Jack Henry™ announced today that it is operationally ready to support the launch of the Federal Reserve's real-time payments network, the FedNow^SM Service. Jack Henry has actively participated in the development of the newest network, expected to launch in July 2023. More than 20 Jack Henry clients will participate in the supporting pilot and early adopter program.

FedNow is an instant payments network that moves funds directly and immediately between financial institution accounts in the United States. The network will initially support multiple use cases and serve as a platform banks and credit unions can leverage to develop innovative payments solutions that support evolving instant payment needs and additional use cases.

"Processors play an important role in enabling the FedNow Service for many financial institutions,” said Ken Montgomery, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston first vice president and FedNow Service program executive. “We appreciate the commitment that Jack Henry has made to be ready to deliver instant payments services when we launch in July."

Alabama-based Bryant Bank and HawaiiUSA Federal Credit Union will be among the first financial institutions to implement the FedNow Service using JHA PayCenter. 

“Partnering with Jack Henry through the use of JHA PayCenter to offer the ground-breaking FedNow Service aligns with a core value of Bryant Bank – preserving our traditional culture while embracing innovation,” said Elizabeth Allen, chief operating officer for Bryant Bank. “The ability to provide customers with access to multiple payment channels and faster payment methods empowers the potential of Alabamians.”

“Over two years ago, we were elated to be chosen as one of the 120 organizations in the FedNow pilot program,” said Scott Young, vice president of payments operations for HawaiiUSA Federal Credit Union. “We decided to be part of the program because we wanted to have input on how the instant payments rail was going to operate and ensure that the needs of financial institutions in Hawaii were being considered. FedNow will level the playing field and help us compete with the large financial institutions on the mainland.”

Jack Henry has consistently been on the leading-edge of faster payments, developing JHA PayCenter™, its proprietary faster payments hub, to connect financial institutions to the Zelle Network^®, which is owned and operated by Early Warning Services, LLC; the RTP^® network, owned and operated by The Clearing House (TCH); and now the FedNow Service. With JHA PayCenter’s integration architecture, this ready-built hub connects Jack Henry’s core and digital solutions to the faster payment networks and also can be leveraged to connect third-party core and digital platforms.

“Today’s convenience-driven consumers and businesses expect to move money in the moment of need so real-time payments have evolved into competitive necessities,” said Tede Forman, president of Jack Henry Payment Solutions. “Based on the high and growing demand for instant payments, and the fact that more than half of all U.S. DDA accounts are now connected to a faster payments network, banks and credit unions simply can’t compete without offering real-time payments and meaningful use cases. We made a strategic commitment to help our clients modernize their payment strategies and platforms with real-time payments solution or solutions that enable them to remain at the center of the payment experience and to ultimately reduce payments friction and financial fragmentation.”

Despite government backing of domestic schemes in some markets, cards are increasingly being co-branded with international schemes due to customer desire for maximum acceptance, rewards and other benefits 

Global shift from cash and return to normalcy drives card spending 

RBR’s Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2027 research shows that spending on payment cards continues to grow strongly as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic begins to wane. Every region is growing strongly. Financial inclusion programmes are encouraging large numbers of unbanked people to enter the financial system for the first time, while the continuing rise of contactless and e-commerce purchases are boosting card spending, particularly for international schemes where contactless functionality is more common. 

UnionPay, Visa and Mastercard account for 93% of global card expenditure 

UnionPay has the largest share of global card expenditure, with 48% in 2021, one percentage point higher than the previous year. This is mostly driven by spending in China, the world’s largest market, where UnionPay accounts for 95% of the total. RBR’s report shows that spending on Chinese cards has continued to grow as debit cards are increasingly used for purchases rather than cash withdrawals. 

Visa is the second largest scheme with 27% of global spending, while Mastercard accounts for 18%. Visa lost share in debit and prepaid in 2021, but the scheme retained the largest share of global credit expenditure, and Visa brands account for the largest share of spending in all regions except Asia-Pacific.  

Travel and entertainment credit spending was hit during the pandemic as a result of lockdowns and suspended travel, but has bounced back strongly. Mastercard increased its share in the sector, driven by growth in the Americas. American Express also gained share, accounting for 9% of credit expenditure in 2021. 

Share of Purchase Volume Worldwide by Scheme, 2021 

Source: Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2027 (RBR) 

Domestic schemes are increasingly being co-branded with international schemes 

RBR’s analysis shows that if China is excluded, Visa is the largest global scheme with 52% of card spending, while Mastercard accounts for 33%. Around the world there is an increasing trend of co-branding or converting domestic schemes with global players Mastercard and Visa. Governments in countries like Turkey and India have attempted to promote their domestic schemes over international ones; however consumers continue to prefer the latter, due to their widespread acceptance and reward incentives. 

Daniel Dawson, who led RBR’s Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2027 research, remarked: “The trend of international scheme co-branding is set to continue despite government backing of domestic schemes in some markets, with domestic schemes accounting for a gradually declining share of global spending. We would not expect to see seismic shifts, but gradually this will have a positive impact on Visa and Mastercard’s global businesses”. 

Smart, the London-headquartered fintech transforming the global retirement savings market, today announces it has closed its $95m Series E funding in a round led by Aquiline Capital Partners LLC (“Aquiline”), a private investment firm based in New York and London.

Jeff Greenberg, Chairman and CEO of Aquiline, said:
“Smart’s distinct retirement technology leadership coupled with Aquiline’s deep experience in the retirement technology industry makes this a compelling investment, as does the growing global need for better retirement saving technology. Smart has consistently delivered impressive commercial growth, and is backed by an array of top-tier investors whom we are delighted to join. Under the leadership of Andrew and Will, we have every confidence that Smart is a multi-billion pound company in the making.

“The UK remains at the forefront in the digitalisation and democratisation of retirement savings and we are excited to support a UK leader in the sector as it helps to solve pressing issues facing savers, financial institutions and governments across the world.”

The co-founders of Smart, Andrew Evans and Will Wynne, said:
“This investment is strong recognition of Smart’s success and journey to date, and highlights the immense opportunity that lies ahead. It is also a resounding vote of confidence in the UK’s fintech sector, and its leadership in financial services provision.

“We are on a mission to transform retirement, savings and financial wellbeing. We are the global leader in retirement technology and our industry-leading platform, Keystone, is being deployed by the biggest, most successful financial institutions around the world. This is a $62 trillion global sector in the early stages of being disrupted, and we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of that. We have already reached scale and profitability in the UK, with Smart Pension now serving in excess of one million savers, and this backing allows us to achieve that scale and profitability in our global markets across the group. We welcome Aquiline to our board and we’re incredibly excited for the years ahead.”

Facctum has announced that FacctView^TM, a new screening platform, has been chosen by NTT Data Payment Services to expand its anti-financial crime defences. This new technology will support NTT Data Payments Services’ e-commerce platforms by detecting and assessing sanctions, terrorism financing and money laundering risk in consumer transactions. The deal provides NTT Data Payment Services with high-performance countermeasures to the threats posed by criminals attempting to commit financial crimes. 

Takeo Ueno, CEO at NTT Data Payment Services, said, "Facctum technology is a great match for the needs of our high-growth and customer-focused PSP business in India. Its addition to our anti-financial crime defences shows our commitment to protecting customers and providing the highest standards of compliance effectiveness. This approach extends the capabilities of the business to provide continuous robust compliance whilst also improving the speed of services for customers.”  

With growing volumes of digital transactions, combined with changing customer behaviours, there is an increasing concern about the potential abuse of Payment Service Providers (PSPs) through cyber-attacks. The increasing risks to which PSPs are exposed have led to increasingly stringent regulatory standards of compliance effectiveness. In response, PSPs are prioritizing investments in risk screening capabilities, not only to fulfil regulatory obligations but also to protect consumers and deter criminals.  

K.K. Gupta, Founder and CEO of Facctum, comments, “The payments ecosystem is facing a growing threat from financial criminals. This is increasing the need for regulatory and compliance countermeasures. Leaders of PSPs have therefore recognized the vital importance of robust and resilient anti-financial crime technology to meet the challenges of regulatory change and ever-changing risks. I am humbled that NTT Data Payment Services has trusted Facctum technology to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of risk controls.”  

FacctView is powered by innovative parallel processing technology and an extensive library of risk detection algorithms. This combination enables the rapid detection of comprehensive financial crime risks. An innovative approach to data management technology also delivers low-latency batch processing of payment transactions that are scalable to massive volumes. 

NTT DATA Payment Services India is part of NTT DATA Corporation, one of the globally top 10 IT service providers, headquartered in Japan. The NTT DATA Payments division group has a significant presence across Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Amongst path-breaking Payment infrastructures, NTT DATA operates CAFIS, Japan’s largest card payment processing network. The company has an annual transaction value of INR 150,000 crore and a volume of over 10 crore transactions across India. The company aids merchants to provide a seamless digital payment experience to customers, via both online and offline channels. The company caters to more than six million merchants across India in sectors such as education, government, retail, BFSI, healthcare, among others. 

European Fund Administration (EFA) is pleased to announce that it is rebranding to "efa", as part of its integration journey into Universal Investment Group. The new efa brand is a major milestone in the company’s transition to becoming “more than a fund company” while underlining its proud belonging to the Universal Investment family. 

Since its inception in 1996, European Fund Administration has expanded its services and client base far beyond just Europe, Funds, and Administration. The original acronym, a symbol for quality, trust, and reliability in the fund industry, will cease to be an acronym and become the name of the company. This trusted brand name and what it stands for remains at the heart of the new logo, combined with the UI that is characteristic of the Universal Investment Group companies. 

"We are excited to unveil our new brand identity, which is a modernised version of our former brand name, a long-standing token for quality, expertise, and trusted relationships, and also emphasises that we are part of the Universal Investment family," said efa's Chief Commercial  Officer, Paulo Fernandes.  

"We are delighted that efa is part of the Universal Investment group," said Universal Investment Group’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael Reinhard. "The rebranding of efa is an important step  in our integration process and we look forward to working together to provide the highest  standard of service to our clients." 

The acquisition by Universal Investment was completed in October 2022 and enables both companies to offer more service optionality to their clients, push new product developments, and reach new markets. 

The new efa brand identity is now live on the company's website and rolled out across all of the company's communications channels. 

Money20/20, the world’s leading fintech show, regarded as the place where money does business, is unveiling Money20/20 Europe’s Champions of Change who will be taking their stages at RAI Amsterdam Convention Centre on June 6-8th.  Seven influential fintech leaders are presenting or moderating sessions as part of the Champions of Change program this year.  Dr. Ruth Wandhofer, Executive Director and VC partner at Gauss Ventures, Maria Prados, Head of Vertical Growth at Worldpay, and Mary Agebsanwa, Fintech Growth Lead at investment technology provider Seccl are three fintech leaders moving the industry with impact and wider purpose.

“Moderating sessions and speaking at Money20/20 Europe will elevate Seccl’s presence. Seccl exists to help people invest and invest well. We are a regulated custodian and investment technology provider that powers leading fintechs and advice firms to run their own investment platform, ultimately supporting them to get to market fast and at low cost. Money20/20’s audience of decision makers and senior leadership is exactly where we want to be, allowing us to have productive conversations in an efficient amount of time,” said Mary Agbesanwa,” Fintech Growth Lead at Seccl.

Maarten Stolk, Co-founder and CEO of Deeploy, a company providing businesses with a responsible AI platform for high-risk AI use cases is also a proud champion of change in fintech.

“Responsible and explainable AI becomes increasingly important with AI being used in more high-impact cases. It’s a topic that requires awareness and education and I feel honoured to moderate and bring attention and transparency to Explainable AI at Money20/20 Europe.  Deeploy is a company that essentially makes sure that AI can be used in regulated risk AI cases rebuilding the underlying infrastructure and platform for data teams to safely deploy AI models. Money20/20 is the one leading industry event in Europe where key players in the financial industry are coming together for both business opportunities and inspiration,” said  Maarten Stolk, Deeploy Co-founder and CEO of Deeploy.

Money20/20 is also honoured to welcome Gerrit Sindermann, Deputy Executive Director at Green Digital Finance Alliance. GDFA is a nonprofit and a catalyst of next-generation green digital finance.

“At GDFA, our mission is to drive financial innovation for climate, nature, and biodiversity challenges across the global ecosystem. Money20/20 Europe is a great platform for helping us shape the green digital finance landscape globally. I feel honoured to not only moderate sessions with some of the leaders in this space but also collaborate on the program content development. I look forward to inspiring conversations – on and off stage – and very much hope to spark enthusiasm for green digital finance among the conference audience,” said Gerrit Sindermann, Deputy Executive Director at Green Digital Finance Alliance.

Joanne Dewar, Ambassador at the Payments Association and Money20/20 VIP speaker will be moderating a panel on financial inclusion named Future of Credit With Affordability in Mind.

“I am honoured to be a Champion of Change at Money20/20 Europe. We’re seeing the role of open banking and open finance having an impact on financial inclusion. We’re also noticing that the role of AI and machine learning have a role to play in harnessing the future possibilities for those that aren’t fully included in the financial world and look forward to elevating these important topics at the show. I’m of course also excited to make connections face-to-face and meet dear friends from the industry," said Joanne Dewar, Ambassador at the Payments Association.

Aydan Al-Saad, Creator at the startup European Income, a company giving businesses the ability to make fair compensation decisions is a true Champion of Change.

“Money20/20 Europe enables us to reach a broader, more impactful audience. Advocating topics like financial transparency and the gender wage gap provides insights to companies to make educated compensation decisions and something I truly believe the audience will actively take part in. Ravio is disrupting the compensation space by giving businesses the ability to make fair compensation decisions by accessing real-time data. I couldn’t be more excited to lead this important dialogue on the powerful stage that Money20/20 offers,” said Aydan Al-Saad, Head of UK at Ravio & Content Creator at Aydan.

“The Champions of Change is a team of influential, passionate thinkers with impact and purpose beyond the norm leading and disrupting everything from green finance, financial inclusion and explainable AI.  We are so excited for our speakers to take their stages in Amsterdam and share their stories and leadership with the world, “ said Tracey Davis, Global President at Money20/20. 

ITAS Assicurazioni, Italy’s oldest insurance company, continues its strategic path of digital transformation and launches ITAS Pay with the support of Nexi Group, the leading European PayTech. The new payment institution will offer services and solutions to support the sale and marketing of insurance policies.

Nexi played a fundamental role in supporting the ITAS Group with the development of its new payment solution to ensure compliance with PSD2, and obtain authorisation from the Bank of Italy to operate as a Payment Service Provider.

Through ITAS Pay, the ITAS Group intends to further consolidate the digital transformation of sales processes for its insurance products by offering customers an even simpler and custom-built purchasing experience. Nexi will provide digital payment expertise and technical support to the ITAS Group, along with access to its innovative products and services.

“For ITAS, this digitalisation represents a crucial element of simplifying and streamlining our customer relationships,” explains Norbert Bonvecchio, Director of distribution and special projects at ITAS Group. “With ITAS Pay, the Group has introduced an innovative monthly premium payments system. This is a significant step forwards in automating insurance service payments. The current market environment and the evolving regulatory framework will foster the emergence of new solutions and services that will complement the existing ITAS offering. Above all, this will serve the protection needs of our community of insured members and new customers.”

M-KOPA, a leading fintech platform, today announced it successfully closed over $250m in new debt and equity funding to expand its financial services offering to underbanked consumers across Sub-Saharan Africa. This marks one of the largest combined debt and equity raises in the African tech sector, enabling M-KOPA to continue its rapid growth.

Over $200m in sustainability-linked debt financing was led and arranged by Standard Bank Group, Africa’s largest bank and long-term strategic partner to M-KOPA. Other participating lenders include The International Finance Corporation (IFC), funds managed by Lion’s Head Global Partners, FMO: Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank, British International Investment, Mirova SunFunder and Nithio. A further $55m in equity investment was backed by existing strategic investor Sumitomo Corporation, which is contributing $36.5m to the total raise and will engage closely with M-KOPA on new growth markets and products. Blue Haven Initiative, Lightrock, Broadscale Group and Latitude, the sister fund to Local Globe, also participated in the transaction.

M-KOPA fintech platform combines the power of digital micropayments with the Internet-of-Things (IoT) to provide customers with access to productive assets. In markets where individuals have limited pre-existing financial identities and conventional collateral, M-KOPA’s flexible credit model allows individuals to pay a small deposit and get instant access to everyday essentials, including smartphones, electric motorcycles and solar power systems, and then graduate to digital financial services such as loans and health insurance. M-KOPA’s solution embeds credit into the product through a smart digital connection, giving customers ownership instantly, which they can pay off through micro-instalments over time. The company has sold over 3 million of these products through a unique direct sales model that includes more than 10,000 agents.

M-KOPA’s operations started in East Africa and successfully expanded to Nigeria in 2021 and, more recently, Ghana. From 2020 to 2022, M-KOPA recorded a compound annual growth rate of 85% in new customer acquisition, and was recently recognised as one of Africa’s Fastest-Growing Top 100 companies by the Financial Times for two consecutive years, in 2022 and 2023. Today’s news coincides with the business reaching over 3 million customers and providing over $1 billion in cumulative credit for underbanked customers in Africa. The company continues to scale rapidly and is on track to acquire an additional million customers over the course of 2023.

With this new funding, the business aims to grow its smartphone services, expand its model to new markets and extend its financed product set. In line with M-KOPA and its partners’ longstanding commitment to creating a positive impact, the debt financing is structured to support sustainability-linked goals with pricing that is linked to the achievement of environmental and social targets. Lendable was appointed as the Borrowing Base and Sustainability Verification Agent for the debt transaction. M-KOPA will also use the financing to drive women’s financial inclusion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its East African markets by increasing smartphone ownership among women and further developing its electric mobility solutions offering, respectively.

Speaking on the round, Jesse Moore, M-KOPA CEO and Co-founder said, “At M-KOPA, we are working hard to create a positive environmental and social impact by systematically addressing the barriers to digital financial services. We have already unlocked $1bn in cumulative credit to over 3 million customers, and are proud of the thousands of local jobs we’ve created during tough economic times. As we continue to scale we remain committed to building a sustainable business and closing economic and digital gender gaps. We are delighted to have the support of new and existing investors who share our vision and mission”.

“Supporting M-KOPA is in line with our purpose of driving sustainable growth for Africa and her people. Financial inclusion not only enables economic growth, it also accelerates it. M-KOPA has, in a short time, managed to positively impact so many lives by enabling access to power and smartphone connectivity, which are a vital part of enabling the economic empowerment of all.” added Nick Riley, Corporate Financing Solutions at Standard Bank.

“As a strategic investor, we are very excited to accelerate business growth through collaborative efforts in business development. By leveraging each expertise and resource, we believe this partnership will have a positive impact on both the financial and telecommunications sectors, ultimately enriching the lives of people across the continent.” commented Masaki Nakajima, Senior Managing Executive Officer, General Manager, Media & Digital Business Unit at Sumitomo Corporation.