The move democratises enterprise-grade payments technology for businesses

 Adyen, the global financial technology platform of choice for leading businesses, has partnered with Kooomo, a global eCommerce platform provider, to give it the technology to create a new product, Kooomo Payments.

Businesses that use Kooomo’s SaaS end-to-end model are rapidly scaling their operations, with ambitions to trade overseas. Adyen’s platform helps businesses to manage the complexities of international payments, with technology that makes it easy to navigate local country regulation and consumer preferred payment options.

The integration of Adyen’s payment solutions gives ambitious mid-sized businesses access to a payments platform that is purpose-built for cross-border transactions. Kooomo will rebrand Adyen’s platform as Kooomo Payments, giving its customers local payment methods and currencies can be switched on and off with the click of a button. Businesses will also enjoy access to the latest payment methods such as Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services and digital wallets.

“Kooomo is built to simplify cross-border selling. With Adyen, we’re giving rapidly scaling merchants access to affordable enterprise technology, which might otherwise be out of reach”, said Gary Hammond, Managing Director at Kooomo. “Our customers are looking to move away from a model of multiple integrations into multiple payment types. This is especially relevant since Covid-19 has triggered the rapid rise of digital wallets, and BNPL methods such as Klarna. A single integration with Adyen enables our customers to be agile and focus on growth.”

“We’re delighted to power Kooomo’s new payment solution, which will help businesses scale by offering access to a single global payment system and enterprise standard technology”, said Colin Neil, Managing Director of UK & Ireland. “Through this partnership, Kooomo will be able to provide data insights on digital wallets and cards across markets. Users will also get access to repeat subscription services, which can make a tangible difference to businesses of all sizes.”

Historical data from thousands of Medius customers shows finance teams should be prepared for a mammoth surge in invoices on the first Tuesday after Easter

Medius, a leading provider of accounts payable (AP) automation solutions, predicts April 19 to be amongst the busiest days for invoice processing and approvals in 2022.

Medius, which has thousands of customers and manages transactions worth more than $180 billion annually, has analysed historical data to predict the first Tuesday after Easter is likely to be one of the busiest of 2022. Last year, Tuesday 6^th April, the first Tuesday after Easter, saw a 44% increase in invoices sent for approval - the busiest day of the year for invoice approvals.

Below outlines the biggest spikes in the Easter period over the last four years for both PO-invoices and non-PO invoices:

Invoice approval means reviewing and approving supplier invoices before these are posted as a cost in the ERP system and sent for payment.

David Taylor, Data Analyst at Medius, said: "Our data shows the number of invoices on the first Tuesday after Easter make it one of the busiest days for accounts payable teams. In fact, last year it had the highest volume of invoice traffic all year beating Christmas and the financial year-end to the top spot with the average business approving more than 200 invoices in one day.”

Jim Lucier, CEO of Medius, comments: "Our advice for account payable teams is to clear the backlog as much as possible before Easter so the break doesn’t add to the crunch. The surge can be challenging for finance teams given they are under constant pressure to deliver more with less. A sustainable long-term solution is to invest in technology like AI and ML that can automate much of the invoicing process for staff.”

Surecomp® today announced it is providing a new solution based on advanced cryptographic technology allowing financial institutions to mitigate the risk of duplicate financing fraud. The solution provides an effective invoice comparison process to identify whether finance has already been requested or whether there is any suspicious activity detected against a specific invoice, all while ensuring that no confidential information ever leaves the bank.

Based on the sharing of unrecognizable hashed crypto document fingerprints to a global validation database, the solution allows any financier to check and compare trade documents without having to disclose any customer information at all. It enables visibility of invoice status and promotes industry collaboration through a shared open API-based repository. Providing a channel through which financing parties can communicate to resolve any fuzzy matches and prevent duplicate financing fraud losses before they happen, the solution ensures that companies around the world regain the ability to access funding, while giving lenders the immediate confidence to issue finance knowing that financial documents are not exposing them to the risk of duplicate financing fraud.

The solution, which has already been introduced to over 25 leading global banks across all continents, is part of Surecomp’s continuously growing Trade Finance-as-a-Service (TFaaS) offering.

“We’ve seen a dramatic rise in duplicate trade financing fraud, with billions of dollars being lost and many banks reviewing their appetite for risk which has further impacted the trade finance gap,” explains Enno-Burghard Weitzel, Surecomp’s SVP of strategy and business development. “We believe that an effective fraud prevention solution is a must have for banks to sustain their trade finance business and therefore we’re offering this to all banks free of charge as an industry utility.”

 Capitalise, the platform that gives businesses and their advisers transparency and control over business finance in one place, has today announced a new integration with global small business platform, Xero.

Capitalise will now be available for accountants to access on the Xero App Store.

Capitalise provides accountants with full transparency and control over their business clients’ finances, unlocking their advisory potential with data combined from Xero, and credit insight from Experian and public Companies House records.

The Capitalise offering in the Xero App Store provides accountants with an easy to use platform that allows them to segment portfolios, track facilities and create shareable reports for their clients. With Capitalise, accountants can access business credit score analysis, funding eligibility check, corporate finance insights for every client.

Capitalise’s recent ‘Get Fit for Business’ report found that nearly two-thirds of businesses rely on their accountant for advice on funding, growth, cash flow and business planning, and, two thirds (66 per cent) said that their accountant had been their most trusted business adviser in the last two years.

However, this year business owners want to see even more from their accountant. 59 per cent said that they want to see even more from their accountant in terms of advice and finance options in 2022, and 61 per cent understand that they need business finance if they want to grow this year, but there is an industry-wide issue of not understanding how to access it effectively.

Ollie Maitland, CPO and Co-founder for Capitalise, comments:

“This year, small businesses want to grow, and they will be looking to their accountant to provide insight, access and advice to support these growth initiatives".

“This is why it is essential that accountants unlock their firm’s full advisory potential powered by cloud accounting data, helping their client portfolio build healthier businesses".

“We are thrilled to be working with Xero, which is the go to business platform for many small businesses where we currently operate in the UK and South Africa. Ultimately, this integration will open the doors of a number of exciting opportunities for small businesses, who will soon have a better understanding of business performance, credit, debt recovery and funding options via their accountant.”

Setting up, and connecting Xero with Capitalise is simple and can be done in just a few clicks via the Xero App Store. To read more about the Capitalise platform, or to download it, see here: https://apps.xero.com/uk/function/accountant-tools-extras/app/capitalise#overview

Paymob, MENA’s market-leading digital payments provider, announces its formal market entry, and start of operations, in Pakistan.

Paymob’s exciting expansion into Pakistan follows its rapid growth in its home market of Egypt, plus Jordan and Kenya, where - combined - it services tens of thousands of merchants. Paymob serves merchants such as LG, Samsonite, Talabat, Uber and Virgin Records, plus SMEs.

Paymob’s market opportunity in Pakistan is significant. It has a population of over 220 million with a range of retail outlets and SME businesses across the country’s cities. Over four million SMEs use just over 80,000 POS terminals and less than 3,000 ecommerce gateways. The market is perfectly suited to Paymob’s ability to bridge the digital financial gap and meets the company’s criteria and strategy to expand further across MENAP, and globally.

Pakistan is ranked as the world’s fifth largest market for freelancing servicing local and international customers with no sufficient local means of digital payments. Paymob can help enable individual and micro businesses with payment links, soft POS solutions, and means to manage their payments and scale their businesses.

Paymob aims to rapidly impact the ecosystem by empowering MSMEs across all Pakistani cities with online and physical digital financial solutions, to manage and grow their businesses. Paymob’s advanced technology offers instant onboarding features for the first time in Pakistan, using products such as Payment Gateways, POS, and Soft POS. The instant onboarding is empowered and enabled by Digital Onboarding regulations recently published by the State Bank of Pakistan. It is one of many positive steps the State Bank has led to enable MSME Merchants and help digitize the ecosystem.

Paymob also plans to extend its “Tap-on-Phone” payment acceptance mechanism service – a recently announced industry-first in Egypt in partnership with MasterCard – to Pakistan merchants. This will give merchants the ease to use mobile phones directly to service payments. This is likely to have a significant impact in the Pakistani market.

Islam Shawky, CEO and co-founder of Paymob, said: “We are very excited to be launching Pakistan. This comes as an essential step after our successful journey in leading the Egyptian payments landscape where we enable over tens of thousands of merchants with innovative financial solutions.

Paymob operates with a concrete belief that SME’s are the corner stone of every economy and enabling them automatically reflects on the country’s digital economy.”

Paymob’s market entry has also been welcomed by Mastercard who recognize Paymob as an ideal partner to build Pakistan’s payment ecosystem and make a material impact on the country’s digital payments transformation.

Atyab Tahir, Country Head of MasterCard Pakistan & AFG, commented: “Paymob’s commitment to building the payments ecosystem is a very encouraging sign for Pakistan. In Paymob, Mastercard and the financial services industry in general will have the right partner to help build a network of digitally enabled merchants accepting non-cash payments. We look forward to the day where digital payments are ubiquitously accepted.”

Other market drivers include GDP growth forecast for Pakistan at 4-6% per annum, and the growth in total value of e-commerce consumer goods which increased 83% in 2021 to US$3.9 billion. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority reports that 101 million people use the internet in Pakistan, with 46% having access to broadband services and 85% (183 million) to mobile connections.

According to the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, the country has the potential for significant Fintech growth, due to its increasing youth population, disruptive internet and smartphone penetration, consumer preferences for mobile phones and social media, a booming e-commerce market facilitating digital payments, and the financial system’s overall capacity for innovation.

Established in 2015, Paymob offers different products and APIs, enabling online businesses and typical offline store merchants to accept and send payments. Merchants can easily integrate Paymob’s payments APIs in their websites or mobile apps to accept payments from their customers using different payment methods including cards, mobile wallets, BNPL, direct debit, and more.

North American chemical distributor and manufacturer chooses Infor CloudSuite Chemicals to help manage critical business processes and complicated pricing methods

Infor, the industry cloud company, today announced that Hydrite, an integrated manufacturer and supplier of chemicals and related services, has selected Infor CloudSuite Chemicals to help manage critical business processes and transform its business. This solution will provide Hydrite with real-time visibility across its entire enterprise and tools to handle the complicated pricing methods associated with manufacturing and distributing commodity chemicals.

Learn more about Infor CloudSuite Chemicals: https://www.infor.com/resources/infor-cloudsuite-chemicals

Hydrite is one of North America’s largest independent distributors and manufacturers of specialty and industrial chemicals. It has a network of manufacturing facilities, warehouses and laboratories in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, California and Texas, with nearly 1,000 employees in 25 states. The company celebrated its 90^th anniversary in 2019 and has big plans before its 100^th — from expanding plants and moving corporate offices to transforming digitally.

“Hydrite is coming up on 100 years of business, and we’re looking for ways to make the business as efficient as possible for another 100 years,” said Gary Branger, IT director at Hydrite. “As a results-driven company, we wanted a solution that had proven results and that could quickly scale to support our growth. We selected Infor CloudSuite Chemicals for its last-mile functionality and reputation for industry specificity. Having specific knowledge about true cost and what is being consumed will be a real game changer.” 

The chemical company is tank intensive, with both batch and continuous manufacturing. Infor CloudSuite Chemicals has tank lot blending and tank management and scheduling capabilities, which will accommodate both types of manufacturing, as well as their by-products. As a distributor and manufacturer of commodity chemicals, Hydrite will also benefit from the solution’s ability to handle its industry commodity pricing by potency. The pricing between the company’s vendors and their customers is often complicated, so the solution will help modernize the business to better handle these complexities.

With a standing relationship with Infor for 15 years, the specialty chemical company is set to continue its partnership for at least another 7 years with this long-term agreement. The Infor solution will include Infor Factory Track, an end-to-end manufacturing automation solution; Infor Birst enterprise analytics; production scheduling; Infor Product Lifecycle Management (PLM); Infor Capture document management; Infor User Adoption Platform (UAP) to author and manage unique learning content; and Infor Graphical Lot Tracker (GLT) for traceability information.

“Infor is helping us execute our ambitious growth strategy, and we look forward to continuing our strong partnership,” Branger said. “With the rollout of this new cloud solution, we expect more modern production scheduling and real-time traceability to help transform our business.”

Open banking platform welcomes Charles Damen as Chief Product Officer and Artashes Torosyan as Chief Technology Officer

Open banking payments platform, Token.io, has appointed two new executive hires as it continues to strengthen its leadership position in Europe. Charles Damen, Chief Product Officer (CPO), and Artashes Torosyan, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), join Token.io to build out the company’s Account-to-Account (A2A) payment platform, which delivers best-in-class open payment and data connectivity across 16 European countries.

Charles joins Token.io from Worldpay, where he served as SVP of Product Strategy for global Real Time Payments and Open Banking products. He has over 20 years of experience in senior roles at payments, mobile and internet companies, and prior to Worldpay founded and led the global cross border payments division of Thunes, enabling real-time payments to and from emerging markets. He is a member of the European Payments Council (EPC) and was previously a board member for the Merchant Risk Council.

Based at Token’s Berlin office, Artashes brings over 25 years of experience in FinTech and blockchain technology. Previous roles include CTO for the German-based open banking data-driven loyalty and rewards platform, OptioPay, and CTO for Artory, a leading art and objects registry utilising blockchain technology.

“Open banking is a huge opportunity for the financial services industry, enabling the development of innovative payments and data services offering customers secure, fast and frictionless payment experiences at lower transaction costs,” comments Charles Damen, Chief Product Officer at Token.io. “Owning and operating a global open banking network, Token has a highly strategic position in the open banking ecosystem and one that is difficult to replicate. By doing the heavy lifting for many of the leading PSPs, acquirers, banks and financial institutions, Token is driving the shift from card to bank payments in a way few other players are able to.”

“Token’s history as a pioneer in open banking technology is what first attracted me to the role,“ comments Artashes Torosyan, Chief Technology Officer at Token. “The Token platform already has deep functionality to enable simple and elegant bank-direct payments for a range of use cases, from eCommerce and bill payments, to funding an account or paying off debt via loan or credit card repayments. I look forward to working with the team to build out these capabilities as new use cases continue to emerge.”

“Token’s technology underpins the open banking propositions of some of the world's most respected financial institutions and fintech disruptors,” comments Todd Clyde, Token.io CEO. “We are making account-to-account payments a true competitor to cards and alternative payment methods. With the expertise of Artashes and Charles behind us, Token will continue to push the boundaries of functionality beyond regulation through new open payments and data capabilities, premium APIs and value-added services.”

Token.io processes tens of millions of open payments annually for payment service providers, gateways, banks, wallet providers and large merchants. Customers that plug and play, white-label or have used Token.io’s open banking infrastructure to build their own propositions include BNP Paribas, HSBC, Mastercard, Nuvei, Ecommpay, Rewire, Coingate, Sonae Universo, Volt and Vyne. 

Carbon tracking experts Cogo are collaborating with ING’s innovation accelerator, ING Labs Brussels, as one of the 2022 cohort of start-ups. ING will work with Cogo to validate its unique capability to integrate their carbon tracking technology into digital banking propositions. The first step will be to develop a proof of concept over the next sixteen weeks.  

The Proof of Concept will be developed in a banking context, to demonstrate the capabilities of Cogo’s current technologies. Bob Timmermans, Tribe Lead Digital and Customer interactions at ING: “What if, we as ING contribute to make a difference for a better world. And give our customers next to insights on the financial behaviour also insights into their sustainable behaviour and even nudge them to improve. We are looking forward to explore this with the proof of concept with Cogo”. 

ING Labs Brussels also announced earlier that regtech start-up Sygno and data visualisation tool Solidatus will also be part of the 2022 cohort. Pieter-Jan Boiten, Head of ING Labs Brussels : “With this year’s participating scale-ups, we focus more than ever on creating value and taking a leap forward in some of the most strategical topics for ING. With sustainability being one of them, we are welcoming Cogo to our ING Labs Brussels family.” 

”This project is a significant step towards further exploring the potential benefits of carbon tracking for banking customers” said Emma Kisby, UK and Europe CEO, Cogo. “We’re excited to get started and benefit from the extensive experience and knowledge of a top-tier bank like ING. Having shown an impressive ongoing commitment to its own sustainability over the past years, they are as passionate about tackling the climate challenges as us.”  

Launching in July 2022, the new partnership will see SOFORT’s bank transfer product complemented by Brite Payments’ instant payout solution. Following the launch, merchants using the SOFORT platform will be able to opt for the service and activate Brite Payments’ innovative instant payout solution without additional technical effort, allowing them to disburse funds to consumers within seconds.

The joint solution, entitled ‘SOFORT Instant Payouts powered by BRITE’, lets merchants facilitate instant payouts through their existing SOFORT Bank Transfer integration. This means there is no need for labor-intensive integrations, enabling a quicker ‘go to market’. Additionally, Brite Payments will continue to offer its standalone instant payment service for businesses separately to the SOFORT platform.

Since its inception, SOFORT’s online banking-based payment method, also known as Sofortüberweisung in Germany, has been used for more than one billion transactions and boasts more than 85 million users. Now, many of these customers will be able to start receiving funds instantly when requesting a payout from their online platform. As part of the partnership, Brite Payments will disburse funds to the same bank account used to make the initial payment with SOFORT, offering a genuine one-click solution.

Speaking on the partnership, Lena Hackelöer, CEO and founder of Brite Payments shared: “We’re all very excited to launch our joint solution across some of the continent’s leading markets, where SOFORT is a highly popular payment solution with online shoppers. This prominence makes them the ideal partner for us. Combined with our instant payout technology, we can jointly provide a very convenient solution for consumers and merchants alike. Instant payments are the future of payments and together with SOFORT we want to finally anchor this technology in everyday life.”

Wilko Klaassen, Managing Director Sofort GmbH commented: “We are very proud to offer our SOFORT users instant payouts in a manner that complements our existing direct bank transfer product, by establishing this unique partnership with Brite Payments. Instant payouts is a service for which we have seen a great need in the market for some time, and we are pleased to have found a solution as efficient and innovative as Brite’s.This additional service ‘SOFORT Instant Payouts powered by BRITE’ is offering our partners and users the speed and convenience required within the e-commerce space.”

For more information about the new Brite Payments and SOFORT partnership, please visit: www.britepaymentgroup.com or www.SOFORT.com

New report explores the implications of the BNPL market for banks and retailers

Dloitte and cloud banking platform Mambu have identified the five steps merchants and fintech need to embrace in building a successful Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offering. This is part of a new report exploring the implications of the fast-growing sector for banks and retailers.

The ‘Deloitte and Mambu Guide to BNPL’ identifies five core building blocks for businesses looking to develop a BNPL solution in an increasingly competitive environment:

• Value proposition - defining and understanding what merchants and customers need and developing a model to solve their key pain points 

• Technology and data - developing a tech stack with best-of-breed partners to enable real-time decisioning as well as the creation of next-generation solutions that deliver distinctive customer experiences

• Risk and compliance - designing a risk framework that provides a competitive edge, from in-built fraud detection and management to defining the risk appetite, model and strategy 

• Skills and capabilities - investing in specialised talent in critical areas to compliment businesses’ existing teams as well as build their brand and differentiate their product in the market 

• Go-to-market - bundling the offering within a businesses’ portfolio and bringing the minimum viable product to life

The report comes amid booming demand for BNPL services, with the market projected to be worth $3.98 trillion by 2030 - growing at a CAGR of 45.7%. 

Consumer demand for convenience and affordability is one of three factors driving this growth according to the report, with recent data from Deloitte showing that more than half of consumers (56%) cite the ability to test a product before making a payment as a key driver for using BNPL.

Other growth factors include widespread merchant adoption, as vendors look to reap BNPL benefits, such as increased sales conversions and average order sizes, as well as accelerated market traction during the pandemic. According to Worldpay data, BNPL accounted for 2.9% of global e-commerce in 2020, and is expected to reach 5.3% by 2025.

Kunal Galav, Regional Director, EMEA Advisory at Mambu, said: “Our report with Deloitte defines what BNPL success looks like and the practical steps financial and non-financial brands need to take in order to capitalise on the market opportunity. With fintechs already directing billions of revenue away from banks via BNPL services in recent years, incumbent players risk losing out if they fail to act now. BNPL will continue to erode unsecured retail lending post-pandemic, so it’s vital that financial institutions think strategically about if and how they decide to play a role in this new business line - we hope this guide will enable them to do just that.” 

João Caldeira, Partner at Deloitte added: “BNPL is now a key sales and conversion driver for retailers and ecommerce providers. Merchants, if they have not done so already, are looking around for an embedded finance solution that can help them design BNPL experiences at speed and at low-cost. The bottom line is that it’s a new revenue driver and having the ability to quickly add seamless installment-based payments at the point of decision can change a business.”