Fenergo, the leading provider of digital solutions for Know Your Customer (KYC) and Client Lifecycle Management (CLM), and Shieldpay, the market leading fintech solving high value, complex B2B payments, today announced their partnership. The companies are working together to realise a comprehensive CLM system and perpetual risk monitoring, as Shieldpay scales its operations.
 
Shieldpay provides secure B2B payments to legal and professional services firms, financial services, and technology platforms, focusing on high-value and high-volume transactions. To date, Shieldpay has processed over $5bn of corporate funds for litigation settlements, M&A deals, real estate and secondary transactions through its digital platform.
 
Fenergo’s Software as a Service (SaaS) CLM and transaction monitoring solution enables Shieldpay to consolidate real-time client KYC and AML data in one platform, achieving perpetual customer due diligence and supporting ongoing regulatory policies. With this in place, Shieldpay can manage a fully digital due diligence process, which will streamline internal operations and allow for faster onboarding of new clients.
 
With an advanced 360-view of their clients and continuous risk monitoring on their platform, Shieldpay is leading the way in the payments industry for financial crime identification and prevention.
 
With both companies striving to bring genuine innovation in due diligence and payments, formalising a partnership together is part of the next exciting chapter in B2B payments on an international scale.

Commenting on the selection, James Stubbs, Head of Product, Shieldpay, said:
 
"As we continue to expand, it's crucial that we have partners that share common goals around making the payments landscape highly secure. Fenergo’s depth of experience in onboarding complex entity structures, transparency, and ability to automate client due diligence made it the standout vendor of choice.”
 
"Modern payments businesses like Shieldpay require CLM solutions that provide seamless automation, in addition to a complete view of their clients and ensure full compliance with international regulations," said Stella Clarke, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Fenergo.
"Through our solution, Shieldpay can focus on delivering an exceptional overall client experience within a secure environment. We look forward to continuing to be a transparent partner as Shieldpay drives the B2B payments industry forward.”

Retail customers of the international payment service provider (PSP), Computop, will now be able to use smartphones at the POS to accept contactless payments.
 
With the new Computop PhonePOS solution, which will be debuted by Computop (Hall 6 booth E24) at the EuroShop trade fair in Dusseldorf (26 Feb-2 Mar) secure PIN entry will allow retailers to accept payments over £50 or 50 euros.
 
The use of commercially available mobile devices, also known as consumer-off-the-shelf-devices (COTS), provides an alternative to card terminals and also enables interaction with other app-based services. Communication between the device and the card takes place via the NFC reader and payment from smartphone to smartphone, for example, via ApplePay or Google Pay is also possible.
 
Software PIN for secure authentication
The PIN, if required, is entered via the screen of the merchant’s device, however, this is only used to authenticate the card and is not stored on the device.
PhonePOS can be used with a large number of current Android smartphones and tablets. The required app is installed via the Google Playstore, and a terminal ID is also required, which is transferred by Computop during the onboarding process.
With the new system solution, Computop is targeting large companies from the retail and service sectors that want to make payment more flexible for their sales staff or delivery service. Small and medium-sized companies can also use PhonePOS via partners. For German retailers, or UK merchants selling in Germany, acceptance of the girocard takes place directly via Computop as an authorised network operator, while the processing of credit card payments is via many acceptance partners due to the acquirer-agnostic approach.

Stephan Kück, Managing Director of Computop, comments: "With PhonePOS, Computop is expanding its portfolio for payments at the POS with a very contemporary update. The full potential of card acceptance via smartphone will become fully apparent in the next few years, however PhonePOS opens up a completely new service and optimisation possibilities for retailers and service providers right now.“

Lloyds Bank Business & Commercial Banking has strengthened its Specialist Client Solutions team with the appointment of Tim Biddle as Head of Invoice Finance and Asset Finance Field Sales.

Tim will be responsible for helping to shape the execution of Lloyds Bank’s Invoice Finance & Asset Finance sales strategy, and will lead its UK-wide team as they deliver invoice and asset finance products that enable firms to drive growth by quickly freeing-up working capital and funding new business-critical assets.

He joins from Paragon Bank, where he served as Commercial Director for SME lending, responsible for strategic initiatives including new product development and growth in new markets.

Prior to this, he was Paragon’s Asset Finance Sales Director, leading the bank’s broker, aviation receivables and invoice finance sales teams nationwide. He has previously held senior asset finance and invoice finance roles at Aldermore Bank and Siemens Financial Services.

In his new role, Tim will report to Ben Stephenson, Managing Director and Head of Specialist Client Solutions, Lloyds Bank Business & Commercial Banking, and be based in London.

Ben Stephenson, Managing Director and Head of Specialist Client Solutions, Lloyds Bank Business & Commercial Banking, said: “Our clients are working hard to balance considerations such as high inflation and supply chain disruption with the numerous growth opportunities available. They need a financial partner who can provide specialist support and access to a full suite of financial solutions when they need it most, quickly, and conveniently.

“We’re committed to delivering this type of backing through the expert consultancy of our team across the UK. Tim’s depth of experience and breadth of perspective will help ensure we’re continuing to improve the service we offer businesses as they address working capital challenges. I’m excited to welcome him to the team.”

Tim Biddle, Head of Invoice Finance and Asset Finance Field Sales, Lloyds Bank Business & Commercial Banking, added: “What attracted me to Lloyds Bank was its laser-like focus on innovation, as well as its clear mission to help British businesses to prosper. 

“Its team are constantly looking to draw on the insight of colleagues and partners so businesses can readily access tailored invoice and asset finance facilities. I’m looking forward to bringing my experience to bear in helping shape our future strategy, so we can continue to deliver solutions that make a real difference to our clients’ operations.”

Lloyds Bank has continued to invest in new partnerships to unlock new innovation in its working capital products.

In 2022, it unveiled a new partnership with fintech Satago to deliver the first end-to-end digital single invoice finance and whole-book invoice factoring solution on a single platform offered by any UK bank.

In an exclusive interview with Finbold, Alexander Wilke, the co-founder of Pendulum, a public blockchain connecting traditional finance with decentralised finance (DeFi), has maintained that despite the pessimistic position on cryptocurrencies by key global organizations, the sector is bound to keep growing.

Wilke referred to the gloomy crypto sector outlook by the World Economic Forum (WEF), noting that the agency's stand has little impact on the overall digital assets market prospects.

Crypto to record increased adoption

He noted that although the crypto sector is facing headwinds, they will only slow down adoption while calling for an understanding of the industry before making a stand. According to Wilke:

"More and more use cases will be adopted, and more intermediaries will be automated by smart contracts, potentially delivering a better service than their centralized counterparts. This cannot be stopped by some people having a different opinion, including the WEF. In my opinion, an opposition to that overarching DeFi growth can only happen when people are not familiar with DeFi or defending their currently disrupted business."

With liquidity standing out among key issues that have impacted the crypto market in recent months, the co-founder stated that Pendulum focuses on growing a sustainable ecosystem while aiming to lower rewards with further adoption. 

Amid the crypto market downturn, regulators have increased the oversight of the sector, and Wilke pointed out that Pendulum is keeping tabs on changing laws in various jurisdictions. He stated that the company focuses on working with partners for stablecoins that comply with specific jurisdictions' laws.

Finally, the Pendulum co-founder explained that the stablecoin standard and the open architecture of DeFi applications partly contributed to the platform's option to focus on the convergence of forex and the decentralised finance sector. In this case, diverse users can participate in liquidity contributions through different currencies translating to a higher fiat liquidity aggregation.

Read the full interview here: https://finbold.com/pendulum-co-founder-interview/

International payment service provider and direct bank acquirer, ECOMMPAY, has today announced the launch of its first Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) offering. Built with the company’s proprietary technology, the new payment solution promises 24/7 customer support with a robust risk scoring system tailored to an individual’s travel circumstances, offering higher credit limits for specific travel needs, and credit return limits to protect booking agencies and travel agents. With the unique requirements of the travel industry in mind, the new consumer finance offering joins a suite of payment products that enable companies to grow their business and protect travellers.

BNPL has become a hugely popular payment option for consumers with a third likely to remove items at checkout if it is not offered (33%), according to research from ECOMMPAY. Further research also illustrated that nine in ten travel and aviation companies expect their customers to increasingly rely on BNPL payments due to the impact of the cost of living crisis and rising inflation (94%).

Leveraging its existing experience serving the travel sector, ECOMMPAY enters the BNPL market with a solution that has a range of features to help businesses navigate these economic challenges. Including increasing direct bookings, reducing shopping cart anxiety, mitigating fraud, and boosting checkout conversion by up to 35%. Travel businesses who adopt ECOMMPAY’s offering can give their customers the options to Pay in Instalments, Pay in 30 days, or Pay over Time to introduce manageable financing for the largest purchases. These options offer travellers the ultimate affordability and flexibility.

ECOMMPAY takes financial credit very seriously. Through a rigorous procurement process, its carefully selected partners help ensure the highest standards are met across a range of features:

• Credit scoring — A rigorous auditing system reduces cases where customers who cannot afford credit are given access to it, keeping consumers safe 
• Borrowing limits —tailored to the larger purchases the travel industry experiences, leading to higher payment acceptance rates 
• Extended time limits for credit return — up to 12 months

Travel brands can also enable their customers to pay for their bookings any time, anywhere, using card details, smart devices, or even QR codes - no POS terminal required. ECOMMPAY specialises in creating bespoke in-house solutions for the travel and hospitality industries, meaning those businesses can choose to integrate a custom, fully-branded solution into their own booking pages or host everything under ECOMMPAY’s name on its highly trusted payment platform.

Olga Karablina, Head of Product Development at ECOMMPAY, comments: “Like the retail sector, the travel industry can see customers’ huge appetite for BNPL payment solutions. Our research revealed the introduction of regulation in the UK has made more than a third of consumers more comfortable using this payment option (37%). ECOMMPAY’s product has been developed to give travel companies a responsible, easy-to-implement, and trustworthy consumer finance solution that will allow their customers to spread payments for travel bookings in a way that protects them. We’re helping travel businesses improve their payment flows, reduce costs, and ultimately grow revenue in an economically challenging year.”

Following the launch of its latest finance solution for the travel sector, ECOMMPAY also has plans to unveil a similar product for the retail space in the near future.

Book a tailored consultation about what BNPL can offer your business from ECOMMPAY’s travel-industry payment experts here: https://ecommpay.com/products/bnpl-for-travel/ 

Weeks after a $350 million raise, Indian digital payment platform PhonePe has secured another $100 million in funding at a $12 billion valuation.

The ongoing round was joined by Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global and TVS Capital Funds. PhonePe says it expects further investment to follow.

The money will be used to scale up PhonePe's payments and insurance businesses in India, as well as to launch and aggressively scale in new sectors like lending, stockbroking, ONDC-based shopping and account aggregators over the next few years.

Sameer Nigam, CEO, PhonePe, says: "We are privileged to have a great set of leading global investors, both existing and new, who believe in our mission of building massive technology platforms to bring at-scale financial and digital inclusion in India."

APEXX Global, (“APEXX”), the multi-award-winning Payment Orchestration Platform, has partnered with Trustly, the global payments platform for digital account-to-account (A2A) transactions, to offer Trustly’s recurring payments method to merchants across global markets.

Trustly’s solution, provided through APEXX Global’s orchestration platform, is set to transform the Direct Debit experience for APEXX merchants and customers. The payment method boosts conversion rates, reduces payment errors, and lowers costs. Trustly’s solution creates mandates instantly, using innovative Open Banking APIs without additional account verification or manual handling.

Through this partnership, merchants can access a more cost-effective and efficient alternative to the manual Direct Debit mandate setup. The scalable, recurring payments method is available to EU and UK merchants.

In an immediate testament to the new partnership, APEXX and Trustly have announced that they have delivered a sustainable and scalable recurring payments solution to a leading operator in the European travel industry, reducing mandate failure rates to zero.

Peter Keenan, CEO of APEXX Global, said: “I’m delighted to announce our partnership with Trustly. Our mission is to transform the global payments ecosystem for merchants and Open Banking is a critical tool in streamlining the payments process. Through this partnership, we can meaningfully boost the conversion experience for merchants by reducing Direct Debit mandate failures. I’m looking forward to working alongside the Trustly team to further transform global payments.”

Daniel Hecker, Chief Product Officer at Trustly, said: "We are delighted to partner with APEXX Global to help supercharge checkout conversion and performance for their merchants, fueled by what we believe to be the most efficient and embedded payment solution available. Since its launch, we have seen that over 70% of users opt for the Open Banking mandate setup over legacy manual processes, showing that Trustly is not only offering new payment methods, but solving pain points for businesses, and improving user experience when paying with existing solutions such as Direct Debit."

SteelEye and LeapXpert have partnered to help financial firms combat the risk associated with the use of unauthorized communications channels.  

Last year, $2 billion in eComms fines were handed out to Wall Street firms for failures in preventing employees from communicating on channels that were not being monitored for compliance.

Capturing and overseeing communications is a critical way of detecting market abuse like insider trading, unlawful information sharing, or other forms of manipulation. These are illegal activities that financial services firms are required to monitor for in accordance with FCA, ESMA, SEC, FINRA, and CFTC rules.

Previously, data capture and surveillance solutions for messaging applications like WhatsApp did not exist, and firms opted to ban their use. However, as evidenced by the ongoing communications crackdown, clients and employees often speak via these channels regardless of the bans imposed.

Now, LeapXpert and SteelEye have partnered to address the industry-wide eComms challenge and enable firms to fully capture and monitor data from the widest-range of channels.

The native integration between the two platforms means that eComms data captured by LeapXpert from platforms – including WhatsApp, SMS, Voice, iMessage, WeChat, Telegram, Signal, and LINE – flows automatically into SteelEye for compliance record keeping and surveillance. SteelEye is the only truly integrated surveillance solution that can natively bring together communications, trades, and orders, as well as news, and market data on a single platform.

A new LeapXpert integration with Microsoft Teams allows financial institutions to message clients through WhatsApp, SMS, and WeChat from within the native Microsoft Teams interface.

Commenting on the partnership, SteelEye’s CEO, Matt Smith, said:
“There is mounting pressure on financial firms to improve how they capture, archive, and monitor regulated communications across their organizations. Together with LeapXpert, we provide a sophisticated, scalable, and efficient solution – so that firms can empower their employees to communicate across a wide range of channels. LeapXpert’s innovative solution, which is deployed in some of the world’s biggest banks, takes the pain out of capturing communications while SteelEye’s Integrated Surveillance platform makes it easier for firms to identify compliance threats, investigate alerts, and report to the regulator.”

“We’re excited to partner with SteelEye, one of the leaders in surveillance technology,” added Avi Pardo, Co-Founder & CRO of LeapXpert. “SteelEye’s distinguished platform offers a futureproofed and scalable solution for financial firms looking to strengthen their communications but also trade surveillance programs. This integration ties into our strategy of partnering with complementary solutions, enabling us to provide an end-to-end solution and rapidly expand our business.”

Also commenting on the integration, Brian Lynch, President of SteelEye Americas said:
“The Securities and Exchange Commission is coming down hard on firms who fail to monitor for and capture communications on messaging channels. The partnership between LeapXpert and SteelEye can help firms avoid heavy fines and negative headlines.”

In 2022, the business sector expanded by 76% compared to the previous year. European P2P consumer lending reduced the pace of growth.