• Small business spending solution Pleo and open banking provider Yapily have formed a partnership.
• Under the agreement, Pleo will leverage Yapily Payments to enable account-to-account payments for its small business clients.
• Pleo will begin rolling out the new service to its business clients in the Netherlands and France in the coming months.

Small business spending solution Pleo has teamed up with open banking provider Yapily this week.

Pleo is leveraging Yapily Payments, a tool that enables direct account-to-account payments. And because Yapily uses open banking, it does not use card rails, which ultimately cuts out middlemen and limits fees. Yapily covers 19 countries and has more than 1900 institutions integrated with its open banking infrastructure.

Pleo was founded in 2015 and enables small businesses to tackle invoices, issue reimbursements, give their employees payment cards for work-related expenses. The company’s spending solution offers small businesses control over employee spend and provides visibility into their expenses.

Yapily Payments will enable Pleo users to top up their Pleo account directly from their bank account. This direct connection offers two major benefits– it offers instant payments and decreases the risk of card fraud and human error. “Manual processes, settlement periods, and bottlenecks in cash flow are all avoidable obstacles,” said Pleo Chief Product Officer Olov Eriksson. “We want to enable our users to focus on what really matters: growing their business and empowering their people.”

Pleo will begin offering customers the new capability in a gradual rollout “over the coming months.” The service will be made available starting in the Netherlands and France. The bank account to-up capability is just the start of Pleo’s partnership with Yapily. Pleo also plans to leverage more of Yapily’s payments solutions in the future.

Yapily was founded in 2017 and offers API-based tools to enable the connection between banks and third party fintechs. Last month, the U.K.-based company launched Variable Recurring Payments, a tool that allows merchants and service providers to offer recurring payments of varying amounts without having to re-authenticate for each transaction.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

• Square is launching its first integration with ClearPay this week.
• Square merchants in the U.K. can now leverage Clearpay (known as Afterpay outside of the U.K.) to offer a BNPL payment option to their customers making purchases both online and in-person.
• The integration is the result of an acquisition between Square parent Block and Afterpay in January of this year for $29 billion.

Block’s Square is launching its first integration with ClearPay (also known as Afterpay) in the U.K. this week.

The move will make ClearPay’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) technology available clients making purchases at both in-person and online Square merchants. End customers will have the option to pay in four interest-free installments over the course of six weeks, while merchants will receive payment right away.

There is record demand for BNPL among U.K. consumers. The BNPL model is the region’s fastest growing online payment method. Last year, consumers spent $15 billion using BNPL on e-commerce purchases. This figure is expected to double by 2025.

“The integration across platforms furthers our goal to give sellers of all sizes omnichannel tools that help them to grow by meeting consumer shopping habits, whatever and wherever they are,” said Head of Square Alyssa Henry. “Clearpay provides our ecosystem with a new tool beyond an alternative payment method; it enables an omnichannel commerce solution that can offer true value to our sellers.”

Today’s news comes after Square’s parent company Block acquired Afterpay for $29 billion in January of this year. Outside of the U.K., Square has already seen positive results from its integration with Afterpay. The company reported that in the U.S. and Australia, the average transaction size among customers using Afterpay is three times greater than non-BNPL purchases. Across the globe, Square noted a 180% increase in new customers using Afterpay offered by Square sellers between February and March of this year.

Founded in 2009, Square is a fintech pioneer. The company was among the first to offer mobile point-of-sale payments. Today, Square offers a holistic merchant services platform and competes with some of the largest traditional players in the space, as well as newcomers including Stripe and PayPal. Earlier this year, Square teamed up with Apple to launch Tap to Pay on iPhone. The new service will offer sellers a solution to accept contactless payments with no additional hardware.

Photo by Uzunov Rostislav

• Alliant Credit Union announced a partnership with lending-as-a-service fintech Upstart.
• The agreement will make Alliant part of the Upstart Referral Network.
• Upstart SVP of Lending Partnerships Michael Lock said the move will help Alliant “grow its membership while providing greater access to affordable credit.”

Alliant Credit Union announced it has selected Upstart to help it offer customers personalized loans.

Alliant Credit Union first partnered with Upstart in May 2022. With today’s announcement, Alliant becomes part of the Upstart Referral Network. Under this agreement, Upstart offers qualified loan applicants tailored loan offers in around five minutes. When the applicant decides to pursue the loan opportunity, Upstart transitions the client from its own user interface to an Alliant-branded experience, where they finish the online member application and close the loan.

“As part of the Upstart Referral Network, Alliant will be able to grow its membership while providing greater access to affordable credit,” said Upstart SVP of Lending Partnerships Michael Lock.

With more than 650,000 members and over $15 billion in assets, Alliant Credit Union is among the top 10 U.S. credit unions. Alliant SVP, Chief Capital Markets Officer, and Head of Commercial Lending Charles Krawitz said that the company is “very particular” when it comes to selecting partners. “Our partners must embrace doing things the right way, with legal and risk compliance maturity,” said Krawitz. “We believe Upstart has invested in robust systems that ensure borrowers are well-vetted, and that they will make a strong partner for delivering value and options to our members.”

Founded in 2012, Upstart differentiates itself in the alternative lending space by partnering with banks and credit unions seeking to increase their approval rates and lower their loss rates. The company’s AI-first lending tool enables financial institutions to reach a wider variety of end customers, including those with less favorable credit files.

Upstart went public in December 2020 and was in the news headlines recently due to concerns about a drop in funding as well as a decline in earnings. Company CEO Dave Girouard said that the decline was “disappointing” and “unacceptable,” adding, “It may be natural for you to question whether Upstart’s AI-powered risk models aren’t working as designed, but we’re confident this isn’t the case, that, in fact, our models continue to improve with respect to accuracy and risk separation.”

• Pomelo is launching a family credit card account that gives accountholders up to four cards to give to friends and family overseas.
• Because the payments run on credit rails, users save on international money transfer fees.
• Pomelo is launching money transfer capabilities between the U.S. and the Philippines.

Pomelo is the newest fintech in the digital banking scene. The company is launching today with $70 million in Seed funding to change the fundamentals of international money transfer.

Leading the round are Keith Rabois at Founders Fund as well as Kevin Hartz, Co-Founder of Xoom and General Partner at A* Capital. Afore Capital, Xfund, Josh Buckley, the Chainsmokers, and the Weeknd also participated.

Frenkiel, who regularly sends money to family overseas, came up with the idea for Pomelo while he was visiting family in the Philippines and thought, “Why can’t I just give a card to my family instead of having to send money through Western Union?” At that point, Frenkiel came up with a way to use credit card payment rails to disburse funds and eliminate transfer fees.

Pomelo is a family account that gives the primary accountholder up to four physical and virtual credit cards to give to loved ones overseas. Users can set limits via the app, pause any of the payment cards, and view how each member is spending their funds. Unlike many shared accounts, Pomelo is not prepaid. The primary accountholder pays for the charges on each card at the end of the month and builds their own credit as they pay off each balance.

Each account comes with a Mastercard credit card issued by Coastal Community Bank. And because the payments run via credit rails, the fees are paid by merchants via interchange and daily foreign exchange rates. This eliminates transfer fees, which can add up to 6%.

“Pomelo is on a mission to change how international money transfer fundamentally works,” said Pomelo Founder and CEO Eric Velasquez Frenkiel. “Our goal is to help our customers establish their financial future here in the United States by building positive credit history with their existing remittance obligations, and to financially include their loved ones in emerging economies with access to modern financial instruments. For many of our customers, Pomelo is their first credit card here in the U.S. and the very first card for their loved ones overseas.”

After beta testing the service for several months, Pomelo is launching money transfer capabilities between the U.S. and the Philippines.

Photo by Ron Lach

• Credas has appointed Geraint Rogers as Chief Strategy Officer.
• Rodgers formerly worked at Experian U.K., where he served as the company’s Product Director for Identity, Fraud, and Financial Crime.
• Rodgers will also serve on Credas’ executive board, which includes Barnett and company CTO Kevin Smith.

Digital identity verification platform Credas is bolstering its team this week. The U.K.-based company has appointed Geraint Rogers as Chief Strategy Officer.

Credas anticipates Rodgers will aid the company in the launch of its new Digital Identity wallet later this year. Company CEO Tim Barnett said that Rodgers will “help Credas stay at the forefront of the market.”

Rodgers comes to Credas from Experian U.K., where he served as the company’s Product Director for Identity, Fraud, and Financial Crime. He has almost 30 years of experience in product development and has worked across banking, risk, and compliance departments in senior roles at both Experian and LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

Outside of his role at Experian, Rodgers currently serves as a board member of the Open Identity Exchange, helping to shape industry standards for digital identities and wallets; and he is certified with the U.K. Government’s Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework.

Rodgers will also serve on Credas’ executive board, which includes Barnett and company CTO Kevin Smith.

Founded in 2017, Credas offers biometric facial recognition, document authentication, and eSign technologies to help businesses across a range of sectors streamline their onboarding processes, conduct due diligence, and remain compliant.

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash