Tag Archives: Open Banking

LFP157 – Enabling Direct Bank to Bank Payments For Merchants – Faster, Cheaper w/Brad Goodall CEO Banked

Online payments are expensive – directly for merchants and indirectly for consumers as the price is obviously higher due to the merchants having a ~3% cost of payments. But in a world where I as a consumer could pay you as a merchant directly from my phone if you simply gave me your sort code and account number (and you would get the funds immediately rather than with a considerable delay), in a world of Open Banking and APIs can this simple model not be automated and provide the same functionality online to all customers?

It turns out it can and Banked are leading the way of so-called direct-payments. These have many benefits not having been designed in the days when a plastic piece of card with some simple numbers on them was what amounted to account security.

If this is the schematic than as always one needs to understand that traditional credit card payments do but just provide payment but a whole host of features around them. What if eg the credit card used to buy something from your store was stolen? What if you the consumer receive the goods having paid but the goods are substandard.

As always with payments the high-level schematic is simple yet the devil lies in the detail.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading

LFP141 – Open-Banking: Super-Important for SMEs w/Matt Cockayne CCO Yapily

Open-banking hype has generally focused on the consumer marketplace. However SMEs can potentially benefit more especially as they currently pay for banking services. Accounts and transactions can be consolidated improving cashflow management and payments can be made at a far lower cost and far faster as well as cool stuff like including “pay me” buttons in invoices to speed up receivables.

In this episode Matt Cockayne of Yapily takes us through the SME open banking marketplace and we cover a schematic of how it all works.

How do you connect to open banking? How does authroisation work? Is it just a set of pipes connecting accounts or is there added value taking place.

We get the whiteboard out and sketch the whole process.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading

LFP097 – Open Banking – Damp Squib or City of Revelations? Nigel Verdon Railsbank

Many electrons have been agitated to produce patterns of light and dark on this topic. Which is probably more interesting aphenomenon than the average article on Open Banking. Ignore it we cannot however and uber-Fintech Guru (in the true sense, not self-penned LinkedIn encomium) Nigel Verdon, founder of Currency Cloud and now founder and CEO of Railsbank joins us to work out what is really going on and where challenges lie.

Nigel is no mere Fintecher with his own opinion. Way back in LFP024 Nigel shared his experience of 25yrs in Fintech – and hardcore fintech at that from doing the first online FX deal in 1992, through running digital markets at Dresdner Kleinworts to founding Currency Cloud. Since when he has VCed and now for some time been CEO and founder of Railsbank.

So someone with a very informed opinion.  Open Banking is very much an evolving topic. So LFP060, an overview with Paul Thomalla at ACI Worldwide, is still #2 in the LFP all-time download charts.  As recently as LFP087 Louise Beaumont argued that its not really about tech & reg but far more about strategy.

Topics discussed on the show include: Continue reading

LFP087 – Passionate Advocacy that Open-Banking is really about Strategy (not Tech/Reg) Louise Beaumont SapientRazorfish

A year ago in LFP060 (currently the 2nd most downloaded episode) we covered Open Banking/PSD2 from a Regulatory perspective. In this episode Louise Beaumont argues forcefully that Reg & Tech perspectives are “necessary but not sufficient”. To do Open Banking “well” means to utterly rethink ones strategy.

Louise is the co-Chair of the Open Bank Working Group at techUK , member of the UK Govt’s Open Bank Implementation Entity and Strategic Advisor Open Bank at Publicis.Sapient and thus sees Open Banking from many sides.

She was also on the show three years ago in LFP011, she was a co-founder of Platform Black, the then number two in the UK Fintech Invoice Discounting sector so has plenty of deep background in the Fintech Revolution. Indeed LFP011 was precisely around what she saw as the 5 Key Challenges facing Fintechs growth (which seem appropriate to this day).

So with that track record behind her we can anticipate that her views on Open Banking/PSD2 will be equally relevant in several years’ time too.

So if a year ago we looked into what this is all about and where it is coming from, we can now examine where we are and critically what the key factors for success are in practice.

What are the threats?

What are the opportunities?

Is sharing your customers data so well you lose them all success?

All these topics and more are discussed on the show including:  Continue reading