• Checkout.com and Shieldpay announced a partnership this week.
• The collaboration will bring Checkout.com’s merchant clients more transaction processing options, including digital escrow.
• This official partnership announcement comes a year after Checkout.com and Shieldpay first started collaborating.

Global payments platform Checkout.com and digital payments solutions provider Shieldpay have aligned this week. The two have joined forces to offer B2B merchants more transaction processing options.

In addition to straight-through processing, or processing transactions without manual intervention, merchants using Checkout.com will have access to Shieldpay’s payment engine and digital escrow capabilities. Shieldpay’s technology helps businesses add trust, transparency, and extra security when conducting transactions online. In an era when digital payments fraud is at an all-time high, it is essential for both the buyer and the seller to instill trust in the payments process, especially when dealing with high-value transactions.

“Together with Shieldpay, we’re bringing our merchants even more value and flexibility for their B2B transactions,” said Miyesa Hussain, Strategic Partnerships at Checkout.com. “Shieldpay’s digital escrow technology is truly innovative and further enhances the payout process for our customers. We’re excited to see where this partnership takes us.”

Shieldpay’s digital escrow tool was created to protect buyers and sellers across multiple deal types– including M&A, supply chain payments, capital raising, domain name transfers, real estate transactions, and more. The company offers KYC and KYB checks on all parties, full transparency, and flexible and efficient contracts. Leveraging this tool, Checkout.com customers can hold funds in safeguarded accounts until both the buyer and the seller are satisfied that the conditions of the transaction have been met. Once they approve the transaction, the money is then transferred to the verified merchant or the marketplace customer. Shieldpay can also help marketplaces disburse funds to submerchants.

This official partnership announcement comes a year after Checkout.com and Shieldpay first started collaborating. Shieldpay has already helped a handful of Checkout.com’s merchant clients manage complex payments. As an example, the two provide the payment flow for in-person digital payment acceptance company KodyPay*. In the arrangement, Checkout.com acts as the acquirer and provides a payment gateway facility to accept payments, while Shieldpay provides seller verification and disbursement.

“We are both on a similar mission as payments innovators and the services that our platforms offer to the market work in perfect harmony, said Shieldpay Head of Partnerships Daniel Dunne. “With these key drivers aligned, we are looking forward to the future of this partnership and growing together, and we are now envisioning new opportunities to further collaborate.”

*In other news, KodyPay announced a $5 million Pre-Series A financing round.

Photo by Bogdan Kupriets on Unsplash

• SEON is giving away its fraud prevention tools for free.
• The free tier will include up to 2,000 API calls each month at a rate of two queries per second.
• “We’re determined to tackle fraud head on,” said SEON CEO and Co-founder Tamas Kadar. “This version will help us to serve a greater number of online businesses than ever before, and it is a major step towards building a truly fraud free world.”

Online fraud prevention platform SEON‘s mission is to democratize the fight against online fraud for businesses of all sizes. Today, the Hungary-based company is furthering its efforts toward this goal by giving away fraud prevention tools for free.

The Forever Free version of its online fraud prevention software will support up to 2,000 API calls each month at a rate of two queries per second and includes email support from SEON’s customer service agents.

“We’re determined to tackle fraud head on,” said SEON CEO and Co-founder Tamas Kadar. “This version will help us to serve a greater number of online businesses than ever before, and it is a major step towards building a truly fraud free world.”

SEON has always offered businesses free access to its technology via a 14-day free trial. Starting today, after a user’s trial period expires, they will automatically be converted to SEON’s Forever Free plan. Businesses that want more capabilities can convert to SEON’s Pro plan, which offers more API calls and responses around 10 queries per second, for businesses with higher transaction volumes and a need for a faster speed.

“As a company, we make it tough for fraudsters by intelligently combining real-time social signals, phone, email, and IP lookup details with device intelligence and machine learning to uncover fraud patterns and discover revenue opportunities. We enable fraud prevention teams to go further with access to insightful, real-time data from one source.” 

SEON doesn’t think of itself as a typical fraud prevention company. The company’s business model is based on a product-led growth (PLG) strategy via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, which makes the technology more accessible to a wider range of businesses.

“Sadly, for too long, this level of protection has only been available at a very high price point. That’s why for years, we’ve strived to make our service as accessible as possible. Through our ‘forever free’ option we’re able to go even further in that effort,” Kadar added.

The second half of the year has been a busy one for SEON. In the past couple of months, SEON has formed partnerships with SaaS anti-money laundering company, Lucinity and AI-powered decisioning platform, Provenir. And in the last few weeks, the company has made several updates to its system, including improving the accuracy of its IP, BIN, email, phone, and platform checks.  

Photo by Neenu Vimalkumar on Unsplash

Sometimes “futuretech” means technology that helps ensure that we actually have a future!

This week we’re taking a look at recent initiatives in the fintech world to help promote sustainability. These efforts have been growing as more and more companies respond to customer concerns about the impact of their financial behavior on the climate. From technology that helps consumers measure and track their carbon footprint to new payment cards that eschew plastic for renewable, environmentally-friendly materials, businesses in the fintech industry have pursued a wide variety of strategies in support of “climate consciousness.”

The news that the Bank of Ireland has begun issuing new bio-sourced debit cards is one of the latest examples of this trend. The cards are made from 82% bio-source renewable materials such as field corn and decompose in months – compared to plastic, which lasts for hundreds of years. The cards will be available to both personal and business customers and the Bank of Ireland expects its entire portfolio to be switched over to the bio-sourced cards by 2026.

“The environmental credentials of these bio-sourced cards are exceptionally strong and with 60,000 already being used by third-level students, we will now radically expand the rollout across our entire cards business in Ireland and the U.K.,” Bank of Ireland Chief Sustainability & Investor Relations Officer Eamonn Hughes said.

The Bank of Ireland expects to save 17 tons of CO1 and nearly four and a half tons of plastic every year with the new initiative. The Bank first issued bio-sourced debit cards for third level students in September 2020. In addition to the new bio-sourced cards, the Bank of Ireland also announced that it was upgrading its card designs to make it easier for users to correctly insert the cards in machines and ATMs.

The decision to pursue bio-sourced cards is based in part on research the bank conducted on young shoppers over the past year. The Bank learned that 63% of those in Ireland between the ages of 18-25 have become “more aware of shopping sustainably” over the past 12 months. Additionally, more than half of those surveyed, 54%, said they were “happy to pay more for sustainable goods.”

In other fintech sustainability news, Zurich-based F10 is hosting what it calls the world’s first climate-focused fintech incubator in the Nordic region. The six-month program will feature startups from the U.K., Israel, Sweden, Lithuania, Switzerland, and Canada that are innovating in areas ranging from sustainable investing to waste trading. Head of F10 Nordics and Baltics Anders Norlin said, “the variety of climate fintech solutions presented reinforces the interest for more innovative solutions in the needed transition towards a net zero society.”

The startups participating are: Azzera (Canada), Eljun (Sweden), GreenGrowth (U.K.), OCO (Lithuania), Spritju (Sweden), SustainSME (Switzerland), Weather It Is (Israel), and Xworks (U.K.).

U.K.-based digital challenger bank Tandem launched its Tandem Marketplace this week. The new offering is a consumer-based hub for information on how to live a more sustainable life with tips on everything from retrofitting your home to keeping energy costs low. For example, among the tools available on the Marketplace are an EPC (“energy performance certificate”) checker to help U.K. homeowners understand their EPC and learn ways to improve it.

“We are in the middle of a climate crisis and a cost-of-living crisis,” Tandem Chief Impact and Marketing Officer Georgina Whalley said. “People shouldn’t have to choose between heating and eating. This is why we have created our Marketplace, people need more information and support to make greener choices.”

Tandem Marketplace is only the most recent sustainability initiative the bank has pursued. In September, Tandem Bank announced that it had joined the Coalition for the Energy Efficiency of Buildings (CEEB) sponsored by the Green Finance Institute. The coalition consists of more than 300 businesses and organizations from finance, policy, and civil society, working to develop a market for financing net zero carbon and climate resilient buildings in the U.K.

“This is a brilliant opportunity for Tandem to join leaders across a range of sectors to develop green and innovative financial products that will address the retrofit investment gap,” Tandem Bank CEO Susie Aliker said. “With over 28 million homes in need of retrofitting by 2050, collaboration is key to successfully tackling Net Zero targets.

Founded in 2014, Tandem is one of the U.K.’s original digital challenger banks.

Photo by Mahima

• Digital banking solutions provider Moneythor launched a new engagement tool for wealth managers.
• The new offering is designed to help wealth managers leverage client data to create more personalized experiences that help customers build their wealth.
• Moneythor was a finalist in this year’s Finovate Awards in the “Best Fintech Partnership” category.

Moneythor, a Finovate Awards finalist this year in the “Best Fintech Partnership” category (in collaboration with Standard Chartered), unveiled a new tool for wealth managers this week. The offering is an add-on module to its data-driven personalization and digital engagement solution, and is designed to help wealth managers increase loyalty and NPS, as well as lower the costs and boosting revenues.

Moneythor’s digital engagement tool aggregates a sizable range of user data – from retail accounts and payment cards to lending products and investment portfolios, and more. This data is then processed by the Moneythor platform to generate and provide insights, recommendations, and alerts – at scale and in real-time. This gives customers the kind of contextual and actionable information they need in order to better manage and grow their finances. Customers can also take advantage of the configurable conduit to update their risk profile, compare their portfolio’s performance against model portfolios, as well as consider and incorporate investment advice.

“Adding the ability to deliver personalized experiences across investment journeys was a natural evolution of our solution aiming to address the needs of financial services customers across all segments including retail, SME and now wealth,” co-founder and CEO of Moneythor Olivier Berthier said. “We are excited by the interest we have seen from our clients and partners for these new features, and how important personalization and digital engagement are now to their wealth management strategies.”

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Singapore, Moneythor has spent the fall of 2022 inking partnerships with the likes of Trust Bank, a digital financial institution headquartered in Singapore, and Australia’s National Australia Bank (NAB). In May, Moneythor teamed up with Finovate alum Thought Machine, which selected Moneythor among the initial partners for its Integration Library, a suite of curated integrations that are interoperable with Thought Machine’s Vault Core. Moneythor began this year announcing collaborations with The Saudi Investment Bank (SAIB) and carbon footprint tracking company Cogo.

In addition to its Singapore headquarters, Moneythor maintains offices in Paris, Sydney, Dubai, and Tokyo. The company’s solutions are used by financial institutions around the world, including in developing markets such as Indonesia, India, and Malaysia.

Photo by Adhitya Andanu