Day: 27 April 2023

Discover how to increase your fintech speed-to-market with a BIN Sponsorship solution that supports you during regulation and beyond.

For fintech startups or businesses with financial services, starting a payments and FX journey can come with unique challenges. With an EU market valued at over €430 billion alone, becoming operational in the fintech space is crucial to building a strong customer base.

One of the more laborious processes that is essential for any fintech or financial service business in the digital space is the establishment of the company as a regulated Electronic Money Institution (EMI).

Establishing a business as an EMI is critical to allow companies to issue and receive electronic payments (e-payments) from consumers or businesses, in addition to becoming an independent facilitator for Payments and FX. With a process that is often drawn out over several months, businesses are vulnerable to missing valuable trading time.

But is there a way to start trading without EMI-regulated status? B4B Payments can get your Payments and FX services to market ahead of the competition, as well as the advantage of adding embedded cards to your business plan.

Payments and FX – the tools for scalability

Speed-to-market is critical for all businesses to accelerate revenue. But it’s just as important for fintech companies in their infancy if they want to build a platform for scalable growth. The quickest route to market is leveraging Payments and FX from third-party companies, like B4B Payments, allowing companies to trade quickly and efficiently.

Securing investment is critical for business growth. While investors may believe in an idea in principle, seeing it in action and being able to analyse performance data can be the key to determining the pen-to-paper investment that fintechs need to grow.

Investment in the fintech space peaked in recent years, and decreased by 30% in 2022 from $130 billion to $96 billion. With this decline, we are starting to see signs of impending economic difficulties. With a crisis on the horizon, having a serviceable and active product in the market could be a huge differentiator as the investment gatekeepers become more critical of their spending.

B4B Payments offer competitive payment and FX services, offering companies the chance to make a head start on the competition. With B4B Payments, companies are able to make and receive high volumes of transactions in 25 currencies through SEPA, Faster Payments, CHAPS, USD ACH, DKK Intraday, and SWIFT.

The key to successful scalability is the preparedness of a company to adapt to changing consumer needs and market conditions. To facilitate this it’s crucial that products and services are made available cross border as soon as possible.

Using B4B Payments low-cost FX, companies looking to make the jump overseas can do so for a reduced up-front cost. With transparent rates for incoming and outgoing payments, companies can offer their services in up to 25 currencies at a competitive FX rate.

The Challenges of EMI Licensing and Regulation

Whether a business is applying to become a small EMI (not generating more than €5 million) before registration or a fully authorised EMI (over €5 million), they are required to comply with specific regulations.

One of the biggest barriers to product entry into the market is the process of becoming a licensed e-money issuer through EMI Regulation. Registering as an EMI allows fintech companies to issue e-payments legally, often followed by acquiring a card scheme membership. This, sometimes laborious process, stalls the potential for fintech and financial services to push their product to market quickly in both domestic and international markets.

Regulations such as Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds Regulations 2017, as well as providing a level of detail on a businesses’ operations, such as place of business, central management and control, balance sheets, forecasts, and more.

While this process is necessary for fintech and financial service companies that want to grow, there is a way to get to market while applying to become a regulated EMI: BIN Sponsorship.

BIN Sponsorship 2.0 and embedded cards as a solution

BIN Sponsorship is a solution that has been on the market for a short time. It helps fintechs and financial services leverage EMI-regulated businesses to offer their services faster.

B4B Payments offers payment services to businesses across sectors, and we have taken BIN Sponsorship to the next level, helping non-regulated EMIs to get their products to market as quickly as possible, as well as offering support and solutions to companies that are at later stages of their business journey.

For non-regulated EMI’s, BIN Sponsorship 2.0 offers authorisation by the FCA and the Bank of Lithuania, allowing businesses to provide payment and card services across the UK and the EU, as well as the opportunity to leverage our licences and Mastercard Principal Member status.

Using B4B Payments as a BIN Sponsor, businesses have the ability to trade in that all-important test-and-learn phase of early business. What’s more, once an e-money licence or regulated EMI status has been acquired, businesses can continue to outsource their scheme management, settlement, and collateral requirements to us. Once a full card scheme membership is obtained, we can continue to support it by safeguarding accounts and payments. 

With virtual payment critical on fintech services – like online trading platforms – embedding them into bespoke platforms is the logical next step in scalability. Embedded services can help enhance customer experience with directly integrated services, drive growth through customer engagement and retention, and are easily set up through merchant accounts and instant payment confirmation.

At B4B Payments, we also offer embedded financial services to enrich business propositions post-regulation. With these services, businesses can integrate payments, cards and virtual account solutions directly into their platform through a single API.

See how others have partnered with us
to go to the market ahead of the competition.

Connecting with your business

Here at B4B Payments, we have over 18 years of experience in payment innovations.

Our goal is to keep our clients one step ahead of their competitors and to ensure that they can keep their teams happy by facilitating fast and transparent global transactions.

Book a demo with us now to learn more about payments, FX and BIN Sponsorship, and discover whether B4B Payments can help optimise your business journey.

Fast and secure payments & payouts are a must-have for B2B and B2C businesses alike – discover how B4B can supercharge your business or PISP.

There are two common challenges throughout industries across the globe: payments and payouts. From businesses in tourism looking for quick payments, payout services to customers, or Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs) looking to facilitate fast payments for their partners, and even corporate businesses looking to distribute their expense networks across the globe, speed and security is essential.

For small businesses alone, 30% reported late payments problems are due to poor practices. However, there are a myriad of ways businesses can speed up their payment services. Depending on the nature of the challenges, ways to improve payment speed can include:

• The deployment of an instant payment service
• Issuing card services
• Supercharging Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs) for instant confirmations

Why speed and security is important

Building a reputation as a company that pays out quickly and securely is worth its weight in gold. Whether you’re a gaming business paying out winnings to your customer base, an online retailer providing refunds for your customers, or a travel company providing stranded passenger payouts, it’s important to be faster than your market competitors, or your customers will start looking elsewhere.

Slow, unsecure payments and payouts and other financial risks can drastically impact business reputations, which Deloitte reports as one of the biggest strategic challenges companies face. Speeding up and tightening processes can remove the risk of holding up the supply chain for B2B transactions, or dragging down review and approval ratings through data protection breaches or delayed payouts.

It’s not only your reputation that can be on the line, too. Fintech Global claims that a third of UK consumers are spending less in online transactions because payouts are taking too long to reach their bank, as well as 52% saying they’re unlikely to do business with the same company if payouts are taking too long to complete. While this may not have a great enough impact to dampen reputation, it can slow down business growth at the first hurdle.

But, how can businesses tackle this potential pitfall while still offering secure payments and payouts to their customers and other businesses?

Fast, secure payments and payouts

The easiest way to secure fast payouts is by offering physical and virtual cards to your customers. Card services like these allow the transfer of funds instantaneously, enabling consumers to make transactions and check their balances as quickly as possible.

Debit card usage is becoming increasingly popular as we head towards a cashless world. In the UK, for example, debit card usage rose by 8.1% in 2022, with over 2.1 million transactions occurring in November alone.

B4B Payments offer these services, allowing businesses to distribute funds, as well as consumers to spend worldwide. Providing fast and secure payouts is a mark of a reliable and reputable brand, and with B4B Payments, businesses are able to advertise the fact that they have the ability to distribute these services through the use of branded cards. This means companies can distribute payment services on behalf of B4B Payments.

Branded cards are designed by businesses, for a business’s customers, allowing them to place marketing collateral onto each card, in the form of a logo or business name – which can be an easy way to spread the word as cards begin to circulate to customers or partners across the globe.

Virtual and physical cards are a great way of securing payments too, especially in the world of corporate expenditure. They allow companies to track and record business payments through one dedicated online platform, as well as pre-load and top-up cards for on-the-go expenses like travel, events, and more.

Facilitate quicker payments and payouts as a PISP

But what about the intermediaries? with PISPs initiating payments or payouts on behalf of businesses like fintech and financial services, it’s important to be able to provide a fast and efficient service for your merchants and partners to ensure continued business.

With B4B Payments’ Reconciliation for Open Banking service, PISPs can use their own VIBAN infrastructure as a merchant account. This offers merchants the ability to make fast and secure payments in 25 currencies, including SEPA, FPS, USD, ACH, and SWIFT.

Our services integrate directly into bespoke PISP interfaces through the B4B Payments API, or allow selected merchants access to our digital platform.

Making payments fast and secure is the name of the game for PISPs, and our confirmation and reconciliation services do just that. With instant notifications of funds received, PISPs are able to improve relationships and maintain integrity and trust with your merchants through domestic rails in the UK and EU.

For established PISPs or new-to-market, B4B Payments is able to offer support, allowing those businesses to leverage our own e-money licences to launch your products, and offer additional settlement and safeguarding services once PI authorisation is granted.

Connecting with your business

Here at B4B Payments, we have over 15 years of experience in developing safe and secure payments and payouts for businesses.

Our goal is to keep our clients one step ahead of their competitors and to ensure that they can keep their teams happy by facilitating fast and transparent global transactions.

Book a demo with us now to learn more about our payment and payout solutions, as well as our Reconciliation for Open Banking service that we offer for PISPs.