• Stakeholder interviews reveal that UK issuers, acquirers and gateways are largely ready for SCA enforcement
• SME merchant readiness remain greatest concern for UK market
• New sprint ramp-up plan to commence on 18^th January with full compliance required by 14^th March

The Payments Association (formerly The Emerging Payments Association (EPA)), today announces the release of its new report ‘The Long and Winding Road to SCA: UK Readiness Status and Key Learnings from Europe’. The report takes the pulse of the payments industry to determine the status of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) compliance, the learnings from Europe, the best practices to be followed and the outstanding challenges that must be overcome. The Payments Association conducted a comprehensive research programme through in-depth interviews with representatives from international networks, issuers, acquirers, gateways, retailers, technology providers and trade associations.

SCA compliance requires the authentication of customers using multiple factors from possession, knowledge and inherence elements. It is required as part of the Payment Services Directive (PSD2), to prevent remote purchase card fraud, a problem that has grown significantly over recent years – 170% in the UK since 2011. Although SCA was originally planned to be enforced throughout the European Economic Area (which the UK remains a part of post-Brexit) in 2019, but a lack of market readiness, uncertainty over the underlying standards and the impact of COVID-19 meant that the UK deadline was pushed back to January 2022.

Helped by this additional time the UK issuers, acquirers and gateways are largely ready from a compliance perspective. Large eCommerce merchants have also been busy implementing EMV 3DS technology to authenticate their customers and are expected to be ready but have been reluctant to be early adopters due to fear of cardholder confusion leading to checkout abandonment. SME merchants however remain an area of concern as many appear not to have taken the necessary actions and so are expected to see an increase in the number of declined transactions in the new year.

With this UK deadline now only three months away it is vital that all stakeholders focus their attentions on optimising the SCA payments experience, by maximising the use of exemptions, correctly flagging transactions, complying with MIT frameworks and reviewing how in-app payments are handled. The industry is planning a sprint ramp-up plan, starting on the 18^th January, that will see an increasing number of transactions being ‘soft declined’ in escalating phases, in order to ensure all parties are ready by the 14^th March. Heightened monitoring and rapid issue resolution will be required during this short time ramp-up period and for the initial months following enforcement.

Encouragingly, the study has found that remote purchase card fraud levels have started to decline in Europe since the start of active enforcement of SCA with issuers seeing the average value of fraud fall by 33% and the volume by 50% according to EBA data. The most popular technologies being used to achieve SCA compliance are EMV 3DS, face and finger biometrics, behavioural biometrics, mobile banking apps and digital wallets. The report also found that the most popular SCA exemption is the Transaction Risk Analysis.

Tony Craddock, Director General at The Payments Association, comments: “Although challenges remain, especially amongst SMEs, the data we have gathered is extremely encouraging. We have seen that the financial services and FinTech sectors have prepared well, used the additional time wisely and are ready for the upcoming deadline.”

He adds: “The early signs are that SCA is having a positive impact on European card fraud levels, and we look forward to seeing similar declines in the UK. We do though have to remain vigilant as criminals have a habit of seeking out new ways and places to attack. Financial Crime prevention is an ongoing fight.”

To download a copy of the whitepaper, please visit: https://bit.ly/3xIjL4E

For more information on the work and services of The Payments Association you can visit https://thepaymentsassociation.org/ or contact jay.bennett@thepaymentsassociation.org

Anchor, the autonomous billing platform, announces it has completed a $15 million seed-funding round. Led by Rapyd Ventures, the new venture capital arm of Rapyd, Entrée Capital, a leading international venture capital firm that has invested in unicorns such as Monday.com and Riskified and Tal Ventures, a premier Israel based VC with an impressive portfolio of more than 30 companies, including Rapyd, in which Tal’s previous fund was its first investor. Anchor will use the funding to expand its team and extend its partnerships and marketing efforts.

According to a report by Dun & Bradstreet, cash flow issues caused 90 percent of small business failures in 2019. Surprisingly, 60 percent of these businesses were profitable but couldn’t handle the negative cash-flow gap caused mostly by late payments. Today, billing and collections are labor-intensive, expensive, time-consuming, error-prone, and subject to fraud risk. This systemic failure is caused by the inherent manual labor in every billing cycle. Anchor completely automates the billing process, ensuring every business is paid on time and effortlessly.

Anchor connects businesses and their clients through a ‘live online agreement’ that serves as a single source of truth. Anchor’s autonomous end-to-end billing and payments solution covers the entire cycle: starting with the vendor and client agreement and managing the invoicing, payment, and reconciliation steps. This automation frees businesses of all sizes to focus on doing billable work, instead of the time-consuming and costly manual work involved in trying to get paid on time.
Anchor integrates with the client’s payment information and with the service provider’s tech stack, so once the service is delivered, or upon the billing due date, the invoices are automatically populated and sent according to the agreement and deliverables. Once payments are released, Anchor automates the collections and reconciliation.

“The challenges of billing and collections, which make paying a vendor a hefty process, stem from the human element,” says Rom Lakritz, Co-founder & CEO of Anchor. “If people could trust the invoices they receive from service providers just like they trust machine-generated invoices from their Spotify and Amazon accounts, billing and payments would no longer be a painful process, and cash would easily flow in a market estimated at over $120 trillion annually.”

“We knew immediately that Anchor was a company in which we wanted to invest,” says Arik Shtilman, CEO of Rapyd. “It has its finger on the pulse of the future of payments and has built a modern framework for B2B payments and billing, poised to become necessary for every business.”

“The B2B payments space is highly fragmented due to each vertical requiring some level of specialization,” says Avi Eyal, co-founder and Managing Partner at Entrée Capital. “Anchor has found such a unique opportunity and we believe it will go on to become a key player in the industry through the deployment of its solutions to thousands of service-oriented businesses.”

“Anchor has a remarkable vision paired with an amazing team that can reshape how businesses do business”. Says Eyal Dior, co-founder and Managing Partner at Tal Ventures. “They are catering to an underserved market that is thirsty for innovation and for such an encompassing solution”.

Payments platform spurs external innovation

Mollie, one of the fastest growing payment service providers in Europe, today launched a new 1 million Euro fund designed to drive the creation of new integrations and add-on products for its platform. The ‘Mollie Acceleration Fund’ will support developers, start-ups and digital agencies to realize bold and ambitious projects that help power the growth of Mollie’s 125,000+ e-commerce merchant customers.

The Mollie Acceleration Fund is open to developers, software companies and digital agencies from around the world. Mollie welcomes integrations with new SaaS solutions and add-on products that enhance Mollie’s offering via new tools, applications or third-party software.

“Mollie has demonstrated continuous commitment to investing in technology partnerships and integrations. We are seeing great traction from tech start-ups and scale-ups that want to build out their payments capabilities with Mollie,” said Ken Serdons, CCO, Mollie. “For a company like Mollie the entire ecosystem of developers, start-ups and agencies is incredibly important - both to our success and the success of our customers. By working with these companies even more closely, and by financially recognizing their devotion to our platform, we will drive innovation that supports the growth of our merchants. These relationships will help us go beyond our existing plans for evolving our payments platform and launching financial services products, into areas neither we, nor our customers, can imagine today.”

Successful applicants will receive integration funding, access to Mollie’s 125,000+ customers, Mollie’s tools and market and customer insights. To apply, applicants should visit: mollie.com/en/acceleration-fund.

• Sonovate becomes sole funding partner to XPO for fast influencer payments by brands
• Influencer marketing market worth $14bn globally, and still growing
• Sonovate data shows 57% of young people believe freelance work gives them the flexibility to experiment with different career routes
• But 56% of contract workers will only work for a company which had a track record of paying wages on time, and 48% refuse to continue to work for a company which doesn’t pay on time
• 53% of businesses agree that it is unrealistic to expect contractors to wait 30 days to be paid, but 31% routinely fail to pay freelancers on time

Sonovate, the embedded business finance lender, and XPO, the digital payments app for social media content creators (or ‘influencers’), have agreed a strategic partnership that sees Sonovate named XPO’s exclusive funding partner. 

Under the terms of the partnership, Sonovate becomes XPO’s sole funding partner, helping to ensure the thousands of influencers that use XPO to manage their payments get paid by the brands that use them in full and on time, every time. 

Combining Sonovate’s industry-recognised embedded finance tools and XPO’s easy-to-navigate app, the partners help influencers to get paid within as little as 24 hours after completing a job. 

The first financial intermediary of its kind, XPO pays out to content creators on behalf of the brands using them, including TikTok, Nike, Experian, BooHoo and Estee Lauder. Since launching its app in summer 2021, XPO has helped creators collectively save five years of waiting time. 

The market for influencers is growing extremely fast. Industry figures suggest influencer marketing today is worth approximately $14 billion globally*, and predict that by 2022 the market will be twice the size it was in 2019**. 

Richard Prime, co-founder and co-CEO at Sonovate, commented: “XPO is building up a significant first-mover advantage in a market that is massively underserved and hugely scalable. The traditional 90-day payment cycle of businesses simply doesn’t chime with a modern gig worker’s expectation of near-immediate invoice settlement. Increasingly, businesses recognise the benefit of using gig workers, such as influencers, to help them engage new customers, but too few of them are set up operationally and financially to handle changing payment expectations. We’re delighted to support XPO to bridge the gap in this market with a commonsense solution that works for all.”

Lotanna Ezeike, co-founder & CEO of XPO, added: “Younger people’s desire for greater ownership over what they do and how they spend their working lives has been a big driver behind content creation as a career path. Brands are alive to this shift and are working out how best they can work with content creators and get the best from this generation of young people determined to work differently. Our partnership with Sonovate provides brands with an attractive alternative to managing multiple influencers a month and the huge admin issue that this creates. Not only do we manage the flow of finance, but we facilitate communication between brands and influencers, ensuring a good working relationship.”

Data from Future World of Work, a report published by Sonovate last month, shows that portfolio careers, side-gigs and flexible working are priorities for the UK's next generation of workers. Three in five young people (59% of 18-34 year olds) expect “portfolio careers” will become more popular among younger workers in the next ten years; the same proportion of young people believe freelance work gives them the flexibility to experiment with different career routes (57%) and half see the advantage of contract work while having a family or pursuing personal interests (50%). 

However, it’s not all been smooth sailing. There is a persistent disconnect between the expectations of freelance workers surrounding the speed of payment for work done, and the internal systems and processes of the brands that use them.  

Over half (56%) of contract workers in Sonovate’s report say they will only work for a company which had a track record of paying wages on time, and almost half of them (48%) refuse to continue to work for a company which doesn’t pay on time. The report also found that, while 53% of businesses agree that it is unrealistic to expect contractors and freelancers to wait up to 30 days to be paid, a third (31%) of them routinely fail to pay freelancers on time. 

• Half of pension savers want to ensure their pension is invested in companies they believe in
• More than four in ten think new rules are needed governing the impact of pension investments on climate change
• Average UK pension pot helps finance 23 tonnes in carbon emissions each year through the companies it invests in - equivalent of running 9 family cars or burning 1,100 coal fires
• Research supports Cushon’s new investment strategy for its Net Zero Now pension, focussing on greener investments

Savers are demanding to know whether their pension investments are benefitting both the planet and society, according to research from Cushon, the world’s first net-zero pension provider.

Across all age groups, half (51%) want to know their pension investments are both environmentally and socially sustainable, increasing to six in ten (60%) millennials.

Currently there are many misconceptions around the regulation of pensions, with almost half (48%) of savers either wrongly believing that pensions can only be invested in companies that don’t have a negative impact on the environment, or not knowing whether there are rules around this.

Similarly, more than one in ten (13%) employees mistakenly believe it’s illegal for their employers to put their money into a pension pot that contributes to climate change, whilst more than four in ten (45%) think there should be rules about the impact of pension investments on climate change.

Previous research from Cushon shows that the average UK pension pot finances 23 tonnes in carbon emissions each year through the companies it invests in - equivalent to running 9 family cars or burning 1,100 coal fires. 62% of employees who belong to a workplace pension scheme would engage more with their pension if they knew it was having a positive impact on climate change*.

Ben Pollard, Founder and CEO of Cushon, says: “People clearly want their pensions to be a force for good, and to have a positive impact on things they feel strongly about.

“With all this confusion and misunderstanding, pension providers need to work faster to enable savers to have their voices heard and to align investments with fundamental issues like the fight against climate change.

“It’s easy to overlook the power of your pension, but UK pension funds control over £2.5 trillion of assets.  Private markets in the US spent around £15bn building Tesla which is now worth over a trillion dollars.  The UK pensions industry could have built Tesla 170 times over.

“Our new investment strategy represents a new way to think about your pension. We will invest in things you can feel proud of to deliver great returns alongside a greener future worth saving for.”

Cushon’s new investment strategy launches in early 2022 and aims to leverage the potential for greater investment returns by focusing on greener companies which are generally expected to perform better in the longer term.

Vyne’s Open Banking powered account-to-account payment method has gone live on the online checkouts of 10 THG plc brands including Myprotein, Glossybox, ESPA and Zavvi

Vyne, the specialist open banking powered account-to-account payments platform, today announces that its payment solution is now live on the checkouts of 10 brands in the THG plc portfolio; namely Myprotein, Glossybox, ESPA, Zavvi, Coggles, mio Skincare, Myvegan, Beauty Expert, Allsole and Pop In A Box. It’s the first step in a wider integration that will see Vyne’s solution offered as a payment method for 25 THG brands in total.

Based on Open Banking technology, these integrations will allow consumers to make ecommerce payments directly to the THG brands and retail sites. Vyne’s payment method enables consumers to pay from their banking app, eliminating the need for card details and in turn speeding up the checkout experience and reducing cart abandonment. As every transaction is completed through the consumer's own banking app, the payments are more secure as the purchaser is verified through biometric recognition, such as facial recognition or thumb print, and bank-level security, reducing the risk of fraud.

The brands offering Vyne can bypass card networks and their associated fees, helping to reduce costs and chargebacks, boosting conversions through optimised multi-channel user experiences and accelerating cash flow with instant settlement.

John Gallemore, CEO of THG Ingenuity, the proprietary, end-to-end technology and operating platform that powers all THG brands, said: “Our aim is to consistently improve and innovate across the platform to provide shoppers with the widest possible payment choice and ultimately enhance customer experience. The addition of Vyne to our range of payment options is another step forward in this evolution.”

Founded by true payments experts, Vyne’s innovative technology brings together decades of combined industry experience to ensure direct, secure and faster payments. Vyne’s full-stack account-to-account solution provides a way for ecommerce retailers to effectively manage payments including full and partial refunds, automated reconciliation and notifications, and a view of real-time cash flow.

Karl MacGregor, CEO at Vyne, adds: “We are delighted that some of THG’s leading ecommerce brands will be adding Vyne’s account-to-account payments to their checkouts. This announcement marks Vyne’s expansion into the retail sector, with alternative payment methods continuing to grow in prominence.”

• GenTwo Digital and SEBA Bank have strengthened their strategic cooperation as preferred partners. This collaboration of two leaders - recently recognized by LinkedIn as Top Startups 2021 in Switzerland - in the digital asset space provides the market with premium solutions in this emerging asset class

• Backed by SEBA Bank’s comprehensive asset management expertise, blended AMCs - crypto and traditional - are a new addition to the AMC landscape

• SEBA Bank’s end-to-end offering in digital and traditional assets combined with the GenTwo Digital securitization platform enables asset managers, banks, and family offices to easily tailor innovative investment products

SEBA Bank, a fully integrated, FINMA licensed digital assets banking platform, today announced the launch of a unique platform providing next-generation actively managed investment certificates (AMCs) that allow easier access to digital assets for investors. The innovative AMC platform enables Swiss asset managers to originate a Swiss-compliant AMC with Swiss ISIN and make unlimited use of SEBA Bank’s sophisticated portfolio management services.

SEBA Bank´s solution allows asset managers, banks, and family offices, to build bankable products based not only on crypto but on traditional underlying assets as well, and then offer them to their clients in the form of AMCs, thereby eliminating the complexities and frictions involved in setting up custom investment products.

Thanks to the flexibility of SEBA Bank’s AMC platform, asset managers, banks, and family offices can implement and offer their investment  strategies to clients easily in a fully compliant way. In line with the white label approach, banks and asset managers have the option to provide their crypto or blended AMCs with their own specific fee models.

A leading provider of innovative securitization platforms, GenTwo Digital is supporting the establishment and coordination of the securitization aspects of the platform. SEBA Bank operates and represents the conventional and crypto asset solution. As part of the platform, clients will receive access to a range of assets and trading in different fiat currencies across all bankable and digital assets of SEBA Bank’s offering. 

“We are excited to make it easier for banks, asset managers and family offices to offer products solutions in digital assets or as blended portfolios combining digital and traditional asset classes”, said Stefan Schwitter, Head Investment Solutions SEBA Bank AG. “We are pleased to continue the good cooperation with GenTwo Digital on structuring leading product solutions .”

Philippe A. Naegeli, CEO at GenTwo, comments: “As a provider of modern securitization platforms, we are proud to be SEBA Bank’s competent partner in another key strategic move. Thanks to the possibility of implementing digital assets easily, SEBA Bank’s AMC platform will add value to many banks, asset managers and family offices. It will enable them to develop future-oriented product offerings.”

New Manhattan office establishes Temenos at the center of banking

Temenos, the banking software company, today announced that it has relocated its North American headquarters to the Helmsley Building on Park Avenue in New York City.

Temenos has delivered software to banks of all sizes around the world for 28 years, from the largest banks to challenger banks at the start of their journey. The United States is key to Temenos’ strategy, representing 40% of Temenos’ total addressable market with 5,000 credit unions and 4,300 banks.

“As the US epicenter of finance and tech industries, New York City is proud that Temenos chose us for their headquarters. Their move demonstrates that NYC provides the best access top talent, as they work to digitally empower the world’s biggest banks, while giving back to the community,” said New York City Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Rachel Loeb.

Over the past few months, Temenos has made several key announcements, demonstrating continued growth in the region. Temenos signed a  strategic partnership with Mbanq to launch a credit-union-as-a-service offering through its Credit Union Service Organization (CUSO) for both new and existing credit unions. Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) has gained momentum in North America and globally, with more and more financial institutions looking to provide white-labeled banking services to neobanks, fintechs and other banks looking to break into new markets. Temenos also continues to expand its North America customer base of 1,400, with recent signings with Green Dot, a digital bank and fintech, and M1 Finance, a leading US personal finance platform.

Dan Henry, President and CEO of Green Dot said: “Temenos is a critical component of our mission to seamlessly connect people to their money, both directly with our digital bank and products like GO2bank, and through our valued partners. Collaboration is key for success and growth – we’re happy to see Temenos investing in its ecosystem by opening the new headquarters in the seat of banking in the US.”

Jacqueline White, President – Americas, Temenos, said: “The relocation of our headquarters represents our continued investment in North America, and our commitment to our clients. As the hub of the US financial services industry, New York City brings together industry experts, visionaries, and the changemakers to drive innovation. The financial services industry is undergoing a once-in-a-generation transformation – by relocating our headquarters to New York City we can better collaborate with other industry leaders to build the future of banking from the heart of the financial services industry.”

Andrew Moor, CEO, EQ Bank said: “As Canada’s Challenger Bank, we have a long-standing relationship with Temenos as one of our strategic technology partners that help us deliver easier and more intuitive ways to bank in Canada. We chose Temenos because it continuously invests in its technology, and creates solutions tailored to our market. With Temenos, we made history in Canada as the first challenger bank, and the first bank to move its entire core banking system to the cloud. We’re happy that the team continues to challenge themselves to innovate and grow, and we’re delighted to celebrate that growth with them for the launch of their new headquarters.”

·       CloudWing Network will develop a Chinese version of Finastra’s Fusion Summit treasury management solution

CloudWing NetWork Technologies CO., Inc. a subsidiary of Hundsun Technologies, has acquired the rights to Finastra’s Fusion Summit product and book of business in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. CloudWing Network will develop, license and deploy the Fusion Summit treasury management solution for customers in these markets and develop a Chinese version of the solution that will be tailored to the specific local requirements, enabling banks to take advantage of both domestic and international opportunities.

Fusion Summit is a cutting-edge treasury management solution used by large and medium-sized financial institutions, supporting operations across business lines including currency markets, capital markets, foreign exchange transactions and derivatives markets.

This agreement will complement the acquisition of the rights to Finastra’s Fusion Opics product and book of business – also in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau – by another Hundsun Technologies subsidiary, Hangzhou Hundsun Lirong Software Co., Ltd. ("Hundsun Lirong"), which was signed in July 2021. With support from Finastra, Hundsun Lirong has produced a Chinese version of the Fusion Opics treasury solution, Hundsun Mangos. Together, these solutions will enable Hundsun Technologies to provide a complete offering of treasury business solutions for banks of all sizes.

As part of the new agreement, CloudWing Network will strengthen local functionalities of the solution and directly engage with Finastra Product Management for co-innovation to evolve the solution. Finastra will continue to develop Summit for its customers internationally and will provide continuous product upgrades and support to CloudWing Network.

Peng Zhenggang, Chairman of Hundsun Technologies, said, “This agreement is another important step in the company's strategy to incorporate international expertise. In the future, Hundsun Technologies will continue to acquire advanced software products from abroad to integrate with the local financial market and develop more advanced technologies. Solutions that are tailored for the needs of Chinese customers, whilst meeting international standards, will contribute to China's self-reliance and steady innovation.”

Eric Duffaut, President and Global Head of Customer Operations, Finastra, said, “Finastra has been operating in this region since 2003 and we have seen an increased demand for solutions that fit the specific requirements of the Chinese market, and for banks to work more closely with local partners. In line with this evolution and with customer success at the center of everything we do, our strategy is to help banks access locally relevant solutions and local support to better support their digital transformation. We are delighted to have completed this agreement with CloudWing Network, which fully supports our strategy and will benefit all Fusion Summit customers in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.”