#TheCEOSpotlightSeries: Faster Payments is a Reality for Banks and Their Global Payment Vendors

As the CEO and co-founder of PayCommerce, Abdul Naushad, has been the driving force for excellence in service, business strategy, and product innovation since the company’s inception. Under Abdul’s leadership, PayCommerce launched its cloud based global payment hub to provide business-to-business and business-to-consumer cross border commerce. The following questions were posed by Wayne Brown, Managing Partner of The Walker Group, in an effort to better understand the players in the global payment space and how these companies partner with banks to accelerate cross border payments. Abdul’s responses are indicated below:

What key factors contribute to the complexity of cross border payments when compared to domestic payments?

Meeting the demand for cross border payments continues to grow year over year. It is common today for companies to send payments cross border to meet client demand. However, there are several differentiating factors, but three primary factors stands out from a complexity perspective for cross border payments verses domestic payments. A primary component of cross border payments include the following:

• Comprehensive and complex regulatory compliance diligence process (involving AML, OFAC, PEP, Dodd-Frank etc.);
• Requires a set of correspondent banking partnerships for fulfillment of payments in a given country;
• Foreign Exchange conversion to various currencies. There needs to be an awareness of the complexities of foreign exchange and the regulatory requirements around this:

What important factors should be considered when banks partners with global payment providers?

There are a few vendors that provide cross border remittances services to bank. However in order to maximize the value of the partnership there are a number of factors to be considered in the evaluation process when selecting a partner. The questions below are just a sampling of some things to consider

• Does the provider have a comprehensive global reach aligned to the banks needs through provider’s own correspondent network to support the operations?
• Does the provider support both disbursements and collections across various countries and what are the settlement cycles in these countries?
• Can the provider deliver competitive FX capabilities for regular and exotic currencies?
• Does provider have the technology capabilities and a platform to make the transaction processing seamless with the banking systems for bi-directional data exchange?

Can banks provide greater value between buyers and sellers in the global remittance market?

Banks continue to play a pivotal role when providing services for their customers. Sending money cross border whether real time or non urgent through the local clearing system provides value for their clients when conducting business globally. Banks can certainly add value by providing other value added services including trade financing, factoring, FX hedging, escrow services, reporting among several others.

In what specific ways can global payment providers assist banks in providing value to corporate customers and their trading partners?

Global Payment providers can outsource the complex and expensive processes that are involved in regulatory screenings, Know Your Customer, global payment operations, customer transaction reconciliation among many such others. The providers can help bank focus on its customers and core services that only a bank can deliver.

In what ways does PayCommerce partner with banks to provide opportunities for to extend their global payment footprint?

• PayCommerce offers a next generation cloud-based payment hub and payment solutions for enterprise based needs in B2B, B2C, and C2B payments. By plugging into the hub, banks can have access to a wide number correspondent banks that are already within the PayCommerce Customer Network. Our integrated payment hub supports multiple payment types and settlements across various countries. We continue to innovate and improve our products and services to deliver the solutions that empower our customer’s success and their financial supply chain.

Where do you see the role of Faster Payments becoming a factor with Global Money Movement Solutions?

Faster payments are becoming a next generation framework within a few countries. As these capabilities evolve and more countries get on the band wagon, it is then a natural progression to enable cross border payment clearing in near real-time. There are several global companies that would benefit from the Faster Payment capabilities for both domestic and cross border capabilities. We are working with our partner banks to launch a next generation platform that would enable a cross border faster payment framework.

The Walker Group provides business development and advisory services to FinTech companies. Our varied market segments enables us to identify synergies and opportunities to stimulate growth as we partner with our clients to build their business. Through our one-on-one CEO Advisory Services we have helped companies develop and execute a marketing strategy to attract both new partnerships and capital.