We picked up this partnership announcement in Finextra. The partnership in question is another example of fintechs joining forces to provide alternative and better cross-border experiences. In this case, it is two UK-based payments firms.
Contis was founded in 2008 and provides account-based payments and services, with a specialty in prepaid and debit cards, including virtual. Currencycloud provides a platform for integrating international and local clearing into other payments and FX platforms.
‘This partnership allows end-customers to convert Sterling (GPB) to more than 30 currencies and send funds to over 50 countries across 5 continents. It removes a pain-point for fintech clients with an international customer base, companies looking at overseas expansion, and any account holders needing to send money abroad.’
In a recent member paper Mercator Advisory Group discussed the importance of the B2B cross-border market, which represents more than 80% of use cases in cross-border value transfers. Much of payments innovation these days is taking place in this space, since traditional methods have been clunky and opaque for decades, although they are now changing through these types of partnerships and other efforts.
The cross-border payments world has been primarily serviced through wires and correspondent banking, with B2B use cases facilitated by SWIFT messaging and various bank-to-bank transfers and FX markups contributing to a relatively slow and somewhat expensive transaction. So this partnership would seem to offer a new client experience that simplifies and clarifies the transactions. As we have also seen during the past six months, faster execution helps the supply chain.
‘Jason Ollivier, Chief Disruption Officer at Contis, said: “The global pandemic has driven an explosion in digital payments and demand for new features. Now more than ever, businesses need to invest in R&D and deliver new solutions for the changing landscape. We’ve increased investment in our core platform and bolted on functionality to our API based platform to meet client needs.’