By 2030, the global fintech market is projected to reach circa $700 billion representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.3%, it’s clear that businesses and individuals alike are continuing the trend of using technology for their payments.

With the competition in the sector fiercer than ever, and only expected to grow, speed-to-market has become a crucial factor when it comes to establishing new startups in a crowded market.

While direct scheme memberships through the likes of VISA and Mastercard can often be a laborious, time consuming process requiring significant investment, there is a quicker alternative to card issuing. BIN Sponsorship bridges the gap for fintechs wishing to offer payment solutions to their customers straight out of the gates.

Read on to find out how BIN Sponsorship can benefit your fintech business, and how B4B Payments BIN Sponsorship 2.0 could give you the tailored support needed to get your product to market quickly.

What is BIN Sponsorship?

For fintech start-ups, BIN Sponsorship is a solution that allows them to connect to the card scheme network through an e-money organisation, like B4B Payments. This allows them to perform the operations of a financial institution, before becoming principal members of card issuers like Visa and Mastercard. Drastically speeding up product launches, it is the perfect way to to bypass long and arduous direct scheme applications, and get products to market ahead of the competition. With an industry saturated with over 27,000 startups worldwide, gaining a speed-to-market advantage can prove significant.

Here’s a breakdown of BIN Sponsorship…

A Banking Identification Number (BIN) references the four or six initial numbers on the front of a payment card and helps to identify the issuer of the card during the transaction, giving fintech companies the ability to make payments quickly and efficiently between accounts.

Sponsors are third-party payment providers or e-money institutions, like B4B Payments, that connect fintech start-ups to approved BINs and account ranges. Sponsors effectively act as the middle-men to enable new businesses to offer payments solutions, allowing businesses to leverage their scheme memberships with issuers.

Looking for BIN sponsors to kick-start your fintech operations can be a tricky process. It’s important to consider a number of factors when partnering with a sponsor, including compliance, speed-to-market, and experience within the industry.

At B4B Payments, we have used our 15 years’ experience in the payments industry to evolve our BIN Sponsorship offer to the next level with BIN Sponsorship 2.0.

How does BIN Sponsorship 2.0 set you apart from the competition?

Using our extensive experience in payments, we have developed an end-to-end bridging solution for fintech startups. This best-in-market offering  provides support to businesses as they launch their service, connect with card issuers, and beyond.

We go the extra mile with BIN Sponsorship 2.0, extending our service to cover the most important areas of partners’ needs:

Functionality and compliance

Functionality and compliance are priorities for fintech businesses – often the deciding factor for whether new products and companies sink or swim. BIN Sponsorship 2.0 puts compliance at the heart of its offering, combining the responsibility to handle Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, with funds safeguarding and fraud monitoring for all partnering companies.

More importantly, B4B Payments offers complete authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Bank of Lithuania with e-money licences, as well as Mastercard Principal Member status, which can be leveraged by startups wishing to expand internationally into European markets.

Tailored support

While BIN Sponsorship is sometimes used as a quick-win when gaining an e-money licence, B4B Payments offers an extended service outside of regulated EMIs, allowing businesses to continue to outsource scheme management, collateral requirements and settlements.

BIN Sponsorship 2.0 is not an off the shelf solution, it can be tailored to Fintech needs. It offers partners the chance to use our e-money permissions while building their own relationships with card issuers.

Partnerships to suit fintech needs

With BIN Sponsorship 2.0 there are a variety of partnerships to suit fintech businesses, whatever stage in the cycle you may be at.

For unregulated EMIs businesses, we offer a full end-to-end package. This allows total use of our scheme licences and e-money permissions, with the support of our experts as you choose your own suppliers and develop your own card programme using our framework. For fintechs who require a less hands-on approach, we also offer a BIN sponsorship light package, allowing direct integration into our platform, and enabling speed-to-market. 

For regulated EMIs without a scheme licence, we offer settlement, or turnkey settlement only packages, allowing you to leverage our issuing capabilities, while building your own UI.

What’s more, B4B Payments also offers a support service for regulated EMIs with scheme permissions, providing a continued service for safeguarding, accounts and payments.

Proven Speed-to-Market success

Our BIN Sponsorship 2.0 partners’ success speaks for itself. In 2021, Juni, an e-commerce fintech, partnered with B4B Payments.Through using our solution, they were quickly able to bring their card to market without first needing to navigate the process of gaining their own e-money licence and card scheme membership.

Juni continued to lean on B4B Payments as a partner for support throughout their rapid scale-up as they became one of 2021’s fastest-growing fintech startups, taking advantage of BIN Sponsorship 2.0’s product flexibility, as well as the experience of the experts behind the scenes.

Discover more about BIN Sponsorship 2.0 with B4B Payments

Do you want to know more about how BIN Sponsorship 2.0 can make a difference to your fintech startup? Discover our memberships and how B4B Payments’ experience in the industry can help keep you competitive.

To find out how our solutions can help you, contact us today!