Leading Payment Orchestration Platform provider IXOPAY today announced a new partnership with Forter, the Trust Platform for digital commerce, to deliver accurate, real-time decisions about customer trustworthiness. The instant, automated fraud decisioning from Forter will help IXOPAY merchants drive revenue growth, improve the customer experience and deliver a clear business impact.

As fraudsters become increasingly more sophisticated, distinguishing genuine customers from bad actors has become a challenge for merchants everywhere. Unfortunately, in an effort to curb fraud, many merchants are falsely declining legitimate transactions. Estimates indicate that for every dollar lost to fraud, the average business loses thirty dollars from false declines.

The Forter-IXOPAY partnership addresses this challenge by making targeted decisions about customer trustworthiness at critical interactions, simultaneously blocking fraud while maximizing genuine customer experience and lifetime value. Forter’s solution integrates directly into IXOPAY’s payment orchestration platform via a central application programming interface (API), bringing merchants the power of Forter's massive network of online retailers quickly, efficiently and without additional implementation effort.

The IXOPAY platform provides complete management of the payments transaction lifecycle. The independent Software as a Service (SaaS) solution monitors transactions in real-time, consolidates data in one place, and enhances the checkout experience with connections to local, international, and alternative payment methods (APMs), as well as risk checks to improve conversion rates and lower fraud.

“When you solve for fraud intelligently, you’re actually pulling a powerful growth lever”, said Aaron Begner, General Manager EMEA at Forter. “Our new partnership with IXOPAY will not only help merchants block fraud, but they’ll also have the insights needed to deliver superior customer experience and maximize customer lifetime value.” 

“With Forter, we have gained a strong, global partner for our customers. Currently, more than 10,000 businesses worldwide rely on Forter’s platform”, said Adam Vissing, Vice President of Sales and Business Development, IXOPAY. “The ongoing development of both solutions provides our customers with the assurance that they can rely on the highest quality, contain threats in the long term and ensure stable customer relationships. We look forward to continuing to work with Forter to develop world-class services and further expand our relationship.” 

Industry-disrupting payments processing fintech, VizyPay, proudly announces its Bronze Stevie® Award win for Customer Service Department of the Year in financial services. This marks the seventh award VizyPay has received from the Stevies in the last three years, including two golds, three silvers and two bronze placements in categories such as Fastest Growing Tech Company of the Year, Minority-Owned Business of the Year, FinTech Solution, and more.

The Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service are the world’s top honours for customer service, contact centre, business development and sales professionals. Award winners illustrated how they have continued to innovate, thrive and meet customer expectations.

VizyPay is disrupting the payments processing industry with transparent, simple, and honest services catered to the needs of small business owners. The sales partner support and merchant tech support teams service over 12,000 merchants and over 700 sales partners across the country. The support teams are a crucial aspect to maintaining the company’s values while developing positive relationships with customers and sales partners in the field. VizyPay proudly maintains a 30-second-or-less hold time for anyone calling the office, regardless of call volume. In addition to excellent hold times, it has consistently maintained a 5-star rating on Trust Pilot with over 1,000 reviews. Working to always improve service, VizyPay has a Zendesk where calls are monitored and reviewed for quality assurance and training purposes. VizyPay’s sales and tech support teams have grown 214% in the past three years, adding to VizyPay’s status as the leading FinTech servicing SMBs in rural America.

“I’m so proud of our support teams,” said VizyPay CEO and founder Austin Mac Nab. “Everybody on the VizyPay team is dedicated to providing excellent service, I’ll even jump in to help if our call volume spikes. Considering 95% of our staff doesn’t come from a payments background, the dedication they have to providing excellent service is commendable. We set ourselves apart from competitors with our minimal hold times and personable attitudes. We even call our competitors’ customer service lines to see how long their hold times are and VizyPay always beats them out.”

More than 2,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in nearly every industry were considered in this year’s competition. Details about the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service and the list of Stevie winners in all categories are available at www.StevieAwards.com/Sales. Nominations for the 2024 competition will be accepted starting this July.

Rapid Finance, a market leader in helping small businesses find sustainable and customized financing solutions through a fast and simple application process, announced the rebrand of its recently acquired digital end-to-end lending platform, Thrive, to Decisioneer.

As part of the relaunch, the platform has been refactored to provide a more elegant and seamless user experience to borrowers and lenders, as well as gained additional functionality. The re-factoring focuses on providing a customized experience for borrowers and shortens the time it takes lenders to reach an informed decision during the underwriting process. Decisioneer is a key component of Rapid Finance’s Lending as a Service (LaaS) capabilities, helping financial institutions better meet the financing needs of their business customers.

Key platform capabilities include:

• Easily configurable, customizable, cloud-based architecture;
• Real-time insights through direct, API-driven connectivity to multiple data sources;
• Detailed financial profiles, debt-to-income ratio and cash flow analysis of applicants and businesses seeking financing; and
• Direct integration to servicing system of choice, with portfolio management modules to enable increased life-time value to customers.

"As the lending-as-a-service market continues to expand, SMB, commercial, and C&I lenders are seeking innovative ways to improve the customer experience,” said Kunal Sehgal, Thrive Founder and Head of Decisioneer Sales. “With Decisioneer, our goal is to provide a streamlined, digital platform for end-to-end lending that empowers our customers to increase efficiency and enhance the user experience. The Decisioneer team and I are excited to raise the bar in the SMB commercial lending market with this next-generation platform."

“Fast access to working capital is always important to business owners, but even more so in the economic environment that we see today,” said Will Tumulty, CEO, Rapid Finance. “With that in mind, we have leveraged our decades of experience in successfully providing financing to small and medium sized businesses to refine the capabilities of Decisioneer to meet the needs of our customers. By intelligently leveraging thoughtful, well-designed automation tools, we are helping financial institutions more quickly, efficiently and cost effectively support the businesses that are so vital within their communities.”

CellPoint Digital, the global leader in Payment Orchestration, has today announced a new partnership with Nium, the global platform for on-demand money movement. Through this integration, CellPoint Digital and Nium will offer merchants a frictionless, optimised end-to-end money movement process.

Payments systems are seen by many as complex and fragmented, neglecting the needs and experience of merchants. CellPoint Digital and Nium are joining forces to address this problem, simplifying and optimising the payments ecosystem and offering merchants greater control and a far simpler process.

Nium empowers on-demand money movement for global payments and card issuing. It’s global network of regulatory licenses, compliance services and world-class APIs are designed to make the complexities of global commerce invisible. Merchants can pay employees, suppliers, local sellers and partners, wherever they do business, seamlessly through a single platform.

Similarly, CellPoint Digital exists to deliver frictionless commerce. Its Payment Orchestration platform, the first of its kind, was designed from day one to optimise payments efficiencies and provide authorisation and reconciliation globally and across multiple acquirers and/or PSPs.

Domestically and across borders, both CellPoint Digital and Nium are united by a mission to help businesses simplify commerce, be it buying, selling, transferring money, managing FX, or making payments. This partnership will support CellPoint Digital’s growth and expansion into money movement capabilities, like pay-outs and alternative payment method (APM) acquiring, which complements its product suite, with Nium’s extensive global pay-out network supporting 100 currencies in more than 190 countries – 100 of which in real-time.

Commenting on the new partnership, Tom Randklev, Global Head of Product at CellPoint Digital said: “CellPoint Digital and Nium share a relentless commitment to delivering frictionless commerce. As a global leader in B2B payments, Nium is a perfect partner for us in this mission. This venture will be important in the next stage of our growth as we begin to serve pay-out and APM acquiring needs as well as our existing core industries including travel, e-commerce, retail, digital commerce, and gaming.”

Michael Bermingham, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer at Nium added: “This partnership with CellPoint is yet another example of how our on-demand money movement platform can truly empower global businesses to offer fast, safe, and easy digital payment solutions. Like Nium, CellPoint Digital is shaping the future of payments, putting the power back in the hands of the merchant and creating an ecosystem in which payments are efficient, affordable and hassle-free.”

CellPoint’s new partnership with Nium is the latest step in its ongoing commitment to offer easy-to-implement solutions that help merchants solve cross-border, operational and technological challenges and simplify back-office complexities.

In a bid to further enhance its clients service operations and provide greater support to SMEs seeking commercial finance across London and the South East, Reward Finance Group has appointed Tom Annetts as its new relationship manager.

Tom has vast financial experience spanning over 15 years, having previously worked for Novuna, Aldermore Bank and Barclays. His primary role will be to assist Reward’s client base by guiding them through every stage of the lending process, with the company providing SMEs across the region with tailored business finance loans and asset-based solutions of between £50k and £5m.

The timing of his appointment coincides with a rapid period of growth for the lender which recently achieved the key business milestone of growing its regional loan book to £15m, having opened its operational centre in the capital late last year.

Commenting on his appointment, Tom said: “I’m very excited to be joining Reward, having seen the giant strides the business has made across the region over the last 18 months. Everyone I speak to in the industry has nothing but positive things to say about the company, so I jumped at the chance to come on board.

“I’m looking forward to working closely with our portfolio of SME clients to understand their business needs and support them in accessing the working capital needed to help them overcome a difficult trading period or expand and unlock new growth opportunities.”

Simon Adcock, Reward’s regional director for London and the South East, added: “Tom’s appointment is integral to our continued growth in London and the wider region, as forging strong client relationships is at the very heart of our business success to date. He has proven experience in the commercial finance space and will be a big asset in terms of managing our portfolio of clients across the region particularly in what is currently a turbulent economic climate for many firms.”

Ripple, the leader in enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions, is proud to announce a new two-year partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity (GOSH Charity), which will see funds donated by Ripple to help support cancer care at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). Through the partnership, GOSH Charity will become Ripple’s primary nonprofit partner in the UK. 

The partnership will launch to coincide with the 2023 TCS London Marathon, for which GOSH Charity is the official Charity of the Year. Together, GOSH Charity and Ripple will cheer on around 1,000 TeamGOSH runners raising millions to help beat childhood cancer.

The 2023 TCS London Marathon will take place on Sunday 23 April 2023. Ripple will sponsor GOSH Charity’s rest and recovery room at their post-race reception, where TeamGOSH runners will have space to relax and recover after taking on the 26.2 miles to raise funds for GOSH Charity. 

“We're thrilled to announce our new partnership with GOSH Charity, who raise funds for GOSH, one of the world’s leading children's hospitals. We can’t wait to support the vital work they do. At Ripple, we believe in the power of blockchain technology to create positive change, and this partnership is a great example of how we can use our resources to make a real difference to children at GOSH and their families,” said Sendi Young, Managing Director, Europe at Ripple. 

Ripple partners with innovative fintechs, universities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), foundations, and local charities where it has offices to make progress towards a more open and meaningfully connected world.

 “We are delighted to establish this new partnership with Ripple. The money raised will support cancer care at GOSH, helping children with rare and difficult-to-treat cancers. With some transformational projects on the horizon,  the partnership will have a huge impact on the lives of seriously ill children in the UK and beyond," added Sarah Bissell, Deputy Director of Relationship Fundraising, GOSH Charity.

Every day hundreds of children from across the UK arrive at GOSH for specialist care. GOSH sees the rarest and most difficult-to-treat childhood cancers and treats more children with cancer than any other hospital in the UK.

ConTe.it Prestiti, a new venture in the credit sector of Admiral Group Italy, has partnered with Tink, Europe’s leading open banking platform, to offer customers in ConTe.it Prestiti’s network an improved and instant lending application process.

ConTe.it Prestiti, a lending fintech platform, has embedded Tink’s Income Check product into its current offering, in order to make more accurate affordability assessments. 

Powered by open banking, Tink’s Income Check product allows banks and lenders to instantly verify a person’s income using secure and real-time data directly from their bank account. Using face recognition or with a single click, customers can consent to connecting to their bank account, where income-related transactions over more than 12 months are categorised as salary, pension, benefits or cash deposits.

In the current macroeconomic environment, where financial inclusion is critical, Income Check is helping ConTe.it Prestiti customers obtain the financial services they are requesting. Tink’s Income Check also streamlines the verification process; reduces the time and cost to apply for a loan and improves the user experience. 

Tink’s technology will enable ConTe.it Prestiti to roll-out and expand its lending offering across Italy.

Francesco Cristofaro, Head of IT & UX at ConTe.it Prestiti, commented: “At ConTe.it Prestiti, we are rethinking the personal loan market and by partnering with Tink we will be able to offer a more tailored loan exclusively on the characteristics of the individual applicant. This enables us to be truly inclusive in our financial services offering. For us, open banking is the essential starting point to becoming the first lender in Italy to offer instant loans. That is why we chose to work with Tink.”

Daniel Henriquez, Southern Europe Banking Lead for Italy at Tink, added: “Real-time insights are vital for accurate loan application assessments. Tink’s Income Check is fast, frictionless and based on up-to-date income information, rather than credit scores or antiquated risk decisions. This allows ConTe.it Prestiti to gain clearer, more comprehensive insight into a loan applicant's repayment ability, providing them with the best loan process available.”

Business credit decisioning tool Fuse by Pave offers lenders 97% accuracy in affordability tests, clearer insights into consumer affordability, reduced rate of defaulted loans, and improvements to borrower outcomes.

In addition to improved accuracy in affordability testing, Fuse by Pave - which uses Open Banking technology - offers lenders personalised insights into cashflow and credit risk of prospective borrowers. The AI-powered technology enables lenders from across the financial ecosystem to increase their credit prediction power by 22 percentage points and reduce loss rates by 30% without reducing approval rates. 

Fuse by Pave estimates that its adoption in lending models could improve margins by around 7%. 

Against a backdrop of the cost of living crisis, with the highest reliance on credit since 2005, millions across the UK are experiencing an increased reliance on the need to borrow. Currently, there are 12-15 million near-prime borrowers in the UK who are excluded from affordable borrowing.

Using insights generated through Open Banking, Fuse by Pave provides lenders with a richer understanding of an applicant's current financial situation and whether the credit product they are applying for is affordable for them. 

Fuse is the latest product from credit builder app Pave. Since launch, Pave has analysed more than 150,000 lending decisions, 1.5 million consumer credit reports, and over 400 million Open Banking transactions. Pave seeks to bring more financial equality to millions across the UK. As a fully regulated credit builder, receiving nearly half a million downloads to date, Pave utilises Open Banking transactions to help consumers build better access to credit.

Sho Sugihara, CEO and Co-Founder of Fuse by Pave, commented: “Given the increasing reliance on credit, lenders require a tool that offers improved affordability insights not only to meet commercial goals but also enhances outcomes for borrowers. Fuse provides a solution to this demand, by providing market-leading clarity over lending decisions.

“The data insights that Fuse offers customers enables them to build lending models that have consumers at the heart, reducing the number of defaulted loans, and ultimately protecting consumers.  Transforming the financial system is vital to improve financial equality across the UK and eventually beyond – but lenders need regulatory and financial expertise to support them during this shift. Fuse can play a central role in providing lenders with the tools they need to remove barriers to improve lending decisions, provide more personalised product and boost equality across the credit sector.”

Ahead of the introduction of the FCA’s Consumer Duty, Fuse by Pave will be launching a new product to allow lenders to proactively monitor their customers financial health. This product will diagnose consumers’ financial vulnerability, providing lenders with improved oversight on financial wellbeing, empowering vulnerable consumers and allowing them to obtain help at a much earlier stage.

Acquired.com, a UK payments specialist and payment initiation service provider, and MultiPay Global Solutions, a leading provider of payments technology, have today announced a new partnership that sees Acquired.com select MultiPay as the official hardware provider for its in-person payment card terminals.

By partnering with MultiPay Global Solutions, Acquired.com can now offer merchants a streamlined in-person payment option, with MultiPay’s hardware solutions integrating seamlessly into their existing solution. This new offering enhances Acquired.com’s payment system by adding a sophisticated hardware option, enabling merchants to further simplify their settlement process.

David Maisey, CEO, MultiPay Global Solutions commented, “Our mission at MultiPay is to simplify and deliver better payment experiences for both merchants and consumers. We develop solutions that accelerate business growth by simplifying payment infrastructures and improving checkout experiences. Our new partnership with Acquired.com will enhance their best-in-class solution with a streamlined in-person payment option. This will give even more merchants the freedom and control they need while reducing costs and delivering a superior customer experience.”

Delia Pedersoli, COO, MultiPay Global Solutions said, “Whether in a physical store, or online, today’s discerning customers expect quick and seamless transactions no matter how they choose to pay. Our innovative bespoke solution keeps pace with the ever-changing needs of customers. This new partnership is a market-beating collaboration that enables Acquired.com to offer an unrivalled system for merchants that provides their customers with a full range of payment options that expands their reach and increases sales conversions.”

As Acquired.com rapidly grows its portfolio in the UK with data-driven, customised payment solutions, the new partnership will enable the company to offer cardholder present hardware to both existing and future customers.

Overall, the partnership between Acquired.com and MultiPay Global Solutions will provide merchants with a comprehensive payment processing solution that maximizes revenue opportunities, enhances efficiency, and simplifies transactions. As Acquired.com expands its reach in sectors including retail and ticketing, the partnership will help deliver an end-to-end solution for businesses that take payments both in-person and online.

Grant Evans, Head of Partnerships at Acquired.com commented, “Our new partnership with MultiPay compliments our online and open banking payment solutions, providing our customers with a seamless cardholder present point of sale solution. Much like Acquired.com’s platform, MultiPay provides a single payment gateway for all transactions, directing payments to multiple acquirer destinations, simplifying the entire process including reconciliation. Having a partner with multiple acquirer destinations, which reflects our own approach was very important to us.  It's been a pleasure working with MultiPay to service our customers' specific needs and enhance their in-person payment processes.”

Xapo Bank, a leading Bitcoin custodian and licensed private bank, has collaborated with Circle, a global financial technology company helping money move at internet speed, to become the first licensed bank in the world to integrate USDC payment rails as an alternative to SWIFT. 

USDC is a digital dollar, also known as a stablecoin, that is a faster and more efficient way to send and receive money around the globe, 24/7 including weekends, in under an hour. By adding outrails to its existing USDC onramps, Xapo Bank is enabling members to bypass costly and time consuming SWIFT payments and instead deposit and withdraw via the stablecoin with no fees charged by Xapo Bank. 

The bank is offering a 1:1 conversion rate from USDC to USD. All USDC deposits at Xapo Bank are automatically converted to USD, meaning that members can benefit from a 4.1% annual interest rate return on deposits. 

A fully licensed and regulated bank, Xapo Bank is a member of the Gibraltar Deposit Guarantee Scheme (GDGS), meaning that Xapo Bank guarantees its members’ USD deposits up to *$100,000 USD equivalent. Ensuring member protection, Xapo Bank does not engage in staking of any crypto deposits and it does not have any exposure to surrounding crypto markets as all deposits are automatically converted to USD held by the Bank. 

Unlike traditional banks, Xapo does not lend and therefore does not rely on fractional reserve banking to make money as its core business model. Instead, Xapo has all its customers' funds in reserve and invested in short term liquid assets in order to pass the benefit of that interest earned, to its customers. 

Seamus Rocca, CEO of Xapo Bank said: “Xapo Bank’s USDC payment rails mark a watershed moment in financial history, combining the speed and cost efficiency of the digital dollar, with the security guarantees of a licensed private bank. Enabling auto converted USDC deposits and withdrawals at Xapo Bank gives crypto members a safe haven for their savings. Running 24/7 including weekends, we eliminate the anxiety of keeping your money in exchanges and the hassle of expensive off ramps into traditional banks.”

“Xapo Bank was built to protect members’ savings. Unlike many traditional banks, we do not offer customer loans and therefore, all of our customers' money is held dollar for dollar on our balance sheet. It is invested in very short dated, highly credit rated, money market instruments and short term bonds. We are passing that benefit to our customers in the form of a 4.1% interest rate, paid daily.”

“We charge an honest membership fee of $150 USD to our members that helps us recover our overheads and means we don’t have to rely on paying almost no interest to our customers, or use hidden fees to make money. We give the benefit of more than 80% of the yield we generate back to our members.” 

Xapo Bank is constantly striving to grow its payment rails options, offering members additional currency choices managed with the security of a fully-regulated Bank. Reflecting this, the USDC news comes after last week’s announcement that Xapo Bank had integrated with the Faster Payment System (FPS) to activate support for GBP settlement for account deposits and withdrawals. The bank also announced an integration with Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, in collaboration with Lightspark, earlier this month.