Skip to main content

£9m investment for Scottish fintech Modulr

Edinburgh based fintech, Modulr, just announced a £9 million investment from PayPal Ventures. This fresh investment will help the company develop new products, recruit and reach new clients.  

Modulr let companies easily implement new payment products and services within their customer journey. The fintech provides a full stack Payments as a Service API, whilst taking care of the complexities and regulatory overhead. Modulr has a direct access to the 

Modulr works with platforms that serve small and medium-sized businesses. This year has been rich in news for the company with the onboarding of new customers despite problems caused by COVID-19. Modulr connected to the Back scheme, the Faster Payments scheme, Visa and Mastercard.

“This investment marks an important milestone for Modulr’s modern payments infrastructure. Modulr lowers the barriers to bringing payments into a platform, creating endless new possibilities for our customers while allowing them to focus on their core competencies. The investment from PayPal Ventures enhances our ability to execute on that vision.”

Myles Stephenson, CEO of Modulr

“More digital businesses are looking to incorporate payments into their existing user experience but either don’t have the expertise or the resources. Modulr is well-positioned to be an enabler of this trend and will undoubtably expand end-users’ access to fast, reliable and secure financial services. We look forward to working with Modulr as it helps to powers the next generation of digital businesses.” 

Anil Hansjee, partner at PayPal Ventures

In total,  Modulr has raised £63.3 million including investment from PayPal Ventures, Highland Europe, Frog Capital, Blenheim Chalcot and a £10m grant from the Capability and Innovation Fund.  

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

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.

Fintechs Worldline and BRIDGE announce partnership

Worldline and Scottish fintech Bridge announced today a technology partnership. BRIDGE will integrate its eCommerce payment consolidation and control features into Worldline’s UK rail eCommerce platform.

Worldline’s eCommerce platform is a very innovative customer-facing service adopted by major transport providers. It helps people along the full booking process from journey planning to payment.

Thanks to this partnership, Worldline’s customers will be able to take control of the end-to-end payments experience whilst connecting transactions with other business processes.

James Bain, CEO, Worldline UK & Ireland, said,

“We believe in collaboration for innovation, ensuring that, through our partnerships, we always have the most inventive technologies built into our solutions. Working with BRIDGE’s specialist strength in payments integration and control means that we will be quicker in bringing a more agile and resilient payment ecosystem offering to our customers. It aligns with the Worldline vision of payments for a trusted world.”

Mobility-as-a-service’ is a growing trend and with it appears the need for a on one-stop platforms to deliver convenience, comfort and flexibility. This partnership ensures that Worldline is equipped to deliver such a platform.

Brian Coburn, CEO at BRIDGE, said,

“For transport companies and their customers, the ticketing system is so much more than a permit to travel ”“ it’s a key part of the customer journey. Given its influence on trust and satisfaction, we see payments as an engine for opportunity and differentiation today and into the future. Through our partnership with Worldline, we look forward to seeing our innovation at work within a world-class transport eCommerce system and showcasing its impact on a frictionless customer experience.”

BRIDGE is a new payment orchestration service, offering a single horizontal integration layer across the retailer’s payment system that manages, consolidates and controls multiple payment offerings, as well as providing data reporting and analytics, and the ability to deploy and test new innovations at speed.

Tesco Bank introduces new payment technology

FinTech Scotland’s strategic partner Tesco Bank just introduced a new technology, enabling 2.6 million credit card customers to manage and pay their balance in a much easier way.

The new functionality, called Pay by Bank’ is powered by Mastercard’s Open Banking Connect™ service, a service that allows for payments to be made directly from current account via electronic payment services.

Tesco Bank is the first in the UK to use Open Banking in this manner.

For customers it means they don’t need to use a debit card, can see their current account and their credit card balance in the same place whilst benefiting from added security.

The new technology release is being staggered and all customers should have access to it in the next few weeks.

Sigga Sigurdardottir, Chief Customer Officer, Tesco Bank, said:

“Tesco Bank’s purpose is to help Tesco shoppers manage their money a little better every day.  The introduction of Pay by Bank helps us do that for 2.6 million of our credit card customers, giving them a simple and secure way of paying their credit card, and greater control of their finances.

“We are particularly pleased to be the first UK bank to make this technology available for credit card customers. We expect this functionality to be widespread in the market in the coming years.

“This is a great example of the strength that our partnership with Mastercard brings to our credit card offering.”

Kelly Devine, Division President for Mastercard UK and Ireland, said:

“Bringing more simple, safe and convenient ways for people to pay is at the very heart of our Open Banking solutions. With this enhancement, Tesco Bank customers will have greater flexibility to make payments against card balances than ever, aiding budgeting and placing them in full control of their finances.”

*This is subject to your bank’s capability

New firm bringing fintech to pubs

Edinburgh start-up pour launched with venues across Scotland in August, their aim; to simplify the cluttered order and pay market that Covid-19 helped create.

Amidst the rapid technology adoption in the hospitality industry, consumer’s needs are being ignored. Patrons are expected to download venue specific apps and create accounts for every place that they visit, something they will not tolerate in the long run.

 

What is Pour?

Founded by Scottish entrepreneurs Ian Martin and Paul Kirkland, Pour is an online app platform that enables venues to upload and edit their menus, and share them directly with their customers across social media, their website, offline channels, and on pour.

Customers can order and pay through one web app, for table service or takeaway collection in any participating venue. No app download, no account required, just the food and drinks they came for.

 

Says Ian Martin, Co-Founder of pour:

“We started pour to simplify the consumer’s experience with online order & pay, bringing table & takeaway ordering together on to one platform that businesses of all sizes can afford to join. The platform makes the ordering process contact free, but it’s the reduction in administration time, increase in rate of sale, and access to a broad marketing platform where the true value of pour lies.”

 

Find out More

Find out more about the platform by visiting  https://www.pourit.co.uk or drop the team an email hello@pourit.co.uk

Fintech Previse, finalist in Innovator of the Year Awards

Fintech Previse announced today that they have been named a finalist in The Spectator’s Economic Innovator of the Year Awards. The awards recognises the companies that will rewrite the rules and help rebuild the economy in 2020.

This is a very prestigious award and the winners will be announced after digital presentations made today by the various businesses to the judges.

Paul Christensen, CEO of Previse, said:

“Being named a finalist for Economic Innovator of the Year by The Spectator is a testament to the team at Previse, who have been working day-in-day-out during the pandemic to ensure that SMEs get the support that they need. This year, we have been accredited as a CBILS lender, and our £2.5 million grant from the BCR to accelerate growth, along with the partnership with the FSB, has been an exciting new chapter in our story. However, the hardest work is yet to come as the global economy must innovate its way out of a depression unapparelled in modern economic history. What we are building here goes beyond just a great product: we’re creating a movement that ensures that every SME has the option of instant payment whenever they issue an invoice.”

Zumo launches crowdfunding campaign via Seedrs

This article was written by Nick Jones, CEO at Zumo. Fintech Scotland doesn’t give financial advice and only help Scottish fintech firms with relaying their messages. As with all investment your capital is at risk.

Approved by Seedrs.

We’re delighted to announce that we’re working with Seedrs on our crowdfunding campaign.

This is an exciting investment opportunity and we’ve already had a lot of interest from investors from all walks of life. We’d love it if you could join us for this limited opportunity to own a piece of Zumo!

You can access the pre-registration page here.

 

Here’s a recap of the opportunity:

Our digital wallet has already gained significant recognition in the form of funding, user feedback and extensive press coverage in the UK. Further funding will enable us to expand our marketing efforts to make Zumo available to everyone, everywhere and to start rolling out our B2B offerings – the ZumoKit software development kit and our payments platform, ZumoPay.

Our main source of revenue is our in-app currency exchange. We charge users 0.5% for any exchange transaction, across all currencies available within the Zumo wallet. This makes us one of the most cost-effective as well as secure ways to buy and sell cryptocurrency.

Our convertible debit card, which is planned for launch next month, will allow users to make card payments in both cryptocurrency and GBP. As time goes on, we’ll be adding more traditional and cryptocurrency options.

If you know of anyone else that might be interested, we would appreciate it if you could share the link.

 

Zumo: Smart Money for Everyone

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUuyI40dxDE&feature=youtu.be

 

Scotcoin announces the launch of its new ERC20 token

Scotcoin’s new token uses the Ethereum blockchain, the second largest distributed ledger network in the world by market capitalisation after Bitcoin. Adoption and use of the Ethereum blockchain assures that Scotcoin remains a bona fide distributed ledger cryptocurrency whose future sustainability is not in the hands of a few.

Temple Melville, CEO of The Scotcoin Project CIC said:

“I am delighted that we have finally reached this milestone in the evolution of Scotcoin. We have worked hard to meet the condition laid down by our stakeholders and funders that the durability and sustainability of the token would never be in the hands of the few. Use of the Ethereum blockchain assures that that objective is met”.

The Scotcoin Project is a not for profit community interest company that seeks to educate and inform the public on digital currencies and blockchain technology. It occupies the ethical space and is developing a program of initiatives designed to help improve the personal and financial prospects of those with the fewest opportunities afforded by the current economic landscape.

Moving to an ERC20 token means that our coin is basically acceptable on any exchange, and in fact we will be having an IEO (Initial Exchange Offer) over the next year. The move will enable us to engage with nearly everyone who has an interest in digital currencies. As an aside, digital currencies are most definitely now an asset class but are also a hedge against the massive quantitative easing that has taken place world-wiide during the Corvid-19 pandemic. We are already seeing inflation creeping into our daily lives in contrast to the mildly deflationary effect of digital and crypto currencies.

For further information please contact Temple Melville on temple@scotcoinproject.com

Paul Forrest joins Blockchain Technology Partners

Scottish fintech Blockchain Technology Partners (BTP), just announced it had appointed Paul Forrest as its first chairman.

Paul has been advising many FTSE 100 and Global 500 businesses in the past 25 years including Ford Motor Company, Wal-Mart, Virgin Galactic and AkzoNobel. Paul is also on the board of Glasgow based recruitment firm MBN solutions and is involved in the Virgin Startup Programme as a mentor. Always interested in blockchain he founded the IdeaGist Blockchain Incubator.

 

Duncan Johnston-Watt, CEO & Co-founder of BTP said: “Paul understands the potential for growth in enterprise blockchain adoption, having been involved in this space for several years and at the cutting edge of successive waves of innovative enterprise technologies throughout his career. We are delighted Paul has decided to take up this role and help us scale the business and lay the groundwork for future investment.”

 

Paul Forrest said: “I am excited to be joining BTP at a pivotal point in their journey. Their management team has demonstrated an ability to develop a scalable product and close early enterprise deals. Given the present circumstances I was particularly impressed by their ability to secure a contract with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to deliver their innovative blockchain-based securities lending platform.”

 

Paul was involved in BTP’s latest angel funding round which was led by Aberdeen Asset Management co-founder Martin Gilbert and former deputy Andrew Laing.