Terminal V goes cashless with Event Genius Pay
Terminal V, Scotland’s largest electronic music event brand, has joined an ever-growing list and decided to go cashless with Event Genius.
All five of the brand’s UK events are going cashless with Event Genius – this includes four 5000 capacity summer events featuring the most popular names in techno, like Patrick Topping, Floorplan, Adam Beyer and Ben Klock.
Even after the festival taking place in summer, the flagship Terminal V Halloween festival will deploy egPay cashless technology over its two days run on the 30th-31st, with 40,000 fans attending.
Prior to the events, ticket holders can create an online account to pre-purchase credits as a way of replacing cash across the festival sites so that when it comes to attending the festival, the credits are loaded onto an RFID enabled wristband that can be received in exchange for their ticket. With a quick tap, they can use this system to pay for food, drink and more.
What happens when they run out of credits? Fans can top-up credits on-site whenever they run low, and can even reclaim any unspent credits once the event is finished.
Not only will this payment method reduce fan to staff contact points, making it safer, but it will speed up transactions by up to 80%.
Speaking about the partnership, Reshad Hossenally, Event Genius Founder and Festicket CSO commented: “egPay offers a win-win scenario for Terminal V’s fans and organisers. Without having to worry about carrying money or wasting time waiting in line to be served, Terminal V attendees can enjoy more of the events while the Terminal V team can expect a reduction in cash handling, fan to staff contact points and potential virus transmission, as well as a significant boost to their revenues.”
“This will also be our first egPay roll out in Scotland, so we’re extra excited to meet the team, get onsite and help deliver some great events.”
Survey – FinTech Scotland Research & Innovation roadmap
Whitecap Consulting is supporting FinTech Scotland in the development of a ten-year research and innovation roadmap to support the growth of Scotland’s digital economy and the wider development of FinTech innovation across the UK.
This roadmap will build on the work of FinTech Scotland to date, and inform priority focus research themes and the unmet needs of consumers, businesses and society.
This survey will help us identify appropriate opportunities for cross-sector enablement of FinTech innovations to achieve the UK’s overall industrial strategy.
Take the survey
Thank you for your participation. Any answers you give in this online survey may be attributed to individuals or organisations within the report, however only with your prior approval.
Paysend Sets Sights on Global Expansion
Paysend, the international payments platform, has announced a $125m Series B funding round, which will help contribute to funding its global expansion plans.
“This $125m B Round investment will allow us to take our platform to the next stage, innovating and expanding geographically to target the $133tn opportunity in cross-border payment flows,” Ronnie Millar, CEO of Paysend said.
“Paysend’s vision is to develop the next generation integrated global payment ecosystem for consumers and SMEs. Our innovative technology is connecting 12bn cards worldwide to pay and send instantly anywhere, anyhow and any currency ”“ we call this Money for the Future.”
Led by One Peak, the funding round had additional input from Infravia Growth Capital, Hermes GPE Innovation Fund and existing Silicon Valley-based investor Plug and Play.
“There remain significant barriers to entry for consumers and SMEs to pay and send money globally; our platform aims to democratise the service by providing a one-stop-shop to pay and send money to families, suppliers, employees and partners in any currency anywhere in the world at a significantly reduced cost,” Millar went on.
It’s Paysend’s global network of banks, international and local payment systems that allows its customers to send money online from any location in any currency.
“We are excited by Paysend’s enormous growth potential in a massive market, benefiting from a rapid acceleration in the adoption of digital payments,” Humbert de Liedekerke, Managing Partner at One Peak, added.
“In particular, we are seeing strong opportunities as Paysend moves beyond consumers to serve business customers and expands its international footprint to address a growing need for fast, easy and low-cost cross border digital payments.”
In the past four years, the payments fintech has grown to more than 3.7 million consumers across 60 countries.
Innovations in the world of payments
Season 1, episode 5
Listen to the full episode here.
The world of payment is being disrupted like never before, accelerated, in part, by the recent economic and societal changed imposed by COVID19.
Contactless payments, rise in online transactions coupled with increased concerns around fraud and cybersecurity mean that the sector is undergoing some unprecedented changes.
In this episode we explore what those changes mean in terms of innovation and from a regulation perspective with 3 fantastic guests:
Genevieve Marjoribanks, Head of Policy and ExCo member at Payment Systems Regulator
Myles Stephenson, Chief Executive at Modulr
Brian Coburn, CEO at Br-dge
Crypto Wallet and Zumo Launches B2B Offering
Zumo, the crypto wallet and payments Fintech, has announced its Zumokit; crypto as a service platform.
This new B2B product targets Fintechs and other financial institutions that aim to compliantly offer cryptocurrencies to meet the demand of customers to access digital assets.
ZumoKit is a blockchain agnostic, thus enabling companies to connect to any blockchain by adopting any cryptocurrency or using their own stablecoin. This provides businesses to integrate a digital currency, allowing their customers to buy and sell digital currencies as an investment.
Commercial Director at Zumo, Eddie Robb, states that this gives businesses the tools necessary to build cryptocurrency solutions into their platforms, saving them thousands of hours of work.
“We’re working with a number of savings, remittance, and share trading apps to allow them to offer crypto to their customers. ZumoKit is a ready-to-roll solution for fintech companies and other financial institutions that want to bring the benefits of crypto to their customers. It’s a plug and play product that makes it easy to get going with crypto in a safe, secure and compliant way.”
Robb added that such a solution can be beneficial to companies, as it allows them to provide customers with the ability to trade crytocurrencies whilst also shielding the wider business from the ups and downs of the markets.
Founded in Edinburgh in 2018 by Nick Jones and Paul Roach, Zumo is available for download on both iOS and Android app stores.
Cryptocurrency, towards global adoption?
Season 1, episode 4
Listen to the full episode here.
Cryptocurrencies are regularly featured in the press. Sometimes it’s about Bitcoin reaching a new high, sometimes about a new ICO launching. More recently we learnt that tech giant Elon Musk had bought into the digital currency movement.
There have been many debates since Bitcoin launched in 2008. There are those who believe crypto is just a temporary craze and those who believe it’s the future of money.
With global tech giants launching their own coins and new crypto reaching new highs, we discussed whether now was the start of global crypto adoption.
For our fourth podcast we’re bringing industry experts together to discuss the topic and listen to their views on the future of cryptocurrency.
Guests:
Temple Melvillle, Director at The Scotcoin Project
Nick Jones, CEO and co-founder at Zumo
Zion Schum, Founder and CEO at Leutheria
Tap on Phone Payments – the Future of Contactless.
The way we pay for products and services has evolved drastically over the past decade, from the simple chip and pin to the modern payment systems we know today. Which allows any individual with a smartphone to make a transaction electronically and virtually, within seconds without any physical money changing hands.
While we may feel as though we are at the forefront of digital payments, reaching the pinnacle of its modern advances. Payment systems are currently undergoing transformational changes, by a few in-the-know’ companies, pushing these boundaries and proving there is more than one way for a business to accept frontline payments.
Enter the Paymob app, transforming the ordinary smartphone into a contactless card reading terminal. Making it easy for businesses across a variety of sectors, from hospitality to transportation, to accept cashless payments quickly and securely in-store, over the phone, or on the move anywhere in the world.
With many consumers enjoying the ease and convenience of making contactless payments delivered through their Apple, Samsung and Goodge devices, the same level of convenience has not been established for business owners accepting payments, with many still using expensive dedicated hardware.
We have been blown away by the demand for our technology. Having found ourselves at a crucial turning point in Paymob’s journey to enable payment acceptance, ushering in a new era of micropreneurs’ and the wider gig economy. Today, Paymob is currently exceeding what we as a startup are able to supply, which has led us to seek support, to maximize and achieve our growth potential and fulfill this staggering demand for our future thinking’ fintech.
In January Paymob became a proud member of the Techstars Accelerator programme, with our exceptional Paymob team pushing us both toward the finish line, and the Techstars Hub71 Virtual Demo Day. Our opportunity to pitch what we know to be the future of frontline payment acceptance technology.
We invite you to join us tomorrow, April 7th at 9:00AM to 10:30AM BST, as our CEO Kosta Du dives into our ethos and new product launch, the SoftPOS smartphone app. To attend the virtual event register here.
If you have any questions for our Paymob team, would like to discuss working together, or simply want to make an introduction, don’t hesitate to get in touch at welcome@paymobtech.com.
If you are interested in our product and would like to know more about who we are and what we are doing to level-up the POS market, visit our website for a quick breakdown of our tap-on-phone technology.
To keep up to date with our fintech advances, company updates and for helpful industry resources, feel free to connect with us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Paymob is now an FCA certified, VISA and Mastercard approved, licensed payment provider launching in the UK, EU, US, Canada, Scandinavia and beyond.
Global partnership for fintech Paysend and Mastercard
Scottish fintech Paysend just announced a strategic partnership with Mastercard.
The partnership will increase Paysend’s global reach and bring better outcomes for both businesses’ customers.
2021 is shaping to be a very successful year for Paysend after announcing they had reached 3 million customers in January as well as having experienced hypergrowth from the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic, since their technology enable customers to manage their money in a safe, secure, fast and low-cost way.
Thanks to this partnership will boost the new Paysend Global Account, combining its Global Transfer together with account/product services. It will also offer a platform for strategic expansion in order to increase the capacity for inter-regional transactions.
Ronald Millar, Co-Founder & CEO of Paysend said
“Our partnership with Mastercard will bring even more freedom to Paysend customers who want to hold, spend and send their money on a global scale. We will be working with Mastercard on collaborations programmes to bring the benefits of our multi-currency service to more people around the world, so they can spend freely and flexibly on their travels”.
Jason Lane, Executive Vice President Market Development Europe at Mastercard added:
“We are thrilled to be able to partner with Paysend. This partnership is an important milestone in delivering choice of payments, in particular in a cross-border environment, and allowing people to pay how they want, anywhere, anytime.”
Banks’ Responses to Embedded Finance and Banking
WRITTEN BY RISE, CREATED BY BARCLAYS
Rise, Barclays’ FinTech ecosystem, is the #HomeOfFinTech and publishes its regular thought-leadership report, Rise FinTech Insights. This edition focuses on Embedded Finance.
In this article, we explore what Embedded Finance might mean to incumbent banks. It’s an area that’s gaining a lot of traction in both B2C and B2C markets across many sectors. In payments alone, Embedded Finance 2020 revenues were $16.1 billion, but by 2025 they’re forecast to reach $140.8 billion[1].
Banking as a Service
Key enablers of Embedded Finance that impact banks greatly include Banking as a Service (BaaS). This is expected to drive great disruption as new BaaS providers’ and the more innovative banks create new and better infrastructure supporting not only the surge in new payment models and Point of Sale financing that is driving eCommerce but also completely redesigned digital journeys that extend beyond retail into non-financial sectors like healthcare, education, agriculture and music.
Those digital journeys will need to be underpinned by new services that must be always-on, reliable and performant at all times. This will often require a significant uplift to the current technical capabilities of the incumbent banks, which will have to deal with legacy systems that are decades-old and costly to adapt to new propositions. This is possibly why we see incumbents invest so heavily in digital-only propositions and in their tech stacks.
Cloud
Another key enabler is cloud computing and its on-demand and highly elastic and configurable capabilities. Disruptors in this space have varied pedigrees ”“ FinTechs, Big Tech, neobanks and incumbent banks are all leveraging the cloud’s potential to innovate faster at a lower cost and to support newer and better B2B and B2C use cases.
In the drive to take financial services to new heights using cloud technology, FinTech representation is, as you’d expect, healthy and has allowed some startups to scale fast. In the payments space, for example, Adyen and Stripe have built modern platforms designed from the ground-up with the cloud at their core. Traditional banks are keenly aware of the disruption to banking experiences brought by neobanks. They of course rely heavily on the cloud and may be able to leverage this core strength to embed payments and other financial features into third-party, web-based products more easily than many incumbents currently can.
APIs
Finally, let’s consider APIs. They’re what lets a bank extend its reach into the new digital journeys of Embedded Finance. Whether it’s a payment transaction at the end of your taxi ride or a request for an instant personal loan when you purchase a luxury item, there are numerous jobs-to-be-done that culminate in a banking transaction. Research tells us that users are reluctant to move to a different digital site to complete that transaction, and the behind-the-scenes operations of APIs support a better, seamless experience. It’s these frictionless experiences that are king in today’s digital world.
When it’s the cloud or APIs, the developer experience should be paramount to banks. After all, other companies’ developers will be the first consumers of any new service that’s created, and if they struggle with opaque processes, difficult integrations or non-intuitive interfaces, banks will lose the agility and scale that allow them to deliver great customer experiences. FinTech developers must be allowed to experiment easily with safe’ data and sandboxes because, only if they’re in place, will financial institutions be able to co-create value propositions at scale.
Thinking like a FinTech
Embedded Finance means that banks will be collaborating with nimble digital players ”“ quite possibly acting nimbler than banks are traditionally used to. You need to move fast to partner with some of the big retail and tech brands ”“ slow and cumbersome processes may present a challenge. This, in part, is why Barclays has signed the FinTech Pledge.
Ready to collaborate?
Can banks think like FinTechs? At Rise, created by Barclays, we like to think so. If you’re in FinTech and are as excited as we are by these developments, we’d love to hear your ideas and thoughts. Contact your closest Rise team in London, New York or Mumbai to discuss how we can collaborate.
Read more about Embedded Finance and BaaS in the Rise FinTech Insights report.
Visit Barclays API Exchange.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronshevlin/2020/08/03/ubers-departure-from-financial-services-a-speed-bump-on-the-path-to-embedded-finance/?sh=790efe967673#484180287673
Sustainably’s Subscription-Based Service for Good.
Scottish Fintech Sustainably has developed a subscription-based service which enables the opportunity for customers to automatically donate whenever they shop.
How does it work?
The fintech has created a method of philanthropy accessible for the everyday person with a busy life. Branded as ‘smart-giving’, the launch has two notable features.
- Round Ups, which uses open banking to micro-donate spare change.
- Monthly Happiness, which allows the user to donate monthly and see the immediate of said donation.
Individual users face no charge for utilising the service. Charities are offered a no donation, no fee service in exchange for a new income stream and anonymised supporter shopping trend data.
“We started with the idea of creating a product where doing good was effortless. We examined urban lifestyles. Every aspect of the app has been created to enable people to give in seamless ways, and see their impact.” Loral Quinn, Sustainably co-founder.
You choose a charity and connect your card in the app. Then you get impact points and levels to show the difference you’re making. Impact points will become a currency in the future for loyalty rewards from your employer and the retailers you shop at. Sustainably reward doing good so you get that do good, feel-good feeling.
How has it Evolved?
Sustainably is the brainchild of Loral Quinn and Eishel Quinn. They teamed up with Mark McLauchlan who was formerly head of technology architecture at RBS/NatWest. E-commerce has experienced accelerated growth during Covid19, with Sustainably reporting a 60% rise in organic growth in the past six months.
Our innovative giving tech is designed to make it easy to give, and track your impact without sharing your personal details so you can give on your own terms. Research shows that gen Z and millennials are the largest giving segment. “86% of Gen Z and millennials (the UK’s biggest givers) want to donate via mobile and see their impact. And while 50%+ of donations are still made in cash, we live in an increasingly cashless society. People want to give with privacy, transparency and control.” says Eishel Quinn, the other co-founder of Sustainably.’
With links to 17 banks, you can choose a cause and connect your bank account to the Sustainably app. You start making a difference as soon as you shop on your card/connected device. The app allows you to track your impact as well as pausing/modifying donations and setting donation limits. The minimum donation is £5 and supporters get instant impact updates showing the difference they’ve made when they donate.
“With Sustainably and our giving tech, we’ve set out to enable people to contribute towards something important everyday and see their impact, with their spare change. The majority of Sustainably users are 18-35 year olds and they want to buy from and work for companies who do good.” Notes Eishel Quinn who spearheaded the product development.
Sustainably currently support over forty good causes, ranging from removing plastic from oceans to teaching young girls how to code. And for 2021, any UK registered charity is able to sign up to Sustainably’s services.
How is it Changing Everyday Philanthropy?
The current landscape for giving is large but very fragmented. This ranges from sponsoring your friends, choosing causes for retailers to support or making regular donations to many different causes.
“We’re creating one place for all your giving, which manages your tax and tracks your impact.” says Quinn.
In addition, Sustainably never shares any of your personal data. You’re able to donate with the confidence that you won’t be contacted by any additional third-parties looking for further donations. In addition, with Covid19 cancelling so many fundraising events, Sustainably has been able to not only provide a new daily income stream from cashless transactions but has enabled charities to connect and engage with a younger demographic.
Sustainably is crowdfunding to get more users and charities and launch its B2B platform this year to enable brands to give to causes their customer and employees care about in a simple, connected way.