TrueLayer, Europe’s leading open banking platform, has today announced its collaboration with the UK problem debt detection and prevention app SuperFi, which will provide open banking variable recurring payments (VRPs) to help customers repay borrowings and avoid fees.

SuperFi’s platform connects to users’ bank accounts and credit cards to track borrowings and overdrafts in a single interface. Customers can then select and follow personalised plans that help them pay off debt faster.

VRPs enable businesses to collect a series of payments from a customer at variable amounts or intervals for purposes such as moving money to a savings account or avoiding an overdraft. Enabled by open banking technology, they are a safer, more straightforward alternative to direct debits and card-on-file payments.

With VRPs from TrueLayer, SuperFi will support customers to set up more intuitive and flexible repayments. Through a process known as “sweeping” approved and mandated by regulators, VRPs allow users to set up automatic fund transfers of different amounts between two accounts that they own on a recurring basis.

For SuperFi and its customers, this will power processes that pay back debts faster and prevent fees. Customers will be able to use VRPs to “sweep” money between bank accounts, averting overdrafts and other penalties. They can also automatically ‘round up’ purchases to the nearest pound, using the spare change to pay down credit card debt.

Features like these address a need for better debt management solutions. As inflation has pushed household costs up over the past year, consumer debt has also increased. In November 2022, the Bank of England disclosed that consumers took out £1.5 billion in consumer credit borrowing in that month, with an additional to £0.5 billion of new borrowing in January.

The spike in debt has left many individuals and families in precarious financial situations. Nearly half (45%) of British adults have trouble paying essential bills, and about six million people have fallen behind on repayments according to an Oct 2022 survey from YouGov and StepChange Debt Charity. 

SuperFi’s debt support can help users alleviate these issues by leveraging technology. Customers get a holistic view of their borrowings and can set manageable repayment plans. VRPs can then help them carry out those plans automatically, settling their debts faster.

Tom Barltrop, CEO & Co-founder at SuperFi, said: “With millions of people struggling to repay their bills and credit commitments, the need for early detection and prevention of problem debt has never been more urgent. We are excited to harness the power of Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) to enable our users to repay their debts faster and avoid unnecessary fees.” 

Matt Parish, Group Product Manager at TrueLayer, added: “By eliminating the need to authorise every transaction, Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs) enable people to repay their loans in a way that’s both worry free and frictionless. We’re excited to work with SuperFi to provide a more reliable approach to debt support.”

Penn Community Bank, the largest mutual bank in eastern Pennsylvania, announced it has implemented the Lenders Cooperative Loan Origination System (LOS) which is focused on small business and commercial product lending. The LOS platform provides a fully online digital experience for the bank’s customers allowing them to apply for their capital needs anytime, from anywhere. In addition to the enhanced front-end customer experience, the platform will automate many of the bank’s back-office workflow tasks, allowing the team to make decisions and close loans more efficiently and effectively.

“The team at Lenders Cooperative has been a great partner over the years,” said Jake Iampietro, Director of Retail Banking at Penn Community Bank. “We leveraged their LOS platform to provide access to SBA PPP Funding to thousands of our small business customers during COVID and as we transitioned to the new lending products and workflows in the LOS, we have continued to receive positive feedback from our customers relative to their experiences accessing the Platform. The Lenders Cooperative development team has combined both conventional portfolio lending products and Small Business Administration (SBA) lending products in a seamless end-to-end workflow which allows us to extend more of the needed capital to our customers who are building and growing their businesses across our communities.”

“Lenders Cooperative is excited to expand our partnership with Penn Community Bank to provide innovative lending products and solutions to meet the needs of their customers,” said Loughlin Cleary, President, and National Sales Director at Lenders Cooperative. “With many former bankers on staff, Lenders Cooperative is uniquely positioned to help Penn Community Bank reimagine the customer lending experience, so they can focus on supporting and providing capital to their customers in the communities that they serve.”

Today, Flywire Corporation (Flywire) (Nasdaq: FLYW) a global payments enablement and software company, is announcing a partnership with FranConnect, the market leader in franchise management technology, to streamline the payment experience for franchisors looking to grow their businesses both domestically and internationally. FranConnect is expected to extend Flywire’s B2B payments platform through its marketplace to enable franchisors to easily collect royalties and fees from franchisees in different currencies around the world.

The partnership between Flywire and FranConnect is designed to provide franchisors more efficiency and access to analytics that enable them to accelerate the payment collection process. Flywire integrates directly into the FranConnect software, helping franchisors to automatically power every transaction, ranging from the initial payments required to sign a franchise agreement, all the way through to managing the ongoing royalty and fee payments from franchisees. Because franchisors can leverage Flywire all from within the familiar FranConnect platform, they can benefit from the ability to easily track and access payments, and to quickly and efficiently settle and reconcile payments.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Flywire and integrate their B2B payments platform into our marketplace,” said Gabby Wong, CEO, FranConnect. “Our brands leverage the FranConnect platform for everything from unit sales and territory development, to brand consistency, performance management, and royalty management but a critical missing piece is providing a seamless payment experience, for everything from set-up fees to managing ongoing royalty fees. Flywire enables us to meet that need, and our users will look to their payments capabilities to help them open-up new growth areas both domestically and abroad.”

The economic impact of the franchise industry is significant. The most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau suggests that 10.5% of all businesses are franchises, contributing $790 billion to the U.S. economy and creating more than 8 million jobs. Franchising is also one of the most common growth strategies for businesses in the U.S. as it enables them to expand into new regions without significant overhead. And increasingly, U.S. franchisors are looking to expand their business internationally to pursue revenue opportunities. The latest data from FRANdata expects franchises’ gross domestic product contribution to the overall economy to be 3% in 2022, with a growth higher than the pre-pandemic level, totalling a $501 billion economic contribution.

Despite this growth potential, it can be difficult for franchisors to scale internationally. They face common headwinds, such as regulatory and statutory requirements in different countries. Additionally, the process of issuing invoices and collecting payments from multiple countries, in different payment types and often in different currencies is highly complex, and traditionally fraught with inefficiencies. In a recent Flywire survey, 88% of surveyed finance professionals said the complexities of collecting cross-border payments impacts their ability to grow internationally. Specifically, 95% say if they could deal with exchange rates in an easier way, they could accelerate their global expansion efforts.

The integration between Flywire and FranConnect enables franchisors to overcome these common hurdles by providing a streamlined payment experience that can be tailored to their franchisees around the world. Powered by Flywire’s global payments network that supports more than 140 currencies in more than 240 global countries and territories, the payment experience through Flywire enables franchisees to pay in their local currency, and in their preferred payment method. Direct integration with FranConnect, as well as with other systems of record like NetSuite and other enterprise resource planning software, helps franchisors to easily collect royalties and fees on time and with full transparency into the payment statuses. Additional benefits for franchisors may include lower international processes fees, faster cash conversions, shorter collections cycle, and a reduction in days sales outstanding.

“We’re thrilled to partner with FranConnect as the first payments provider to help streamline both international and domestic payments for their network of franchisors,” said Greg Leven, SVP of B2B, Flywire. “With our powerful integration, the 1,500 franchise brands who use FranConnect to manage their operations can also rely on Flywire to power their critical transactions, all within a familiar interface.”

“My experience with global remittances before Flywire was characterized by payments being a number of days late, being hit with hidden fees, and managing a difficult reconciliation process,” said Jim Perkins, EVP International Development and Support, Dickey's Barbeque Pit. “Working with and incorporating Flywire as the payment option has been a productivity improvement for my partners, as well as a clear path to timely and financial clarity for all involved.”

Glia, the leading provider of Digital Customer Service (DCS), and ebankIT today announced a partnership aimed at humanizing the digital banking service experience for ebankIT clients. ebankIT will now offer Glia’s DCS solution for digital-first customer service as part of its digital banking platform.

“Partnering with Glia is an important step forward for ebankIT on the continuous process of humanizing the digital banking experience. ebankIT and Glia share a similar vision about the future of digital banking and the importance of creating great customer and member experiences. The growing number of banks and credit unions worldwide that subscribe to the ebankIT Omnichannel Platform will now also have the opportunity to explore Glia’s customer service technologies, offering new solutions to their end-users,” said Renato Oliveira, CEO for ebankIT.

Pre-integration of Glia’s Digital Customer Service suite within the ebankIT digital banking platform accelerates deployment and time-to-market. Glia’s DCS solution enables a seamless digital-first customer experience across all channels—SMS, chat, voice and video—without breaking the digital connection. Online collaboration tools, including CoBrowsing, allow institutions to guide customers, accelerate engagements and improve satisfaction to build loyalty.

“ebankIT’s commitment to humanizing the digital banking experience strongly aligns to Glia’s mission to reinvent how businesses support customers in a digital world. This partnership will greatly help our joint clients to improve the customer experience they offer while driving new efficiencies through a seamless, single-platform service approach,” said Steve Kaish, SVP of alliances for Glia.

The joint Glia-ebankIT solution is available for financial institutions across North America, including Canada. For more information, go to https://www.ebankit.com/partners

AML RightSource, the leading provider of Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”), Know Your Customer (“KYC”) and Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) compliance solutions, announced today that Florida-based bank Banesco USA has selected its Automated EDD (Enhanced Due Diligence) solution for efficient, compliant customer risk reviews with streamlined, AI processes that deliver detailed assessments and reporting.

AML RightSource’s AI-powered Automated EDD solution assists Banesco in efficiently conducting periodic risk reviews using Bank customer and corporate registry data. Focal entities and their counterparties are evaluated across a broad array of risk-bearing characteristics, including adverse media, PEP/SOE, watchlists, cryptocurrencies and more. The solution also characterizes related transactions using multiple criteria including transaction type, jurisdiction, and line of business to spot anomalous activity. The solution uses this information to produce algorithmic risk scores and dynamically determine customer risk segmentation based on definitions established by Banesco.

“Our deployment of the AML RightSource Automated EDD solution is an integral part of our strategy to integrate innovative and intuitive technology into our compliance program to efficiently reduce risk and prevent financial crimes across our operations,” explained Alba Prestamo, Banesco USA Executive Vice President, Chief BSA and Compliance Officer.

The AML RightSource EDD solution not only automates data-intensive research required to accurately assess risk, but also presents its findings to AML/BSA investigators in detailed High-Risk Entity Reports (HRERs) that provide scored risks with key details auto-generated case narratives for fast, consistent reporting and decisioning. Additionally, the Compliance and IT teams at Banesco benefit from AML RightSource’s secure cloud-based environment, ensuring full implementation in less than 90 days.

Historically, experienced AML/BSA investigators spend an average of 12 to 15 hours conducting comprehensive EDD reviews. The AML RightSource Automated EDD solution has proven to cut this time to only three to four hours, providing an efficient, time-saving solution that collects and analyzes two to five times more case-related data than manually intensive EDD processes.

“Financial institutions are plagued by lengthy EDD refreshes that demand significant time from even the most experienced investigators,” explained David McLaughlin, Executive Vice President of Technology Sales at AML RightSource. “Our Automated EDD solution offers an improved experience for a bank’s compliance team by enabling investigators to focus on adjudicating and evaluating a case without spending hours collecting and compiling data.”

G-P (Globalization Partners), the leading Global Employment Platform™, and Wise, the global technology company building the best way to move money around the world, today announced a partnership that will power the future of how businesses pay international freelancers and contractors.

Through the integration with G-P and Wise, companies will have direct access within the G-P platform to an efficient payment system that ensures fairness and pay transparency for all talent. Traditionally, cross-border transactions have been limited to time-consuming and manually intensive bank transfers for payment processing, providing no choice to customers or professionals. G-P Contractor will now deliver flexible payment options and a straightforward view into the entire payments process — including the mid-market exchange rate. 

“Together with Wise we are creating a world that is unhindered by traditional financial systems, providing customers and contractors an ethical and transparent employment and payment process for all talent through our Global Employment Platform,” said Nat Rajesh Natarajan, chief product and strategy officer, G-P. “At G-P, our mission is to create a borderless and equitable world of work. Delivering flexible payment options is critical to delivering on that mission and meeting the needs of today’s professionals.”

Unlike other solutions, there are no hidden transaction fees — giving businesses more control and autonomy over their international payments. They can choose the time, frequency and currency of payments, and will see a full breakdown of transaction details and real-time payment status. These payments will save time and labour on individual invoices, ensure timely delivery of funds, provide the current FX rate, avoid inefficiencies and create a more transparent process for all involved. It also provides a significant benefit for those that don’t have access to stable currencies or are experiencing rapid inflation around the globe.

“We’re excited to work with G-P to provide an easy and transparent way for companies to bring on global contractors and better manage these relationships,” said Steve Naudé, head of Wise Platform. “We’ve seen a growing need from companies to have more control over their international payments, especially to contractors, and are proud to see G-P trusting Wise to manage and power their cross-border capabilities. We look forward to working with G-P as they break down the barriers to global business.”

New capabilities for G-P Contractor customers include:
 • Choice of payment method, including bank transfer, credit/debit, ACH, Wire and International Wire
 • Contractors across 180+ countries can now get paid in 50+ currencies including: USD, AUD, GBP, SGD, CAD and EUR
 • Batch payments for invoices in the same or different currencies
 • Real-time guaranteed quotes at the time of payment — avoiding any exchange fluctuations that occur as the transaction progresses 
 • Transparent payment summaries for companies to see exactly what fees they pay — nothing is hidden — and the mid-market exchange rate being applied
 • Payment status updates to monitor the transaction throughout the payment process; more than 50% of payments powered by Wise are instant

New capabilities for G-P contractors include:
 • Choice of payout method to receive funds with multiple options, including: bank transfer, virtual cards, wallets, ACH, Wire and International Wire
 • Choice of 50+ currencies for payment 

With G-P Contractor, businesses can hire contractors in 180+ countries, quickly and easily. An extension of G-P's best-in-class Global Employment Platform™, this offering provides support throughout the entire lifecycle of contractors hired for both short- and long-term projects.

Wise helps people and businesses securely hold and move money in over 50 currencies and send USD to over 190 countries. It is further growing the offerings of Wise Platform to allow banks and businesses to embed the power of Wise into their existing platform. 

The Wise Platform allows partners to take advantage of one of the largest global engineering teams focused on helping move money around the world. The team also has dedicated delivery, engineering, customer and product specialists who work collaboratively to seamlessly integrate the Wise APIs into partner dashboards and user interfaces.  

Lasse Skog, Director of Development at State Treasury of Finland, comments: “Certain public administrative organisations are obligated by the Finnish law, decrees, and other norms to disburse benefits, compensations, subsidies, and other payments to beneficiaries. For a legitimate reason, a part of these payments requires an alternative payment method to complement traditional account transfers. These organisations have been using an existing prepaid payment card solution. Public procurement is typically characterised by fixed-term contracts, and the previous framework contract reaching the end of its life cycle called for a new public procurement round.”

Denise Johansson, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Enfuce, says: “We are honoured that the State Treasury of Finland and Kela trust our expertise in building a service that guarantees secure payments for those who need them as well as efficient and transparent payment processes for the Finnish government and Kela. Enfuce boasts an SLA of 99.99%, which makes the prepaid card highly reliable. The beneficiaries never have to worry whether their card works at the shop checkout.”

Lasse Skog, Director of Development at State Treasury of Finland, comments: “For governmental organisations and Kela, the core of the partnership is to get a payment method that meets our requirements, is cost-efficient, and is easy to use for our prepaid card users. In addition to that, we expect Enfuce to be able to deliver the service, further develop the features according to our needs, and support us in our work to develop efficient processes. We also hope to gain an open and goal-oriented cooperation with Enfuce building on a tight partnership.”

Monika Liikamaa, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Enfuce, says: “We are excited to be a part of building an exceptional user experience for the customers of the government. Us founders of Enfuce have a background and experience in building banks, and Enfuce’s clients serve cardholders on a wide scale. The government gets access to all of this experience – we are able to deeply understand the needs of their different user groups and deliver a payment card service to match those needs.” 

Exciting news for online merchants as Boodil, the specialist account-to-account payments solution, announces its partnership with Aero Commerce, one of the UK’s fastest-growing e-commerce platforms. The partnership will allow consumers to make highly secure payments in just three taps, making the payment process quick, easy and secure, whilst eliminating slow and clunky traditional payment methods. With online transaction volumes for mobile payments expected to grow from 26 billion in 2021 to 49 billion in 2023 representing a 92% growth, the partnership will enable merchants to extract even more value from their transactions. 

Merchants can now access Boodil's Pay by Bank account-to-account payment solution, which offers plug-and-play onboarding, so no bespoke integration is required. This means merchants can be saving up to 75% per transaction compared to card payments. Boodil's frictionless payment process increases conversion rates, streamlines cash flow via instant settlements and rewards customers every time they spend; similar to using a rewards credit card. Security is also improved, significantly reducing fraud and eliminating chargebacks entirely, as all transactions are Secure Customer Authentication (SCA) compliant. 

Shane Williams, CCO of Boodil, comments: “We’re delighted to be Aero Commerces’ first Open  Banking payment provider, directly integrated within their platform. Aero Commerce has one of the most innovative and feature-rich e-commerce platforms in the market and we are excited to roll our solution out with their various merchants. Our partnership will deliver quick and easy  payments to their online merchants, ensuring that the process of completing a checkout is a  seamless and secure experience for consumers whilst rewarding them every time they spend.” 

Richard Bendelow, CEO of Aero Commerce explains: It’s essential that online merchants allow their customers to pay for goods and services easily, seamlessly, and in line with their personal preferences. Our partnership with Boodil delivers all of these benefits. The team’s respected  knowledge of the payments landscape and the advanced functionality of its platform makes them  an obvious partner to support Aero Commerce with offering our agencies merchants an Open  Banking payments solution.” 

With Boodil's easy-to-use payment solution, merchants can now materialize the benefits of  Open Banking payments, streamlining their own cash flow whilst exciting and rewarding their customers. The partnership with Aero Commerce is a significant step on this journey, and with  Boodil's deep understanding of the payments landscape, the possibilities here are endless.

AppTech Payments Corp., an innovative Fintech company powering seamless, omni-channel commerce between businesses and consumers, has engaged international investor relations specialists MZ Group (MZ) to lead a comprehensive strategic investor relations and financial communications program across all key markets.

MZ Group will work closely with AppTech management to develop and implement a comprehensive capital markets strategy designed to increase the Company’s visibility throughout the investment community. The campaign will highlight AppTech’s Commerce Experiences-as-a-Service (“CXS”) platform, which is the first-to-market, cloud-based program backed by AppTech’s mobile commerce patents, core partner technology and other related internal intellectual property. CXS solutions seamlessly deliver digital banking, text-to-pay, and merchant services altogether from a single, unified platform to create flexible, rich, personalized payments and banking experiences for end users.

With a strong balance sheet and exceptional product and leadership teams, the Company is well-positioned to become the premier Fintech SaaS platform powering high-conversion, immersive, commerce experiences for businesses and their customers worldwide.

MZ has developed a distinguished reputation as a premier resource for institutional investors, brokers, analysts and private investors and maintains offices worldwide. Michael Kim, Managing Director at MZ North America—who brings over 20 years of experience in financial services—will advise AppTech’s IR team in all facets of investor relations, including the coordination of roadshows and investment conferences across key cities and building brand awareness with financial and social media outlets.

According to Research and Markets, the global market for Digital Commerce Platforms is estimated at $12.8 billion in 2022 and projected to reach $38 billion by 2030, representing a CAGR of 14.6%.

Greg Falensik, Chief Executive Officer of MZ Group North America, commented: “With the rise of Fintech and emergence of a variety of payment types and platforms, businesses are increasingly looking for a better way to provide their customers with immersive commerce experiences. The commerce experience, or buying journey, begins with customer awareness and continues through purchase and post-purchase feedback. This experience is supported by programmed interactions that center on improving customer satisfaction and a seamless journey. By 2024, 15% of B2B organizations will use digital commerce platforms to support both customers and sales reps in all sales activities. The Covid pandemic intensified the use of digital commerce platforms at an exponential rate as businesses looked to cloud-based digital commerce solutions. AppTech is well positioned to capture market share with its first-to-market, cloud-based CXS platform that offers a truly omni-channel payment experience delivered through feature-rich embedded payment processing. Differentiated by its entire approach, from strategy and development to packaging and delivery of CXS, we believe AppTech presents an exciting opportunity, and we look forward to sharing this with our network of institutional, family offices and retail investors.”

Michael Kim, Managing Director of MZ Group North America, added: “AppTech’s CXS platform provides businesses with everything they need to accept digital payments, including credit card and alternative payment processing services. It’s Payments-as-a-Service equips businesses with merchant services from physical credit and debit card processing to e-commerce, mobile, and new forms of contactless payments. Banking-as-a-Service offers transformative digital banking capabilities that drive efficiency by automating financial control and reconciliation. Taken together, CXS solutions incorporate PaaS, BaaS, Data, AI/ML, MarTech and other features to create flexible, rich, personalized payment and banking experiences for end users. We look forward to working with management to communicate the immense value proposition AppTech represents as the business scales in 2023 and beyond.”

“Over the past year, we have made tremendous progress in positioning AppTech for accelerated growth,” said Luke D’Angelo, Chief Executive Officer of AppTech. “Not only did we successfully complete a raise to strengthen our balance sheet, but we continued to reinvest in the business by expanding our leadership team, while also announcing new strategic partnerships with leading global companies. Looking ahead, we are highly focused on monetizing our growing pipeline of clients to drive revenue, profitability, and ultimately, shareholder value.”

“We look forward to working with Michael and the entire team at MZ Group to communicate the potential of our revolutionary, cloud-hosted Fintech platform that delivers a seamless Commerce Experiences from a fully integrated, modular technology stack,” concluded D’Angelo.