organisation to receive accreditation for three roles under the Australian government’s Trusted Digital Identity Framework, which sets the standards, rules and guidelines for digital identity providers, based on international best practice and industry standards.
Growing consumer expectations of privacy and protection against fraud are driving the market as well. Here, reusable digital IDs unlock competitive value for fintech companies. Using a reusable digital ID to open a new account is as simple as a familiar biometric scan, along
with transparent consent by the individual to share the minimal data required. Providers of loans and other financial products can use reusable digital IDs for additional verifiable credentials to securely offer targeted products. Similarly, account recovery, money transfers and support calls can all be streamlined and secured with the same simple and consistent experience, while reducing fraud. Assuring that a person is who they claim to be at physical location visits or special events can be achieved without untrained human errors that result from checking physical IDs. Forward-thinking companies are expanding their digital presence to meet the demands of digital-first consumers. Reusable digital IDs enable them to provide both the best experience and security, and they will drive competitive advantage for those who embrace them.
Sarah has been focussed on digital identity for a decade, beginning with spearheading and leading the global identity verification business at Mitek. She started her own consultancy, helping with strategy and execution of digital ID projects for the world’s largest banks and corporations, and is now a sought-after speaker on the subject of digital ID. Sarah currently leads a team at Mastercard, bringing to market a decentralised, globally interoperable re-usable digital ID network.
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/in/ sarahmclark/
Sarah Clark welcomes the arrival of a verification tool that has the potential to lay all our fears to rest
Policy, regulation and infrastructure are all slow-burns.
They are hard – if not sometimes downright impossible – to quantify progress in, much less to translate into transaction or user growth numbers and other numerically-based, turbo-charging investment targets. They are non-revenue generating, cost-centre activities – the sort of things you’d rather do without when starting up, because, as a fintech, you are all about innovation and immediacy – about the here and now when it comes to delivery. About growth, penetration and profitability.
But you need to think about them every bit as much as you think about your KPIs and APIs, your BaaS and your SaaS – because all they’re absolutely pivotal to your long, medium and even short-term fortunes.
The (admittedly often long-winded and jargon-filled) discussions that policy, regulation and infrastructure involve are alien to the fast-paced world of the startup culture. But it’s in these discussions where decisions and compromises are made – and it’s upon these decisions and compromises that innovations are built and into which and innovative products and services can be linked. Or not.
Incumbents in the financial industry tend to be alive to the importance of involvement in these areas. They lend time, staff and expertise to them. They
are also often wise to the barriers, the impediments, the immovables and the impossibles that hold back change in any or all of the three areas. Sometimes they are not just resigned to them, but comfortable with them… and even bolstered by them.
In contrast, fintech founders tend to come to the industry fresh, to ignore the impossible and drive for the desirable. Far from being handicapped by history, you like to imagine and create a totally new future. You come without baggage and inhibitions to build new realities. Better ones. You change things, transform processes into experiences. Make the impossible possible. All of which is fantastic.
But, for the most part, all your magic sails on old rails. Your business has more than a little reliance on old banks and legacy pipework – whether as customers or as suppliers. It depends on regulatory frameworks, permissions and approvals. And those frameworks, permissions and rules are in turn informed by policy.
You can only ignore the tiresome trio if think you can operate in a completely different reality (in which case, it could be time for a reality check).
The policy, regulation and infrastructure that supports the financial industry are often blamed for their imperfections. Imperfect they may be, but it’s only by getting involved in them that you can
shape them and stop them frustrating your futures. The discussions that inform them need to be representative of plural interests; it is only that way that consensus can be properly forged and compromises properly informed.
It's in the confluence of imagination, innovation and investment with policy, regulation and infrastructure that transformation can really happen. Focus on the first three, sexier elements if you like, but the shape and form and finer points of the latter three are all foundational to enabling your innovations to flourish and investments to deliver returns.
So don’t fail to get involved in those policy discussions, those regulatory re-writes and those infrastructure designs. They may not pay for your lunch today – but your ability to change tomorrow depends on them. So help shape them.
Natasha de Terán works at the intersection between financial services, technology, communications and public policy. Serving on the PSR Panel and the Bank of England and HMTreasury’s CBDC Engagement Forum , she is the co-author of The Pay Off: How Changing The Way We Pay Changes Everything.
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/in/deteran WEBSITE: www.deteran.co.uk
Natasha De Terán urges fintech founders to engage in the laborious but critical task of creating a landscape in which innovation can thrive
Fintech founders tend to come to the industry fresh, to ignore the impossible and drive for the desirable
Live since only October 2018, Kani Payments has reconciled more than €10billion 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, Railsr.
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 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 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, and key
Kani is proving to be a shrewd choice for scale-hungry challengers looking to automate their payment reconciliation process
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.
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.
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 Railsr. To date, Kani has reconciled millions of transactions for Railsr 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 Railsr to scale
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
to be reconciled. Kani completed the migration process smoothly for Railsr, demonstrating its technical capability and knowledge of payments.
Shahina Ali, former Head of Treasury and Payments at Railsr, 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 suited Railsr’s ways of working.
payments, as this was relatively new to it. During the first few months in partnership, Railsr 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
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.
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.
“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 felt extremely secure, right from the beginning.”
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
Kani’s solution saves weeks of company resources, regulation headaches and innaccuracies of data that can hold back building a successful, disruptive fintech at pace
Buy now, pay later is transforming payments in the MENA region, but leading provider Tamara has a much bigger agenda
There’s not much you can teach IKEA, the world’s largest and best-known self-assembly furniture company, about flatpacks.
The functional home furnisher pioneered the concept of giving shoppers everything they need in one neat, affordable package nearly 80 years ago. Now operating 458 stores around the world and in 50 e-commerce markets, in 2021, roughly 775 million customers visited its outlets.
IKEA’s success is framed by its famous manifesto, Testament of a Furniture Dealer, in which founder, Swedish
entrepreneur Ingvar Kamprad, outlined his vision ‘to create a better everyday life for the many people’.
In Saudi Arabia – where IKEA operates four stores and an advanced digital commerce platform, attracting more than 20 million visitors a year –Kamprad’s mission resonated with Tamara, the buy now, pay later provider that emerged from the Central Bank’s sandbox for fintech startups in 2020.
Tamara has its own ‘financial flatpack’ – a credit product embedded into a retailer’s point of sale or e-commerce platform that allows shoppers to easily build the way they want to pay for goods and services by delaying payment for 30 days or splitting the cost into three payments over two months. It’s simple, accessible to anyone, without having to undergo a credit check, and free if you stick within the terms of the agreement, with fees born by the merchant, not the customer.
Tamara’s mission and purpose is well-aligned with those of IKEA, with whom it partnered in 2021 to offer consumers BNPL, online and in-store.
“Tamara was born to make a change,” says co-founder and CEO Abdulmajeed Alsukhan. “The region and the world need payment solutions that are transparent and customer-oriented.”
The fintech’s aim is to drive financial inclusion in the MENA region, starting with BNPL. And the way it goes about that is by creating a new merchant-vendor model where the two parties work closely to innovate at each step of the customer journey.
That’s worked spectacularly well for IKEA where it’s already had a tangible impact on sales. The retailer has witnessed a 15 per cent increase in conversion rates, 40 per cent increase in average value order, and 18 per cent reduction in returns and refunds.
“From day one, Tamara has been a
great partner for us, working hand in hand to ensure continuous improvement and driving growth,” says Omar Mugharbel, deputy CEO of IKEA Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
The retailer is now one of 4,000 merchants, including major international brands, onboarded to Tamara’s platform – 3,000 of them since the startup secured the largest Series A funding so far in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, raising $110million in 2021. It followed that in 2022 with a successful $100million Series B round, led this time by Sanabil Investments, a portfolio company of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.
It's an indication of the change in attitude towards BNPL products, particularly in Saudi Arabia – and how they are shaping the future of payments across the region.
According to Research and Markets, BNPL transactions are expected to grow by 81 per cent in 2022 in Saudi Arabia with 80 per cent of consumers polled for its Q4 Global BNPL Market Survey saying they are keen to make use of the flexibility the product offers.
Meanwhile, Alsukhan says merchants typically experience a 10-30 per cent increase in conversion and a 30-85 per cent increase in average order value. Sitting between the two, Tamara owns
the relationship with both, giving it data from both shopper and merchant.
BNPL has a number of advantages over other consumer credit choices in the region. Shariah compliant, it provides merchants with a way to offer a short-term credit facility that is capped and affordable to consumers in the region who are otherwise mainly dependent on debit cards or cash on delivery.
Affordability is a major factor for under-25-year-olds, who make up half the region’s population. With no credit, they often struggle to buy non-essentials between pay checks. Ninety per cent of those using Tamara for IKEA purchases are Gen Z-ers or Millennials. And where credit cards are more widely used, Alsukhan says people have been switching to BNPL ‘in droves’, attracted by its on-demand accessibility.
Currently operational in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (which have the lion’s share of the region’s e-commerce and digital payments), as well as Kuwait, Tamara plans to use its new funds to expand across the region and into new products and services to drive financial inclusion in the region.
But it acknowledges that job will never be done. It says: “There will always be room to innovate and come up with better products and solutions. We're always questioning, always curious, always challenging ourselves.”
Tamara is MENA’s leading payments innovator, focussed on providing a seamless experience for merchants and customers through fair and transparent financial solutions.
The company’s flagship buy now, pay later platform lets shoppers split their payments online and in-store, with no interest and no hidden fees.
Founded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in late 2020, it has grown to more than 200 employees in offices around the world. Tamara has more than three million customers and more than 4,000 partner merchants, including leading global and regional brands IKEA, SHEIN, Adidas, Namshi and Jarir plus SMEs.
COMPANY: Tamara
FOUNDED: 2020
CATEGORY: Buy now, pay later
KEY PERSONNEL: Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, Co-founder & CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Riyadh OFFICE IN: Berlin, Dubai, and Ho Chi Minh City
WEBSITE: tamara.co
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/tamara/
TWITTER: @usetamaraen
Tamara was born to make a change
Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, Co-founder & CEO
There is now a broad consensus that open data is the ultimate destination of global economies. It should certainly be worth the effort: open data is estimated to deliver GDP benefits of one to five per cent a year.
It is no wonder that countries from Brazil to Singapore have some form of open data initiative, often starting with the financial services sector. This is happening in Australia, for example, with its Consumer Data Rights policy. Still, a lot needs to come together to realise the full vision.
When the UK government-led Smart
Working Group
Spring
from open living (supported by open or smart data)
The undercurrent of legal and regulatory change flowing towards open data
the UK, stress is being placed on governance and the need for legal and regulatory compulsion to force large industry players to increase their participation levels to bring open finance to fruition. Open data standards
financial services are not a value drain on incumbents but a win for all stakeholders to innovate and grow.
The Smart Data Working Group has repeated that legislative proposals will be advanced, subject to parliamentary time. The Data Reform Bill is now at the first reading stage in the House of Lords but this is well short of the portability and leverage of personal data that an open living world offers.
The Consumer Duty regulations, published by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in July 2022, however, could become a new vehicle for change and the biggest push yet toward open finance – going beyond open banking to the full suite of financial services aimed at retail consumers. The FCA is keen to liberate the market and optimise consumer outcomes but it has yet to join the dots between its open finance consultation and the Consumer Duty work.
Industry understanding and adoption of open finance has been patchy. However, some of the banks and insurance companies would be astonished by the open finance capabilities of employee benefit consultants such as Mercer, which has developed data insights covering the holistic view of employee income, expenditure, assets and liabilities, going far beyond the scope and capability of banking apps.
The ability to combine revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) connections with intermediated data, such as contract inquiry data via a single application programme interface (API), together with direct APIs from class-leading providers (and screen-scraping the laggards), has not yet been fully appreciated by most wealth managers, banks or building societies – or their systems providers. But Consumer Duty could be the spur.
It is all about gaining customer insights to deliver better outcomes. That includes the customer’s context – affordability, vulnerability, suitability, and eligibility – on an ongoing basis.
While only around one in 10 people in the UK so far use third-party money management apps, it is worth noting that one in three Americans use a personal financial management tool or app, but only a quarter of those use one from their primary bank. While financial institutions still struggle with a single customer view, their customers can get it
»There is no hiding from the inevitable trend towards smart data and open finance. The business, consumer and societal benefits are irresistible
from a third party and one that covers all of their assets, liabilities, income and expenditure. That share of wallet view is enjoyed between open finance adopters and their clients whilst locking out less agile and adept service providers. In the UK, Consumer Duty now comes on top of that commercial threat.
Moneyhub is a data, intelligence, and payments company that develops ISO 27001-certified software for open banking, open finance, and open data applications.
Its FCA-regulated open data platform enables companies to quickly and easily transform data into personalised digital experiences and initiate payments.
Its APIs and fully customisable platform provide data aggregation, insights, notification nudges, and payment systems.
As a result, clients have the consent-driven data and analytics
WHAT WE DO Help businesses transform data into personalised, relevant and appropriate products and services
There is no hiding from the inevitable trend towards smart data and open finance. The business, consumer and societal benefits are irresistible. And, as the three elements – consumer adoption, industry innovation and legal and regulatory control – combine, the market and the regulator is telling firms how to react.
To avoid being closed out of customer relationships that they had taken for granted by competitors with more appeal and better data insights, established providers need to act. As implementation plans are required for Consumer Duty by the end of October 2022, those that include open finance will have a distinct advantage.
About the author: Vaughan Jenkins has worked for major financial institutions and at partner and CEO level in management consultancy firms. He was part of the set up of the FCA Sandbox; worked with the regulator on PSD2 implementation; and was an advisory board member for the Financial Capability Strategy For The UK. He is an author and speaker on open finance and improving consumer outcomes.
they need to create super-personalised offers, products, and services. Hundreds of organisations, spanning finance to media and retail, rely on Moneyhub’s award-winning technology.
COMPANY: Moneyhub
FOUNDED: 2014
CATEGORY: Open finance software
KEY PERSONNEL: Sam Seaton, CEO (right)
HEADQUARTERS: Bristol, UK
TEL: 44(0) 117 280 5155
EMAIL: hello@moneyhub.com
WEBSITE: moneyhub.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ moneyhub-enterprise
TWITTER: @MoneyhubEnterpr
Sarwa changed the fintech landscape in MENA by receiving the first Innovation testing licence in 2018. Today, it is building an app that will be the primary financial partner for young people in the Middle East
In today’s digital world, customers are always looking for convenience, practicality and lower prices. They also expect transparency – always – while having access to choices and options. The key to success is not only to meet their expectations but to continuously exceed them. That’s as true of investing as any other branch of financial services.
In the MENA region, investing was a luxury available to only a few.
In order to make wealth, you had to have wealth. For a young population in the Middle East, investing was neither easy, nor affordable. Young investors had typically two options to choose from: either go with traditional advisors that offer high entry points, lock-in periods, lack of transparency and high fees, or go down the route of traditional international brokerage firms with complicated interfaces and no support for someone new to investing. This also meant that their money was fragmented across many platforms.
Sarwa, the fastest growing personal finance app in the region, was launched to democratise investing for retail investors. Like many companies, it was built around a need in the community: a personal story of founders who thought ’we should fix this.’ This is how it starts: a journey of hard work, dedication but also timing.
The Sarwa founders were familiar with how robo-advisors were revolutionising the wealth industry in North America by reducing fees and account minimums. After every
conversation with family members in the region, it became clear that there was a lack of access to financial services that allow everyone to invest their money. There were no proper retirement plans nor affordable wealth management providers. So, in 2016, the idea of Sarwa was born, but it was still thoughts on paper. The market reception validated the need for better investing solutions. The traditional financial industry was not designed to be for the masses, and was failing to address a younger segment.
In 2017, Dubai’s International Finance Centre (DIFC) announced the first fintech accelerator in the region, the FinTech Hive. The timing was perfect. Sarwa was born out of the Hive in November 2017 and launched its beta platform in February 2018 after receiving the first innovation testing licence by Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA).
In record time, after sitting with regulators in the sand-box to develop the laws and regulations for similar providers, Sarwa graduated to a full licence.
Today, Sarwa is building the region’s leading personal finance app, with a line of products ranging from
hands-off automated long-term investing under Sarwa Invest, self-directed trading of stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies under Sarwa Trade, and many other products and features launching soon. It’s about building the next-generation investing and money management platform that empowers the end user, while giving them full visibility over their money across different financial verticals. Investing should be affordable, accessible and easy. It should offer choices, wrapped around with education.
Currently, Sarwa is growing fast, regulated by the Abu Dhabi Global
»The GCC market is full of growth potential and is ripe for disruption, with an underserved young population, high mobile penetration and an estimated $1trillion in personal finance assets
Markets Financial Services Regulatory Authority and the DFSA and backed by top international and regional stakeholders, including the DIFC and Mubadalla, the Abu Dhabi state-owned holding company that operates as a sovereign wealth fund.
With more than 100,000 registered users, Sarwa will keep shipping new products as it maintains its industry leadership and expands its users base.
The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) market is full of growth potential and is ripe for disruption, with an underserved young population, high mobile penetration and an estimated $1trillion in personal finance assets. Sarwa will continue helping its community invest, save and trade, all in one app, to achieve financial independence and realise their financial goals.
We believe investing should be simpler, smarter and low-cost. Because, when it is, we can go about our lives, knowing that our financial future is taken care of.
So, Sarwa helps its clients invest, whether through hands-off investing or self-directed trading of stocks, ETFs and crypto currencies.
With Sarwa Invest, clients are provided with fully-diversified, customised portfolios of low-cost index funds, automated rebalancing to keep those investments on track, as well as dividend reinvesting. With Sarwa Trade, they can buy into companies and technologies they believe in.
We use cutting-edge technology to bring down cost and to simplify the investing experience. Sarwa is backed by a team of world-class financial experts and the best technology talent.
COMPANY: Sarwa Digital Wealth (BVI) Ltd
FOUNDED: 2017 CATEGORY: Wealth management
KEY PERSONNEL: Mark Chahwan, Co-founder (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Abu Dhabi
OFFICES IN: Dubai
TEL: +971 4 512 6219
EMAIL: hello@sarwa.co
WEBSITE: sarwa.co
LINKEDIN: www.linkedin.com/ company/sarwa/
TWITTER: @SarwaCo
India is one country where digital adoption has exploded in recent years. A range of new product and services options for consumers and businesses alike from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) – such as Rupay, the phenomenally successful Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) – have boosted digital reach across the nation by almost 90 per cent.
Here, as elsewhere, COVID-19 has accelerated the shift to e-commerce and digital payments. Another influence, unique to India, is the government’s determination to transform it to a cashless society. Indeed, the 2021/22 Union Budget saw the equivalent of around US$200million of funding allocated to its digital payments sector to help realise that goal.
One payments innovator riding the digital payments wave, is banking and payments technology solutions business, Cashfree Payments.
Based in Bangalore, it was launched in 2015 as a payments gateway, but when founders,
Akash Sinha and Reeju Datta, discovered how difficult it was to use online bank portals for disbursing daily payments, they decided to expand to offer a dedicated bulk payouts solution for businesses in India.
Now evolved into a complete payments platform, processing transactions worth $40billion annually, Cashfree Payments claims more than 50 per cent market share among payment processors in the jurisdiction and helps thousands of businesses collect and send money with solutions such as an easy-to-integrate payment gateway that supports popular payment methods including cards, UPI, netbanking, wallets, PayPal, electronic money institutions, and pay later options, instant refunds and disbursals; a split payment solution for marketplaces; a bank account verification API; a dedicated UPI stack for businesses and auto collect, its virtual account solution matching inbound payments to customers. It also offers payment collections, vendor payouts,
wage payouts, bulk refunds, expense reimbursements and loyalty and rewards initiatives.
Cashless Payments’ customers include leading businesses like Tencent, Shell, Google-backed Dunzo and donation platforms like Ketto. And it is working with leading players such as ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Yes Bank to build the core payments and banking infrastructure that powers its products. It is also integrated with major platforms like Shopify, Wix, Paypal, Amazon Pay, Paytm, OlaMoney and Google Pay, with its services accessible in eight other countries, too, including the USA, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.
Having been at the forefront of the industry in so many areas, Cashfree Payments now believes that issuance-as-a-service (IaaS) will be the next big trend in the payments landscape. In its recently published industry report,
Fast-growing fintech Cashfree Payments believes card issuing-as-a-service will play a key role in simplifying compliance and reducing risk
IaaS: New-Age Payments Solutions Through Card Issuing-as-a-Service, it calls for regulatory support in enabling the growth of IaaS – not least because of its potential to boost financial inclusion. It also explores IaaS’s potential benefits for specific industries, such as e-commerce and marketplaces, by facilitating prepaid and credit cards. It also identifies uses for fintech companies, large corporates, the logistics industry and the gig economy, through APIs enabling functions like creating, loading or blocking cards, as well as easing integrations for businesses.
The report points to increased demand for IaaS across industries, with new use cases emerging rapidly to fulfil the underserved needs of different customer segments. For fintechs, for example, physical and virtual card IaaS provides a plug-and-play, flexible model for easier experimentation and inclusion of services like loyalty and rewards. For established players, it claims, leveraging IaaS can enable faster, more seamless card issuance for their customers, enabling them to offer a better service than they could by building their own infrastructure in-house.
Meanwhile, it says, large corporates and enterprises themselves are starting to adopt it to ease integration and mitigate the challenges of complex manual processes for expense management, sales incentive payouts and contract worker payroll.
When it comes to the role IaaS can play in financial inclusion, it points out that a large number of people living in semi-urban and rural
IaaS will allow modern businesses to adopt innovative, personalised and customer-friendly solutions for their card issuance needs Akash Sinha, CEO & Co-founder, Cashfree Payments
Cashfree Payments is a leading payment and API banking solutions company. It provides full-stack payments solutions, enabling businesses in India to collect payments and make payouts via all available methods with simple integration.
Cashfree Payments’ offerings include an advanced and easy way to integrate payment gateways, a split payment solution for marketplaces, bank account verification API and auto collect – a virtual account solution to match inbound payments to customers.
Founded by IIIT Hyderabad alumnus Akash Sinha and IIT Kharagpur graduate Reeju Datta, Cashfree Payments has leveraged technology to lead payment disbursals in India. It enables hundreds of thousands of businesses with payment collections, vendor payouts, wage payouts, bulk refunds, expense reimbursements, loyalty and rewards.
Its products are also used in eight other countries including the USA,
areas desposit with co-operative societies, and have limited access to online banking and debit cards. By using IaaS, fintechs can facilitate prepaid and debit card issuance for those organisations to enable online and point-of-sale card transactions, as well as collaborating to facilitate working capital credit for micro, small and medium-sized businesses).
Speaking at the white paper’s
Canada and UAE. It is backed by Silicon Valley investor Y Combinator, Apis Partners, State Bank of India (SBI) and was incubated by PayPal.
COMPANY: Cashfree Payments
FOUNDED: 2015
CATEGORY: Payments infrastructure
KEY PERSONNEL: Akash Sinha, CEO & Co-founder (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Bangalore, India
WEBSITE: cashfree.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/cashfree
TWITTER: @gocashfree
launch, Akash Sinha, CEO and co-founder of Cashfree Payments, said IaaS is the next step in the evolution of banking-as-a-service.
“It will allow modern businesses to adopt innovative, personalised and customer-friendly solutions for their card issuance needs,” he said. “We believe regulation has a key role to play in the card issuance space and its financial inclusion imperative and look forward to supportive steps from the regulator.”
Standfirst dydydyyd dydydyddtdtdtdty Interswitch is enabling business growth for micro, small and medium-scale businesses across the continent through its Quickteller suite
Interswitch Group, Africa’s leading technology-driven company, focussed on the digitisation of payments, recently launched Quickteller Business, a new comprehensive corporate solution, empowering businesses of all sizes to facilitate payments and manage transactions from anywhere in the world, through one, simple integrated platform.
Complementing Interswitch’s existing Quickteller, one of Africa’s most recognisable and widely used consumer payment platforms, Quickteller Business will provide access to an extensive range of integrated payment offerings, from disbursements to value financing.
The addition of Quickteller Business creates a unique, differentiated offering with potential to accelerate value creation for large corporates, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and consumers. It leverages Quickteller’s significant existing consumer base of
more than five million consumers who are already using Quickteller for a variety of retail payments in countries including Nigeria, Kenya, and Gambia.
Expanding the reach of Interswitch’s popular e-commerce solution to a broader audience of business users, will help facilitate growth in the burgeoning SME sector across Africa.
Nigeria, for example, has a vast SME sector that has contributed as much as 48 per cent to the country’s national GDP, on average, in the last five years, according to a PwC survey, and accounts for about 50 per cent of industrial jobs and almost 90 per cent of activities in the manufacturing sector. With one of the fastest-growing emerging middle classes in the world, Nigeria represents a significant growth opportunity.
However, almost 40 per cent of the population remain financially excluded.
According to a survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics and the SME Development Agency of Nigeria in 2018, more than 41.5 million MSME businesses operate in Nigeria, of which five per cent are retailers and wholesalers – the market Quickteller Business is targeting. Furthering access to electronic payment systems for businesses has the potential to increase the contribution of SME commercial activity in economies across the continent.
Quickteller Business platform helps African business owners prosper, by enabling access to effective and convenient digital payment and transaction
solutions and technologies. They simply sign up for Quickteller Business by visiting business.quickteller.com, create an account with personal and business details, then request verification. Upon verification, the registered business is then enabled to initiate and receive payments and enjoy all other services on the platform. Customers are also offered multiple payment options, including POS, QR, card, cash, USSD or Paycode.
Akeem Lawal, Managing Director, Transaction Switching & Payments Processing at Interswitch Group, says: “The SME sector is a potential game-changer for economic growth and development in Africa. Interswitch has been at the forefront of digital payment innovation across the continent, enabling individuals, businesses, and governments to transact more efficiently over the last 17 years. The evolution of our payment and e-commerce offerings into Quickteller Business, represents a significant long-term shift in both our business and merchant operating model.
“Through the integrated platform, SMEs, financial services agents and large corporates, can better navigate the challenges around payments collections, allowing them to focus on their core business, with their diverse transaction needs taken care of through the versatility of the new Quickteller Business offering.”
Lawal continues: “The platform offers a comprehensive, integrated, payment solution that allows businesses to receive and track payments, generate e-invoices, as well as handle dispute management. It is an innovative and exciting payment tool that will benefit all business owners. Through this new offering, we are continuing our mission to make payments a seamless part of our everyday lives.”
Interswitch is a leading technology-driven company, focussed on the digitisation of payments in Nigeria and other countries in Africa.
Founded in 2002, Interswitch disrupted the traditional cash-based payments value chain in Nigeria by supporting the introduction of electronic payments processing and switching services.
Today, Interswitch is a leading player with critical mass in Nigeria’s developing financial ecosystem and is active across the payments value chain, providing a full suite of omni-channel payment solutions. Its vision is to make payments a seamless part of everyday life in Africa, and its mission is to create transaction solutions that enable individuals and communities to prosper across Africa.
Interswitch’s broad network and robust payments platform have been instrumental to the development of the Nigerian payments ecosystem and provide Interswitch with the infrastructure to expand across Africa.
COMPANY: Interswitch
FOUNDED: 2002 CATEGORY: Payments platform
KEY PERSONNEL: Akeem Lawal, MD, Transaction Switching & Payments HEAD OFFICE: Nigeria OFFICES IN: Germany, Kenya, Uganda and Gambia
WEBSITE: interswitchgroup.com LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/ interswitch-limited/
TWITTER: @InterswitchGRP
»Quickteller Business represents a significant shift in both our business and merchant operating model Akeem Lawal, Interswitch Group
Composable architecture offers institutions a way to manage the transition from on-premise systems to a smarter, more agile and intelligent future
The terms ‘composable’ and ‘composability’ are gaining momentum in financial services, as insurance firms and banks work to eliminate silos, quickly implement new capabilities, and actualise robust strategies across the business, all without introducing added risk or inefficiencies.
That’s a tall order, but composability is proving itself effective in meeting these objectives. Industry analysts such as Gartner Group have declared that composability is central to the ability to grow and adapt in times of change.
At Earnix, we see composability as a set of technologies and an architectural approach that allows us to work with our customers and partners as an intelligent layer that connects existing systems, new technologies, and diverse teams to create more focussed and flexible solutions.
To achieve these goals, modern insurers and banks are adopting a ‘composability stack’ – one that’s reflected in the business, in technology infrastructure, and in the development and operation of software applications.
To meet the rapidly evolving needs of the market, the composable enterprise places a laser-focussed emphasis on working across functional boundaries, breaking down silos, and reacting quickly to market changes, resulting in a fully-connected organisation.
Based on recent Gartner research, businesses that achieve high levels of composability have the potential to outperform their competition in several key dimensions, by:
■ Increasing their revenue and/or funding
■ Reducing their operating costs
■ Mitigating business risk
The overall result is better business performance. But achieving composability is not just a tech fix. It requires infusing the culture with the thinking and actions that emphasise constant monitoring of the market and competition, quick reaction to changing conditions, and an ability to reconfigure organisational building blocks as needed to adjust to changing market conditions, customer expectations, and new regulation.
Applying composable infrastructure can result in significant cost reductions, allow for a wide range of technology choices, and provide a level of interoperability not possible with yesterday’s monolithic, in-house/on-premises technology stacks.
Achieving composability in the software portion of the stack allows insurers and banks to deliver new and compelling customer experiences (CX), offer new products and services in record time, minimise risk, maximise revenue, and run a more efficient business overall.
Here are some recommendations for making composability work:
■ Reduce dependence on monolithic core systems Putting outdated core systems on track to becoming record keepers as their business value is diminishing will allow resources to be directed to more productive tasks
■ Get the data house in order No matter what application strategies you pursue, data is key. All financial services organisations suffer from issues with data that lives in silos throughout the organisation, is not well-maintained,
and has no clear ownership. To take full advantage of composability, these hurdles must be overcome
■ Open APIs Once composability is established as a key tenet of application development and deployment, open application programming interfaces (APIs) will be key to rapid integration with still-useful legacy applications, development of new solutions, and making connections with partners and their complementary applications
To complete the composability stack and take full advantage of all the benefits that composability has to offer, there are several functional components of customer-facing applications that must be employed:
■ Dynamic pricing software An artificial intelligence-driven (AI-based) enterprise rating and pricing engine operationalises advanced analytics and builds in robust control and governance standards across the organisation. This allows insurers to instantly deploy updated pricing to online channels, to serve up millions of quotes and offers per day, and to leverage those digital channels in real time
■ Personalisation Nothing drives customer engagement faster than personalised insurance offers. With the right software, banks and insurers can reach a new level of personalised consumer experiences, to better serve diverse audiences, implement new market/product strategies in
real time, and build a more relevant, value-adding organisation
■ Usage-based insurance (UBI) and telematics In the insurance space, usage-based insurance (UBI) and telematics insurance are revolutionising the way business is done and how customers are treated to highly personalised experiences. Look for a solution that delivers a complete telematics and UBI solution, combining an app that collects robust data with machine learning (ML) and dynamic pricing capabilities
■ Consumer engagement
Timing is critical to capturing consumer attention and incremental business. Proactively engaging
Earnix is creating a more personalised, connected world where insurers and banks create the meaningful, dynamic engagements that customers want through dynamic, composable and intelligent operations.
Our agile solutions empower technical teams to access high-level data science, analytical modelling and machine learning within one product.
The aim is to create a more data-driven, intelligent organisation by connecting cross-functional teams and infusing industry-leading analytics into every application.
We work with insurers and financial institutions, including Tier 1 organisations, across more than 30 countries, helping them to bridge the gap between outdated legacy systems and modern end-customers’ expectations.
with consumers to offer contextually relevant and timely offers, allows financial services leaders to create real-time, value-adding engagements that increase customer lifetime value (LTV).
Wherever you are in your quest to make your organisation a leader now and in the future, make composability a cornerstone of accelerating the transition and ensure that the competitive advantages last. Composability will allow you to connect existing systems, new technologies, and diverse teams at all levels across the organisation to not only improve what exists, but to accelerate what’s next.
COMPANY: Earnix
FOUNDED: 2001
CATEGORY: Enterprise platform
KEY PERSONNEL: Udi Ziv, CEO (right)
HEAD OFFICE: Tel Aviv, Israel
OFFICES IN: US, UK, Australia, Germany, France and Italy
WEBSITE: earnix.com
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/ company/earnix/ TWITTER: @Earnix_Inc
Moses Sule, Head of Growth, Africa, at dLocal, explains why a flexible approach to payments is key for e-commerce merchants in Africa, starting with Nigeria and Kenya
In examining the changing payment landscapes worldwide, Africa continues to be the most intriguing for e-commerce merchants. Kenya and Nigeria are especially fertile grounds, thanks to the exponential growth of mobile-money users.
Recent data from the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System shows the volume of transactions through mobile devices rose by 128.4 per cent to 153 million in the first four months of 2022, from 67 million in the same period last year.
The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics revealed earlier this year that the number of total mobile money transactions recorded in 2021 rose 16 per cent to
2.1 billion, while total transfers grew from 5.2 billion to 6.8 billion.
Transaction volume is expected to rise in both Kenya and Nigeria and presents an ongoing opportunity for different entities such as banks, fintech, and mobile network operators to bring more consumers into mainstream payments.
With both markets changing rapidly every year, e-commerce merchants seeking to benefit in Africa need to be able to adapt and make flexibility part of their go-to-market strategy.
» Alternative payment methods are the key to launching operations in Nigeria, as only three per cent of Nigerians have cards
Finding success in emerging markets requires being truly local in your approach and execution. It means having operations or partners on the ground who can make sense of each country’s unique attributes and requirements and help you take advantage of the opportunities while minimising the risks. Nigeria and Kenya are no exception.
Alternative payment methods are the key to launching operations in Nigeria, as only three per cent of Nigerians have cards, and only 29 per cent of online transactions are paid with this payment method, according to various industry studies. Mobile-optimised checkout flows become more key each year, as smartphone penetration is growing fast from a base of 56 per cent today.
The most popular method of digital payment in Nigeria is M-Pesa from Safaricom and Vodacom (part of Vodafone). In September 2021, M-Pesa said it had a total of 50 million active monthly users. What started out as a simple SMS payments system has morphed into one that’s also a smartphone app and uses QR code to conduct transactions.
In Nigeria specifically, alternatives to M-Pesa have emerged, though. These include Paga, which offers free P2P transfers between a network of
24,840 agents and 14 million customers.
One of the key challenges in Africa is a lack of interoperability between different mobile money operators. While M-Pesa is the most popular network in Africa, some 17 platforms exist in Nigeria alone, which shows the complex nature of launching operations in emerging markets.
Fortunately for e-commerce merchants,
M-Pesa dominates it. It is the most-used platform in Kenya and accounts for more than 90 per cent of all transactions in the country, both online and offline, as other forms of payment are nearly non-existent.
As of 2018, only 250,000 Kenyans owned a credit card, for example.
Overall, M-Pesa has more than 550,000 merchants on its network that account for $14billion in sales annually.
Nigeria and Kenya are just two examples of emerging markets in Africa that are constantly changing due to new developments in how consumers pay throughout the continent.
interoperability is slowly happening in Africa with countries enabling transactions to take place across a number of platforms.
In July, Kenyans were finally able to fully transact between different platforms to not only pay their friends and family, but also to make payments at supermarkets, restaurants, and pay bills. M-Pesa users in the country can now pay persons or merchants using Airtel Money and Telkom’s T-Kash.
This is important to note because Kenya is widely considered to be the East Africa region’s most prominent economy with 56 million people. Despite other choices,
Other countries such as Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania, to name a few, are experiencing growth in their economies, thanks to the continued emergence of mobile money platforms and government-led initiatives, including faster payments.
As new services and opportunities show up through digital channels, more consumers (especially the younger ones) are expected to consume more online. Such changes will require e-commerce merchants to future-proof their businesses and invest in the forward-looking strategies that can pay dividends for driving long-term growth in a vital market such as Africa.
dLocal was started with one goal in mind – to close the payments innovation gap that exists between developed countries and emerging economies. While dLocal was born in Uruguay, we knew that local payment challenges extended well beyond neighbouring countries. Today, our multicultural team is spread between offices in Uruguay, USA, Israel, Brazil and Europe, and we have boots on the ground in every country where we process payments. As we continue our own rapid expansion, we are incredibly honoured to power growth for some of the most visionary companies in the world.
dLocal powers local payments in emerging markets, connecting global enterprise merchants with billions of consumers across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Through the One dLocal concept (one API, one platform, one contract), global companies can accept payments, send pay-outs, settle funds globally, and issue white-labelled prepaid virtual and physical debit cards in local currencies, without the need to manage separate pay-in and pay-out processors, set up numerous local entities, and integrate multiple acquirers and payment methods.
COMPANY: dLocal
FOUNDED: 2015
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M-Pesa is the most-used platform in Kenya… other forms of payment are nearly non-existent
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