NextGen data-driven core banking engine, SaaScada, today announced it was selected by Electronic Money Institution (EMI) The Payment Firm to power its new payment services for SMEs and individuals.
The Payment Firm’s easy-to-use, customer-centric solutions will cover the full span of payment services, initially providing accounts with virtual IBANs, before expanding into multi currency accounts, cross border payments, card issuing, and accounts with virtual SWIFT. Its open book pricing model and robust compliance are designed with fairness and honesty in mind, with competitive pricing and easy functionality.
“We are the Ronseal of payments - we do exactly what we say we will, and are totally transparent about how we operate. For too long SMEs and individuals have been ripped off when it comes to payments. The industry cloaks terms and conditions in jargon and complexity, refusing to budge on fees for smaller players, yet letting bigger players get away with paying hardly anything. We intend to change all that,” comments Gary Prince, CEO of The Payment Firm.
The Payment Firm started by using an IT service provider to build their infrastructure, but quickly realised they didn’t have the necessary payments expertise required to meet the team’s ambitious timelines.
“In some ways, payments is simple - you put a pound in the top and it comes out the other end, divided up. But you need to know what you’re doing. SaaScada was the only vendor I felt confident in - the technology just works. And the fact they are already deployed and scaled with banks gave us peace of mind they know what they’re doing. The team has been hugely supportive, enabling us to build a new back end, middleware, and APIs in just three months - that’s normally a year’s worth of work. It’s unheard of to get it done that quickly,” Prince continues.
SaaScada’s event sourcing architecture helped The Payment Firm to build robust payments solutions that enable customers and suppliers to move balances between accounts on the network, without having to pay transaction fees. This helps to lower costs, as transaction fees only apply when money is drawn down. This allows The Payment Firm to offer truly disruptive pricing to customers. Moreover, access to real time-customer data also helps The Payment Firm to streamline and automate compliance reporting, ensuring efficiency and accuracy.
“We are radically honest and customer-driven, which will be the key to our disruption. Our entire roadmap is customer-driven and SaaScada allows us to do that,” Prince concludes. “The data we get and the ability to develop and launch new offerings at speed means we can be a full-service EMI and move with what our customers need. Instead of focusing on small niche offerings, with high margins, we are going to offer everything - high volume and low margins to give the best value to customers. SaaScada also primes us to expand into new markets when the time comes.”
“Gary and the team have such a clear mission statement: they want to offer everything customers need to facilitate payments in one neat, fairly priced package without the razzmatazz. This aligns with our values at SaaScada. We take care of the ‘boring bits’ on the back end, so The Payment Firm can focus on building competitive payments services, and launching new offerings at pace,” explains Nelson Wootton, Co-Founder and CEO at SaaScada.
The Payment Firm account is in soft launch currently in the UK, with plans to add international payments functionality in the coming weeks.