GLEIF and Open Future World Directory to enter partnership

The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) and Open Future World have announced a new collaboration to help open finance organisations to work together.

This comes after the launch of the Open Future World Directory , the open finance organisation directory. Thank soo the addition of the Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) within the directory, it will be easier to identify who to connect to and do business with.

“The Legal Entity Identifier is a global standard for transparent and unique identification of legal entities. Users of the Open Future World Directory now benefit from quick and easy identification of the listed organization by linking to its validated and verified profile in the Global LEI Repository,”

Clare Rowley, GLEIF Head of Business Operations

“Whether you are talking about customers choosing to share their financial data, or financial institutions and fintechs working together, trust is a key theme in open banking and open finance. LEIs help enhance transparency by making it easier to know who you are dealing with.”

Nick Cabrera, Open Future World co-founder

Card issuing and management: staying relevant facing ever faster changing customer expectations

How card issuers are rethinking their business models and technical architecture

Our payments landscape is changing rapidly, and traditional card issuers need to keep up with new competitors that meet customer expectations. Especially now, during times of lockdowns and working from home, customers are expecting digital services that are seamlessly integrated into their every-day lives. This means that Issuers have to rethink both their business models as well as their technical infrastructure to keep up with competitors and customer expectations.

Convenient, fast and reliable

First of all, how popular are card-based payments nowadays? As research shows, this payment method will play a major role in the near future. By 2022, it is estimated that 47 percent of global e-commerce payments will be made using eWallets, while 28 percent will be made using credit and debit cards. At the point of sale (POS), it is expected that 52 percent of all global POS payments are made using either a credit or debit card, with eWallets (28 percent) assuming the third place. These numbers have to do with the fact that consumers find card-based payments convenient, fast, familiar, reliable and secure. A little further in the future, we are likely to see the general replacement of tangible plastic cards by alternative means of payment like mobile payment apps and virtual cards. However, the payment itself will remain card-based and will, thus, to a large extent rely on the established infrastructure of schemes like Visa, MasterCard and local schemes.

 

Crowded Landscape

This is the reason that the card issuing landscape is getting increasingly crowded as new players spot opportunities to tap into the unresolved growth potential of the card payments industry. Over the years, many traditional banks have delivered card payments services on a license to operate’ basis, meaning that they have typically issued basic products like debit, credit and prepaid cards and have not shown any interest in differentiating themselves through these products. Neobanks seem to be utilising the full potential of cards and card payment services by making them the focal point of additional services. This places the cardholder at the center of the payment experience. Think about services and features like real-time information on transactions, convenient onboarding processes and product control (for example spending limits and geo-blocking).

 

Challenges

As a result, traditional card issuers are feeling the pressure of increased competition. It urges them to transform their card processing platforms to remain competitive, but there are a number of internal and external challenges that need to be overcome. Think of diversifying channels and the demand for a consistent experience or the creation of new technologies that are disrupting financial services and the arrival of regulations like Open Banking, PSD2 and GDPR. Other than that, players are forced to focus on efficiently processing massive volumes to make the business case viable. In the meantime, internal challenges play a key role as well. Traditional players are, for example, struggling with their legacy systems and their ability to leverage the vast amount of data points produced by transactions. Besides that, players need to protect sensitive data and actual monetary transactions against fraud. And there is also the struggle of managing the increasing number of compliance procedures.

 

The Solution: Open Innovation

While there are many interesting solutions from Fintechs and other third parties available that address some of these challenges or simply offer a superior frontend experience, they are often hard to integrate into existing legacy applications and some processing partners do neither offer a modular platform nor the commercial flexibility required to quickly test and integrate third party solutions. At Worldline, we are convinced that the best results come out of open innovation. That is why we are hosting the annual Worldline e-Payments Challenge where we bring together our clients and fintechs to create innovative use cases together with our experts. Our modular, real time processing platform allows for simple integration of these solutions based on a large and powerful set of APIs.

Are you looking for creative ways to address the challenges Issuers are facing today? Get in touch with our experts to learn how Worldline can support you. Contact Us: worldlinecommunications@worldline.com

Fintech Recruitment: Top Tips From the Professionals

It’s no secret that great fintech candidates are rare. It’s a growing industry that’s becoming cooler all the time. Face to face and phone interactions are decreasing (let’s not lie, we’re all experts at talking to chatbots now!), so the highly skilled roles needed to facilitate these changes are becoming pretty in-demand. 

Add an increase in the need for cyber security and financial insurance and you’ve got a talent gap. But, if you’re reading this, you probably already know that… 

In Scotland, we boast some of the best fintech businesses in the world; as the BBC reported in January 2020, the number of Scottish fintech firms grew 60% in 2019. That’s obviously slowed in 2020, but the outlook remains strong. 

So, in this competitive market, how can your fintech recruitment strategy make your business survive and thrive? I’ve put together the top tips I’ve learnt working in tech and fintech recruitment that should help. 

 

Refine your EVP 

Highly skilled people in fintech can command high salaries. So, you need to differentiate your business to make it stand out. You need to give people a reason, more than money, to work for you. 

And no, we’re not talking pool tables and free coffee. 

The pandemic has increased the demand for flexibility and that means working from home, moveable hours, and part time working. 

People also want to know that they’ll be looked after as your employee. Do you provide private healthcare? Counselling? Gym memberships? Clearly communicate what you do to improve quality of life in your careers page, your marketing, and any external sites.

Then think about your company culture, particularly important when most of us are working from home. Show how you’re inclusive, how you welcome new employees, and show this to potential candidates. 

If you don’t provide the things above, why not? They’re what will make you stand out from the competition. 

 

Widen your talent pool 

Fintech in Scotland is still a relatively small industry. If you really want to discover great talent you might want to look outside either the fintech pool or your locality. 

Thankfully, with great advancements in tech (especially recently) it’s much easier to work remotely and most are finding it a positive experience.

By widening your search, you get a bigger talent pool and more diverse candidates. A May 2020 McKinsey report said that “companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile.”

How candidates view their careers is changing too. We used to work in the same role for most of our lives, but now, people are continually changing roles, reskilling, and upskilling. Now, this ethos means it’s easier to hire people who can be trained to do specific roles, rather than only looking for those already in them. 

Someone who works in customer service might be a great fit for sales, and we’ve seen designers move to development roles easily. 

 

Get methodical about hiring

In a market with talent gaps, it’s easy to make the wrong hire. In the long-term, this can cost you a lot ”“ both financially and in your company culture. If you have a robust hiring method though, you won’t make these mistakes. 

At Solutions Driven, my team and I use RPI ”“ Recruitment Process Intelligence ”“ to make the right hire, first time, every time. We use RPI with everyone from big banks hiring CEOs and startups hiring sales execs. And it always works. 

Through RPI, we use various methods to find and secure the best talent. The two fundamental ones are the 6s and the 6F processes. 

The 6S process is how we find and secure candidates: 

We hold an initial Scoping meeting to identify the hiring needs

We create a Scorecard that matches the businesses’ criteria 

We source candidates via the latest technology and human intelligence, 

We Select them against the scorecard, interviews and psychometric testing 

We Secure them via our 6F Process (more on that in a sec)

We Satisfy both the candidate and our clients by measuring the results and regular check-ins. 

 

For the 6F process, we ensure that candidates and companies are matched on six key areas ”“ Fit, Freedom, Family, Fulfilment, Fortune, and Future ”“ so that your potential hire becomes a long-term, happy employee who helps propel your business forward. 

 

Exciting passive talent 

Your ideal hires are probably already in roles. Thanks, talent gap! So, when talking to fintech companies, we’ve found a big problem they have is activating passive talent who are already happy in their roles. 

Many don’t even want to entertain an initial conversation. 

The first thing you can do is one we’ve already discussed – improve your EVP and how you market it. In this industry, top talent wants to work with companies that are going somewhere or doing something exciting. It’s important that your brand is known for being forward-thinking and allowing people to work on great projects and progress. 

It can be hard to activate passive talent by yourself. It takes indepth technology, experience, and a lot of time. So sometimes, it’s best to get the professionals in. 

If you’re really serious about getting the best people to join your company, a good recruitment company, who knows your industry and knows how to attract great people will be far more cost effective in the long-run than doing it yourself. 


 

Blog written by Nicki Paterson. Nicki is Global Head of Business Growth at Solutions Driven, a Glasgow company that has specialised in business-critical recruitment for over 20 years. Working on a flat-fee basis and 12 month guarantees, Solutions Driven’s focus is getting the right people for the right roles, first time, every time.

If you’d like to find out more about how you can recruit effectively in the fintech market, get in touch with Nicki at npaterson@solutionsdriven.com.

 

Small business resilience and the evolution of ecommerce

The continuing shuttering of small businesses on high streets across the country is being accompanied by an unseen birth of new, exciting digital-only small businesses.

Periods of economic downturn typically result in a decline in new business registrations and at the beginning of the pandemic, it looked like UK SMBs were set to follow in this trend. For instance, statistics released by the ONS revealed that business creations slowed during April and May.

 

Despite this, Companies House figures reveal an overall increase in the number of new company incorporations in Q2 when compared to the previous year. This is indicative of a plethora of new business ventures inspired by our changing way of life.

 

Many of these emerging businesses are digital-first by necessity of the global lockdown they were born out of. Take for instance an independent hardware store which was already struggling prior to the pandemic. They may now find themselves in a position of renewed success, selling specific gardening tools via Shopify and Instagram marketing. While they may not have a strong credit history they do have a vast data footprint, owing to the numerous systems they rely on to run their business. Each data source, from their accounting package to their POS or ecommerce system provides a valuable yet siloed view of performance.

 

The shifting value exchange

However, the modern SMB expects systems and services to work together seamlessly and appears more willing to share their data in an open and automated fashion in order to ensure this. For instance, in September of this year, it was reported that the use of open banking had doubled in just nine months – an increase of one million users since January.

 

This increased appetite for interconnectivity between financial systems has opened the door to a much more collaborative, bespoke and diverse service between small businesses and their financial service providers. This is evidenced by the growing convergence of the POS, ecommerce and lending industries. Square Capital, Shopify Capital and Worldpay Working Capital are just some examples of funding facilities utilising transactional data to determine creditworthiness and offering finance at the point of need for small businesses.

 

Moving forward, customers who are willing to share their financial data digitally via accounting, ecommerce & POS package authorisation or open banking will likely benefit from a better service and more affordable products. For instance, lenders will be able to offer more favourable rates due to their enhanced ability to calculate risk and the notable reduction in the cost of serving these customers. The end result will be a shifting value exchange for small businesses whereby the benefits of sharing their data will become even more tangible than ever before.

 

The rise of ecommerce

The conditions of the global lockdown required existing businesses to pivot in order to remain viable. As a result, the period between April and July saw 85,000 UK businesses launch online stores or join online marketplaces. Many of these SMBs thrived during the pandemic as their adoption of ecommerce solutions coincided with a rapid increase in online sales, accelerating e-commerce growth by five years.

 

With the pandemic shifting the primary channel of trade online, gaining access to ecommerce and point of sale data is now crucial for financial service providers. The mutual benefits of doing so are multifaceted. For instance, commerce data can be used by lenders in particular to improve underwriting processes and credit decisioning. Small businesses will therefore benefit from a faster and fairer service which goes beyond traditional methods of credit scoring to consider their performance from multiple data sources in real-time.

 

This cultural shift towards enhanced digitisation and the growing importance of ecommerce will likely have a lasting impact on the way we think about the financial health of small businesses. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, financial service providers will need to replace siloed data with a connected ecosystem of unified financial data sources.


This article was written by Pete Lord, CEO and Co-Founder at Codat. Codat lets banks and fintechs plug into their small businesses and the software they use, giving them seamless access to real time customer data. Codat is building an ecosystem of connected datasets that handle the heavy lifting of integrations, leaving providers free to focus on improving their offerings for small businesses.


Photo by BedBible

On-Land Payment Infrastructure for Rapid Growth

A strong infrastructure is a foundation for every sustainable financial business. The payment acceptance space is massively regulated by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) and payment schemes (VISA, Mastercard, AMEX, etc.). At Paymob, we decided to take over a heavy part of the payment space – backend infrastructure. We are a software development company focused on b2b enterprise solutions. For the last ten years, Paymob Group managed to develop a proprietary infrastructure for on-land payments, professionally called EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer at Point-of-Sale). We exist to help other fintech and banking initiatives to launch rapidly and grow fast with unbeatably scalable Paymob’s technologies under the hood.
The solution we have got covers the whole card-present payment flow, starting from a till delivering the transaction to the schemes. The bespoke payment interfaces include either a traditional card machine or smart Android-based smart POS terminal or even our in-house developed mobile application that turns a smartphone into a contactless payment terminal. Our core innovation is server-based software that sits between a payment terminal and processors. The core might be an independent payment processing solution as well as an extension of any existing banking infrastructure with hassle-free integration to the latter. Paymob offers a full white-label technology to banks and other fintech businesses. Sberbank, one of the biggest acquiring banks on the planet, is our client. Number one and number three biggest banks in Kazakhstan are our customers among tens of others. In total, the solution is in use by 27 banks in 9 countries around the globe. The tech serves almost a half million of traditional card machines and smart POS terminals.
Paymob has to offer a proprietary EFTPOS system cloud version or in-house deployment. The system might be easily white-labelled, and it includes a TMS (Terminal Management System), Merchant Portal, Payment Switch and other essential functionality. Let me dig in details into a term the Payment Switch. This is a crucial component when a single payment terminal via the Paymob EFTPOS system may be connected to several processing centres at the same time. Depends on which card is presented at the terminal (domestic or international, business or individual, credit or debit) the Payment Switch knows exact transaction fees at every processing centre (bank acquirer) it connected with to navigate the transaction to the cheapest provider to save the cost of the transaction. As well, this feature means an opportunity to connect to national or particular payment systems like some regional QR or bar-code payment systems.
The industry-disruptive piece of our solution is Paymob’s core EFTPOS system. Traditionally a card machine connects directly to a processing centre. Meaning each piece of data will be delayed and sometimes even not accessible at all by stakeholders. Instead, at Paymob, we embedded our core tech in-between of the terminal and processing centre. It puts us at a position to control and route every transaction without breaking the industry regulations. At the same time, our disruptive attitude put us in a position to introduce even more advanced approach. Actual stage of software penetration and almost unlimited possibilities made us able to establish a far beyond idea of an ecosystem where payment acceptance is just one out of hundreds of different features on the same payment terminal. Direct integration with accounting solutions and different ePOS till systems for immediate reconciliation might be done via Paymob’s powerful API engine. Paymob’s Terminal today accepts almost all available payment types. Every payment interface we offer is an access point to a variety of added-value services and provides a full marketplace of other applications.
Good examples of these applications might be a few cases. Taxi ordering app on the same smart terminal may be used at a restaurant to order a taxi for guests. In this case, the taxi service pays a commission to the restaurant and terminal provider. Proper insurance policies might be offered at a bicycle store to its clients, when, again, the insurance provider pays a premium to the shop and the terminal provider. Virtual ATM for the cash-ins and outs, money transfer services, selling or buying cryptocurrencies are other applications to be easily deployed on the terminals. These are only use cases on a surface to be considered as added value services within Paymob’s Ecosystem philosophy.
The latest achievement worth to mention is the most advanced payment interface called Soft POS (Software Point-of-Sale) or Tap To Phone. This is an Android mobile application that turns almost any modern smartphone into a contactless payment terminal. We spent years and a vast volume of resources to certify our in-house developed technology at major payment schemes. Today Paymob is ready to supply the solution on a global scale as an approved vendor. The technology is cutting-edge and disruptive. It drives emerging markets and micro-preneurial economies towards cashless payments. It introduces a zero-cost and extremely rapid process for new merchants onboarding. It revolutionises the whole payment acceptance industry.
We believe in our invention to a degree that we chose one of the most advanced and competitive financial markets in the world, the UK, to launch own payment company and win local businesses. Recently, we obtained a payment institution license from the regulatory authority and going to introduce a whole range of our technologies directly to UK merchants.

Leadership Team Developments for FinTech Scotland

FinTech Scotland is today announcing a number of leadership team developments as it looks to build on the progress made over the last couple of years in developing the fintech community and cluster in Scotland

From November, Stephen Ingledew will become executive chair of FinTech Scotland after leading the body as chief executive from its initial formation in January 2018.

Stephen will remain very much involved with the strategic leadership of FinTech Scotland and the move to executive chair will enable the body to develop further the leadership team as it looks to build on the impact to date as a cluster management body.

David Ferguson, the current non-executive chair of FinTech Scotland, will step down from the role which he has held for over two years. David will continue to actively support FinTech Scotland move into its next phase.

Over the coming months, FinTech Scotland will commence the process of appointing a new chief executive to take over from Stephen and it anticipates being in a position to complete the process by the end of the year.

In the interim , from early November Nicola Anderson, the current strategic development director of FinTech Scotland, will take on the role of acting chief executive.

Nicola has been on full time secondment with FinTech Scotland from the Financial Conduct Authority for two years and has played a significant role with Stephen, Mickael Paris and Shery Johnston in supporting the fintech SME community and the rapid progress of fintech initiatives.

In addition, to his role of executive chairman for FinTech Scotland, Stephen will take on a part time secondment to Scottish Enterprise as an interim director for six months from November.

Stephen will report to Linda Hanna, Managing Director of Scottish Enterprise, and will contribute to the development of future strategic opportunities to support economic recovery.

In addition, Stephen has recently been appointed to the newly formed UK Government Innovation Expert Group set up to advise on driving productivity through innovation. https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/innovation-expert-group

Commenting on the leadership announcements, Stephen Ingledew said

“It has been a privilege to lead FinTech Scotland and deliver significant milestones across the fintech cluster. This is the right time to further strengthen further the leadership team.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank David for his valuable leadership as chair as well as the fintech community and strategic partners whose ongoing collaboration to date has made the progress possible.

I look forward to working with the Scottish Enterprise team to accelerate and shape strategic programmes, sharing my experience of developing clusters to drive inclusive innovation and economic opportunities”.

David Ferguson, the chief executive of Nucleus Financial said,

“It’s been hugely interesting seeing FinTech Scotland come into being and to see Stephen do such a great job of generating momentum over the last couple of years. I’m grateful to everyone who has joined in and helped carry us to the point where things are so well set up for the next phase”

Calling all Internal Auditors working in the Fintech environment

Calling all Internal Auditors working in the Fintech environment”¦”¦.

For those that don’t know me, please allow me the opportunity to introduce myself. I have worked in and around Internal Audit for more years than I care to admit and have recently started a new adventure as Head of Internal Audit for Modulr Finance based in Edinburgh.

Having moved into a fintech organisation I find myself wondering:  “how can I adapt, evolve and innovate the approach to fintech Audit to best meet (perhaps exceed?) the needs of a relatively new and growing fintech industry”?

Over my years of experience, I have (too often) been faced with the negative stigma which can come with our profession.  On hearing the words Internal Audit, stakeholders can automatically jump to the old stereotyped assumptions assuming that we prevent innovation and entrepreneurial spirit and struggle to respond to the changes required in such a dynamic and fast evolving industry. Like many of my colleagues and peers, I am committed to banishing this perception and ensuring that the profession continues to build on and evolve approaches which remain robust and sustainable, but can keep pace with and best add value in such a newly evolving, fast paced, dynamic and exciting sector.

How can we make sure we (as a profession) move with the times displaying the agility, flexibility and creativeness required to satisfy the appetite of such a new industry and its many stakeholders? It can be a daunting thought, and one I am sure I’m not alone with!

My belief is that Internal Auditors in fintech have a unique opportunity to help shape the future of fintech, but to do so require a tailored combination of business audit, IT Audit, project management skills blended, a good dose of commercial judgement together with refined and tailored approaches to realise this. Part of the key to our success is collaboration, and with this in mind, I take much pleasure in announcing a collaboration between FinTech Scotland, and the IIA:  The FinTech Audit Forum – intended to allow those working within Internal Audit in the Fintech industry to network, share ideas, discus hot topic and tailor their approach.

If you work in fintech, either in Internal Audit, or have a vested interest in this initiative and would benefit from:

  • knowledge sharing and asking questions with peers
  • hearing shared experiences, views, and responses
  • industry insight
  • Audit Committee perspectives
  • A network of Internal Auditors working within fintech
  • Discussion and debate of current/ emerging issues, hot topics, obstacles, changes, regulation etc
  • Hearing of proposed/bespoke approaches aimed at the FinTech Internal Audit community and stakeholders

then please let me know and I would be delighted to include you in the FinTech Audit Forum. Our first meeting is on Wednesday 28th of October between 2pm and 3pm. This will be a vitual meeting and we’ll be delighted to see you there.


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