- Financial service and consumer-facing businesses can now improve customer retention with branded, innovative digital payments solutions that can be deployed in 4-8 weeks
- Global Processing Services, Pannovate, Cornercard, Modulr, AllPay, Meawallet and W2 Global are founding partners of the consortium in collaboration with Visa
- Businesses can test propositions with a limited number of cards and wallet accounts
A consortium of major companies, with global payments company Visa among them, have launched b.yond, a new financial innovation platform that will let banks and consumer-facing businesses rapidly deploy a range of innovative fintech payment services.
According to a recent press release, this is a digital-first customers demand service excellence, and will give recurring business to brands that deliver the slickest and most innovative ones well. And precisely that’s the reason why b.yond has been created in first place: to allow businesses to drive customer loyalty, retention and engagement with sticky, digital financial offerings that can be deployed fast. b.yond users will benefit from the innovation, expertise and scale of the consortium partners.
Businesses wanting to launch a payments programme can use b.yond to access a financial technology platform of high-quality, innovative payment solutions using Visa’s rails, which they can deploy for customers in less than 8 weeks.
Commenting on the partnership and launch, Smriti Vicari, Head of Fintech at Visa adds: “At Visa we believe in the power of partnership to bring the best possible solutions to both emerging payment players and our existing clients and partners. The launch of b.yond is another big step towards enabling our clients to gain rapid access to the capabilities that lie within Visa’s global network to power their own ideas.”
As a platform, b.yond additionally aims to reduce complexities of launching a payment programme and having to deal with multiple stakeholders in the payments ecosystem. With one contract from b.yond, businesses will have everything required to launch a payments solution: from on-boarding and KYC (Know Your Customer), P2P transfers, card control, Agency Banking, physical or virtual cards, visualisation of statements/spending and alert notification – with Multi-FX, account load, Multi-language, chat support, rewards and cash-back, saving pots, tokenisation, and more to follow shortly.
b.yond also lets businesses deploy specialised vertical add-ons for travel and forex; expense management; ecommerce wallets; gift, loyalty and employee recognition; insurtech; money remittance and membership. Businesses can test and monitor their propositions’ performance.
Neil Harris, Co-Founder of b.yond and leading the consortium says, “b.yond is breaking the mould with its consortium of industry leading companies who are coming together to drive fintech innovation to a new level of simplicity and speed.” a He further adds, “The project has been all about collaboration-led innovation and with an established list of other leading companies wanting to join the consortium, we expect the initial propositions to grow exponentially as we onboard new organisations and regions.”
For Fintechs and digital banks this is a true game changer and yields great advantages in terms of having the possibility to showcase to investors or VC funds the true potential of their product offering quickly and economically. For brands, this offers them the possibility to test their proposition prior to investing more funds towards development and marketing.
Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.
