Voice of the Industry

The Paypers Global Partnerships Analysis Q3 2023 – Banking and Fintech

Friday 17 November 2023 14:36 CET | Editor: Estera Sava | Voice of the industry

Building onto our previous reporting related to the partnerships that took place in Q3 2023 within the payments and commerce space, this analysis focuses on the banking and fintech industry.

 

Read on to find more information about the names that caught our eye within this timeframe and the most prevalent subjects, namely:

  • Open Finance, Open Banking payments, and their entrance into separate verticals;

  • Digital banking tech and infrastructure;

  • Financial crime and fraud prevention;

  • Crypto, Web3, and CBDC developments.

Open Finance, Open Banking payments, and their entrance into separate verticals

Open Banking helps democratise the financial services industry. With the usage of APIs, third-party access to banking data enables consumers to connect to an extensive array of financial products and services, while regaining control over their financial well-being. With the increase in open technology, Open Finance has entered the field as a continuation of Open Banking, aiming to further new developments in the financial market for consumers and third-party providers alike. Whereas Open Banking enables regulated products and services under the PSD2 directive to access transaction data from banks, Open Finance seeks to provide access to a consumer’s entire financial footprint.

Q3 2023 saw multiple collaborations centring on the adoption of Open Banking and Open Finance worldwide. Reiterating first those with a global focus, early in July, Salt Edge and Kindgeek, a fintech software developer, cooperated to provide PSD2 and Open Banking solutions to the fintech landscape. GoCardless and SMB platform Xero renewed their partnership for an additional five years, enabling Xero’s customers to leverage GoCardless within the Xero platform for recurring and one-off payment collection, both through direct debit and a GoCardless feature powered by Open Banking in the UK and PayTo in Australia. Embedded banking software company Treasury Prime has partnered with Astra to enable real-time payments to customers, providing access to instant account funding and disbursements via push-to-card capabilities.

Expediting real-time payments was a common focus within this timeframe, as seen through multiple collaborations in the industry. ACI Worldwide and Microsoft, for example, sought to facilitate instant payments via ACI’s Real-Time Payments Cloud (RTPC) platform. Standard Chartered and Starfish Digital, on the other hand, partnered to deliver API-led real-time data for cash management and improved cash visibility to corporate treasury teams. Another notable announcement came from Brankas and SaaS tech provider Konsentus, which sought to provide centralised tech infrastructure and BaaS solutions to expedite Open Finance. Moreover, SAP Fioneer tapped Mastercard to integrate its suite of commercial payment and Open Banking capabilities into the SAP Fioneer Card Management, Embedded Finance, and SME Lending platforms.

 

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Europe

Moving onto regional developments, the European space saw numerous announcements focused on open tech, and the advancement of embedded payments/finance, together with instant/real-time payments. The UK was one of the regions whose Open Banking adoption skyrocketed, with a report from Open Banking Limited showcasing that Open Banking payments volumes in H1 2023 doubled compared to the same period in 2022, reaching 9.7 million payments made in June, an 88% increase. Additional growth was reported since the cut-off date of the report as 10.8 million payments were registered in August 2023. Furthermore, a November 2023 MoneyHub research revealed that one in five Brits are regularly making payments via Open Banking (21%). 

This expedited adoption comes from the multiple collaborations to have taken place in the UK, with one of the first news in Q3 2023 being that the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) made public the first Open Finance Coalition partners to further Open Finance in the area. Founding collaborators announced at the time were as follows: the Association of British Insurers, Allen and Overy, Amazon Web Services, Experian, the City of London Corporation, EY, HSBC, IBM, Innovate Finance, iwoca, KPMG, Leeds City Council, Lloyds Banking Group, Mastercard, MBN Solutions, Monzo, Open Banking Limited, the Open Finance Association, Revolut, the Smart Data Foundry, and Zopa Bank, with the support of the FCA.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

July saw Volt partner with Primer, a payments automation platform offering the infrastructure for commerce experiences, to leverage Open Banking tech to simplify payments for merchants and customers alike, enabling Primer’s customers' access to instant bank payments. TrueLayer cooperated with InvestEngine to leverage variable recurring payments in ETF investing. Fintech Guavapay partnered with Yapily to integrate its Open Banking tech into the MyGuava platform for expedited top-up transactions for GBP and EUR accounts from supported bank accounts. Yapily also cooperated with Payhawk, a spend management platform, to create an instant payment experience for finance teams when upgrading their Payhawk wallets, a collaboration rolled out in the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Benelux region, as well as with AI-powered solution Ntropy to improve financial information and transaction data for customers across Europe.

Moving onto the wide European area, A2A payment provider SEPAexpress cooperated with the Open Banking platform Tink to better its payment solutions across Europe. Denmark-based Saxo Bank and Mastercard joined hands to implement Open Banking payments in the former’s investment platforms. In contrast, two separate collaborations showcased the usage of open tech in other verticals, namely The Dutch Association of Insurers and INNOPAY, which sought to enable the players in the insurance sector to transition to Open Insurance. Coinbase tapped TrueLayer, a European Open Banking payments network, to expand its Easy Bank Transfers to the Netherlands, making Open Banking payments available to Dutch customers.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

The Americas

Among the first announcements centring the American space in Q3 2023 was the Moneyhub and MX partnership aimed at driving Open Finance both in the European and North American spaces. GoCardless and Embedded Finance solution provider UNIPaaS partnered to enable businesses’ access to bank payments, whereas embedded financial solutions provider Cross River tapped Plaid to offer multi-rail payment solutions to US businesses, such as Instant Payouts on Plaid Transfer. On the cusp of the expansion of the Federal Reserve’s instant payment service FedNow, Conduent, with support from BNY Mellon, tapped the instant payment rail to boost payment solutions. Additionally, BNY Mellon in collaboration with Trustly launched its Open Banking service Bankify to help firms receive customer payments from bank accounts. In collaboration with Datos Insights, BNY Mellon also issued a report examining the growth of real-time payments following the increased demand from consumers for expedited payment options. Open Banking applications were also sought after by other verticals, such as the travel industry, with flight booking platform Alternative Airlines tapping Link Money to provide US-based customers with a Pay by Bank solution. One of the developments in South America that gripped our attention was that between microfinance bank Mibanco and Belvo to help increasingly more Colombians receive credit through Open Finance.

 

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

APAC and MENA

Within the Asia-Pacific space, Q3 2023 saw ACI Worldwide collaborate with Security Bank to reshape the bank’s real-time payment hub, and Musoni System with Open Finance company Brankas to enhance credit scoring and corporate financing in Asia. In the Australian region, BlinkPay made public its plans to introduce Open Banking services to New Zealand customers by partnering with local banks and FIs, shortly followed by the announcement that it cooperated with wealth management app Sharesies to enable the company’s investors to benefit from Open Banking features and tools to improve their financial prospects at an earlier stage. When talking about the MENA space, one of the most important collaborations was that between Arab Financial Services (AFS) and CRIF, a credit bureau, business information systems, outsourcing, and data processing services company, which sought to serve AFS’ bank clients within the region by supplementing the company’s Open Finance tech platform with CRIF’s Open Banking use cases and solutions.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Digital banking tech and infrastructure

Moving onto modernisation tactics for digital banking technology and infrastructure, this section will focus first on the names to have collaborated with multiple companies across the board, namely Mastercard and Finastra.

Mastercard’s partnerships focus ranged from modernisation tactics for financial inclusion, to product launches. It collaborated with Ingiz, a family financial management startup, to launch a digital payments app aimed at driving financial literacy and inclusion among youth in Egypt and signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Fintech Saudi to further growth and development in the Saudi Arabia fintech industry. Similarly, it announced a cooperation with the Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance to drive financial inclusion in Bahrain and the wider region. Within the North American space, together with spend management platform Extend, Mastercard assisted banking group BMO with the launch of a mobile wallet for virtual cards to enable the US- and Canada-based BMO Commercial Bank clients’ access to an improved payment management functionality. What is more, Mastercard and Oracle helped HSBC launch a virtual card solution to help customers complete supplier payments. Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) connects with HSBC via Mastercard’s global virtual card platform to simplify and automate the B2B payment process.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

A financial software applications and marketplaces provider, Finastra’s Q3 2023 partnerships had a focus on overall digitalisation for financial services and banking, as well as expediting real-time payments and Open Finance within said services. One of its first announcements involved North America-based Open Finance company MX Technologies, to enable personalised money experiences by integrating MX’s Personal Financial Management (PFM), Insights, and Account Aggregation solutions with Finastra’s Fusion Digital Banking solution and help FIs better guide consumers toward financial wellness. In the span of one week, the company made public three additional partnerships. Firstly, it announced a global agreement with Microsoft to support banks in their trade modernisation journeys, it extended its collaboration with Corvallis, part of Tinexta Group, an IT services provider in the Italian financial services sector to expedite the modernisation of IT infrastructures and the adoption of real-time payments, helping Italian banks accelerate their instant payment offerings, and lastly, it partnered with Philippines-based digital bank Tonik to improve its end-to-end core banking capabilities with Finastra Essence.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Moving onto worldwide developments, US-based B2B payments provider Convera has chosen Temenos to leverage its cloud-native platform for access to real-time payments and enhanced resilience, providing the necessary business agility to capitalise on new market initiatives like instant payments and ISO 20022. The Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) announced the formation of an open standard project based on an approach developed by Citi, to describe consistent controls for compliant public cloud deployments in the financial services sector. The project involves participation from over 20 FINOS Member firms globally, including Bank of Montreal (BMO), Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), Natwest Group, cloud service provider Google Cloud, and vendors such as GitHub, Red Hat, Symphony, Adaptive, Container Solutions, ControlPlane, GitLab, and Scott Logic.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Other Q3 2023 announcements within this space focused on automation, embedded financing, and the implementation of generative AI solutions for further optimisation. US tech provider NCR Corporation partnered with Autobooks to integrate digital invoicing, payment acceptance, and accounting into NCR Digital Banking, aiming to help FIs offer unified payment and cash management solutions tailored to the needs of SMBs. GoCardless teamed with Kolleno, a financial operations platform, to enable financial officers and credit controllers to schedule and automate their invoice collection. Embedded finance applications were sought after within the lending space, as showcased by ChargeAfter's partnership with Wells Fargo to expand its embedded lender network, and by OnBuy and YouLend, an embedded financing platform, with the former aiming to provide flexible financing options to businesses that sell on OnBuy’s seller account. When talking about generative AI, Deloitte tapped NVIDIA to leverage its AI tech for the creation of generative AI solutions for enterprise software platforms, and IBM Consulting and Microsoft extended their collaboration to aid joint customers in accelerating the deployment of generative AI.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Europe

Within the European space, German fintech Moss selected GoCardless as its direct debit provider for its push in the UK, helping SMB finance teams fully automate the management of their corporate cards, from paying expenses to repaying balances to accounting. Next-gen core banking provider Tuum and Numeral, a bank orchestration platform joined hands to help FIs and fintechs expand across Europe. Additionally, Tuum collaborated with Paymentology to launch a pre-integrated card payment processing and core ledger service targeting the European and Middle East markets, aiming to offer banks, FIs, and fintechs access to a global gateway for card management and payment processing tools. Digital bank N26 integrated iDEAL within its digital banking experience in the Netherlands to simplify payments. Retail banking company Lloyds Bank tapped Fiserv to offer wholesale FX rates to UK and European merchants for dynamic currency conversion (DCC) on card transactions. What is more, it collaborated with Visa to launch a virtual card solution for businesses of all sizes. Visa, together with Checkout.com, helped Froda enable Visa Direct for embedded business loan payouts.

 

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Moving onto financing-related and financial wellbeing developments, LHV Bank tapped Raisin UK, an online savings platform, to expand into the personal savings market. HSBC UK and Nova Credit provided newcomers in the region with the option to include international credit history when applying for a credit card, whereas consumer lending marketplace Aro and Plend sought to provide UK clients with optimised, accessible, and affordable finance. Other notable developments within the European space were that of fincrime assurance provide Cable which joined the BaaS Association to support the future of BaaS. AI’s applicability was also sought after in the European space, with the NAGA Group tapping Resolve AI’s ‘Brain’ platform to integrate it into its proprietary tech and social trading app, NAGA Trader, as well as NAGA Pay for improved online payments and brokerage.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

The Americas

The collaborations that took place within the American space focused predominantly on digital banking optimisation tactics, as well as on embedded services and automation strategies. One of the first announcements was that of Cheqly, which partnered with BaaS provider Mbanq to launch its SME-focused digital banking services in the US. A similar development was that of SMB banking app NorthOne which tapped Plaid to better cash flow controls for SME customers and clients. JPMorgan Chase in partnership with fintech Gusto introduced digital payroll processing targeting its SMB customer base and collaborated with Scotiabank to provide advanced banking and merchant services solutions to Canadian small business owners, and commercial and corporate clients. Embedded banking software company Treasury Prime alongside Liberty Bank looked to offer fintech end users digital banking products and solutions, whereas embedded financial solution provider Cross River and fintech platform Current partnered to launch a credit-building product aiming to better the financial well-being of unserved and underserved communities.

 

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Other companies to have contributed to developments within this space are as follows: the EY organisation announced two collaborations, namely with AI SaaS company SymphonyAI to help digitally transform organisations with generative AI-enabled retail and financial services platforms, and with Microsoft to deliver its Assurance technology platform as part of a USD 1 billion investment programme. Financial service tech provider eCU Technology and payroll connectivity provider Atomic sought to bring automated direct deposit switching to credit unions to help modernise the banking experience for their members. In the Central & Southern American space, Mexico-based BanCoppel, part of Gruppo Coppel, collaborated with cloud banking platform Temenos to modernise its core banking services, and modern card issuing platform Marqeta expanded into Brazil following a partnership with BaaS platform Fitbank and network certification with Visa.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

APAC and MENA

Within the APAC region, and more specifically Australia, one of the most important developments to have taken place in Q3 2023 was that of Infosys and Microsoft, who completed the foundational phase of a digital programme for Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, which enabled the latter to consolidate multiple legacy document management systems into a single enterprise document management system (EDMS) and deliver better customer service. Moving onto the Asian space, Malaysia-based GAT Investment Bank tapped Currencycloud to launch an app for clients needing a global banking solution. Other product launches involved Indian Bank and OneCard, a mobile-oriented credit card company to introduce contactless, co-branded metal cards. When talking about banking modernisation tactics, Bank INA chose Mambu’s cloud-native core banking platform as the tech foundation aiming to launch new digital banking services in Indonesia. NICE Actimize collaborated with GoTyme Bank to improve its cloud financial crime digital banking platform.

 

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Other developments that caught our attention within this timeframe focused on the UAE, with trade financing platform 360tf partnering with Ebury to better financial services, and the Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) collaboration with Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB), Emirates NBD (ENBD), First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), Mashreq, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB), and Standard Chartered Bank UAE, which sought further the development of the UAE digital banking scene. HMS’ focus was present within the African space as well, having cooperated with Standard Bank to provide digital banking solutions for clients in South Africa.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Global analytics software provider FICO alongside LigaData looked to bring advanced decision management and optimisation tools to telecommunications firms in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, aiming to add new revenue streams and expand financial inclusion in emerging markets. Similarly, Truist and Standard Chartered planned to strengthen trade finance offerings and capabilities in the same regions. BaaS and embedded finance enabler Ukheshe together with Diamond Trust Bank (DTB) announced their plans for the introduction of a BaaS platform in East Africa. A separate notable collaboration within the wider African region was that of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), which signed Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with African multinational commercial banking groups: Access Bank Group, Ecobank Group, KCB Group, Standard Bank Group, and UBA Group to better cross-border transactions settlement within the countries covered by said banks.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Financial crime and fraud prevention

Moving onto financial crime and fraud prevention efforts, the partnerships to have taken place across the board delved into bettering the consumer's identification process, while ensuring businesses’ compliance with AML/KYC standards. One of the first collaborations made public in Q3 2023 within this vertical was that of the Customer Lifecycle Intelligence platform FullCircl and fincrime intelligence company ComplyAdvantage, which sought to facilitate AML and KYC screening for FIs. Global bank account validation and B2B payment security company nsKnox was selected by Meta Platforms to offer global vendor account validation and B2B payment fraud protection. Other news surrounding B2B was that of Brazilian B2B fintech Dock which tapped Feedzai to provide clients with new security solutions.

Moving onto worldwide developments, identity proofing and passwordless authentication company 1Kosmos partnered with NayaOne, a fintech ecosystem platform, to have the 1Kosmos BlockID distributed identity cloud service available on NayaOne for financial services providers. Mastercard and Riskified sought to help businesses mitigate fraud whilst increasing revenues, whereas Nethone and Verifi, a Visa solution, looked to help merchants that meet Visa Compelling Evidence 3.0 criteria to deflect first-party misuse disputes. With the increase of friendly fraud and chargeback disputes, two separate collaborations focused on chargeback management, one being that of payment orchestration platform FinMont which chose Chargebacks911 to offer its travel merchants an extensive chargeback management plan with enhanced data analysis and profits, and that of Justt which joined Forter’s partner programme to automate and simplify chargeback management within a single platform. 3SMoney together with regtech Know Your Customer sought to better efficiency, transparency, and inclusion in financial services.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

The North American region saw Astra and Plaid join forces to offer customers instant authenticated payments through Plaid Identity Verification, whereas fintech TrueNorth tapped RADD LLC, a compliance consulting and internal audit firm, aiming to intertwine regulatory compliance with its financial technology solution development. J.P. Morgan was designated by the US Treasury Department to offer account validation services for federal government agencies, whilst Sumsub and AML Incubator, a Canada-based regulatory compliance outsourcing company aimed to simplify identity verification. Sumsub was one of the names to have had multiple collaborations in Q3 2023, having made public that it joined hands with crypto payments platform Wirex to provide transaction monitoring capabilities, Travel Rule compliance solutions for virtual asset transfers, and its KYC software for client identity verification. It also partnered with dtcpay to improve the security and reliability of digital currency payments in target markets, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, the UK, and Europe.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

In the European space, Tuum has partnered with AMLYZE, an anti-financial crime solution provider, to extend its next-gen core banking offering with specialist anti-financial crime solutions, while digital challenger bank Starling Bank tapped intelligent compliance tech company Napier to better fight financial crime. Other fraud prevention-related developments to have taken within the European banking space are as follows: BBVA, Banco Santander, and CaixaBank announced a joint effort to fight financial fraud, and BaaS fintech Griffin selected Veriff to provide out-of-the-box identity and verification to BaaS customers. Identity services provider OneID integrated with Adobe Acrobat Sign to offer a secure, bank-verified eSigning experience for its clients, TangoPay has partnered with ThetaRay to protect its global payments platform from financial crimes, whilst Deloitte joined hands with Chainalysis to help clients with their crypto forensic, compliance, and investigative requirements.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Crypto, Web3, and CBDC developments

Starting off with banks’ evolution surrounding CBDCs, Nuggets and the Bank of England collaborated to experiment and design a privacy and identity layer for the UK’s CBDC, whilst the US-based Digital Dollar Project in partnership with Western Union and BDO Unibank completed a new CBDC pilot study for cross-border remittances. Similarly, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) together with the Bank of France, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the Swiss National Bank tested cross-border wholesale CBDCs. Nubank connected its infrastructure to Banco Central do Brasil’s blockchain network to initiate testing with Brex, the Brazilian digital currency, whilst IDEMIA partnered with Airtel Payments Bank and HMD Global to expand the reach of offline CBDC payments in India. CBDCs sparked interest in payment processing companies such as Mastercard, which selected blockchain tech company Fluency as its CBDC partner.

 

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023

Moving onto developments surrounding stablecoins, fintech Circle and Mercado Pago sought to bring USDC to Chile, whereas Bitcoin and BitPay rolled out PayPal USD payments for both merchants and consumers. Visa expanded its stablecoin settlement capabilities to the Solana blockchain and made public partnerships with Nuvei and Worldpay to send funds on-chain to acquirers and expedite settlement times for their merchants. A somewhat similar development was that of fiat-crypto payment gateway Alchemy Pay and Checkout.com which collaborated to support transactions between fiat currency and cryptocurrency across the globe.

The wider crypto and Web3 space saw Aptos Labs and Microsoft partner to integrate the Azure Open AI Service into the former’s network for increased Web3 accessibility. Coinbase and PayPal enabled users in Germany and the UK to purchase and withdraw crypto, whilst Deloitte and Bitwave announced a collaboration aimed at delivering increased speed, process efficiency, cost savings, and compliance improvements to businesses utilising digital assets. Another notable partnership surrounding the crypto space was that of Deutsche Bank and Taurus, with the latter’s tech being integrated with the bank to establish digital asset custody and tokenization services globally.

Banking and Fintech partnerships Q3 2023


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Summing up all the developments to have taken place in the banking and fintech space, there’s a clear focus on digitalisation, as well as an increase in Open Banking-based payments, together with alternative methods that seek to not only retain customers but also further competition amongst financial institutions. With the growing consumer demand for instant payments and optimised services, the industry is on the constant lookout for new technologies that can be integrated within their services for additional simplicity, whilst also aiming to better internal procedures, decrease enterprise costs, and ensure a successful fraud prevention and mitigation strategy. Be sure to follow The Paypers Global Quarterly Analysis series to find out more about the developments that took place during Q4 2023, which also includes contributions surrounding M&As and investments in the industry.

 

About Estera Sava

As a News Editor at The Paypers, Estera has a keen eye for quality assurance and loves deep diving into dense research and connecting relevant dots in the complex world of payments. She has been focusing on the ever-changing B2C payments and commerce landscape, never missing a good story, a particularly interesting new trend in the market, or the best reliable source of information.

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Keywords: banking, fintech, fraud prevention, financial crime, Open Banking, Open Finance, crypto, web3, The Paypers Quarterly Analysis series
Categories: Banking & Fintech
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Banking & Fintech