PCM Vol.1 - Issue 7

Exciting thought leader stories about happenings in the payments world | + Insight into In-house recruiting
PCM
Vol 1. Issue 7
Dec. 2015
YOUR GATEWAY TO THE WORLD OF PAYMENTS
Finacial Services in
Modern Times

Welcome to the 7th issue!
You are reading the seventh issue of the Payments & Cards Magazine. In order
to keep our clients, associates, subscribers and all payments professionals in the
loop, we have decided to create a monthly magazine, now already in its seventh
issue.
The seventh issue features events in the Payments industry, thought leader
articles, top jobs and more! The magazine is currently expanding its scope and will
cover topics such as, Q&A, product/ service reviews, statistics & facts, educational
articles and other great content in the following editions!
The magazine is also a good way for you to keep in touch with what is happening
in the Payments world as well as like minded professionals. If you haven’t checked
in with us lately, we think you will be surprised and excited about all the wonderful
things happening in the industry.We hope to hear from you soon, and we welcome
your feedback!
Throughout each issue, there will be descriptions and lists of events within the
Payments industry happening this month, as well as announcements and latest
developments & partnerships. If you are a thought leader and would like to be
featured or present your thoughts, please get in touch.
On the other hand, as a business, the magazine offers you various advertising
possibilities. Want to learn more? Just contact us!
If you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please address them to the
editors:
Amir Abdin - amir@paymentsandcardsnetwork.com
Duc Dang - duc@paymentsandcardsnetwork.com
The Payments & Cards Network team wishes you good reading!
002

Contents
thoughtleaders
spotlight
14
3
8 10 14
STORIES
4
8
10
12
Thought Leaders: Unlocking Wallet Payments in Sub-Sahara
Jide Akindele continues the series about the development of the mobile
payments industry in a promising part of Africa.
Thought Leaders: 10 things to do to keep your customer satisfied
Nick Fox presents key actions to keep your business’ customers engaged and
loyal.
Thought Leaders: E-commerce in Europe
Yves Lalieu discusses the new e-commerce environment in Europe and its
accompanying challenges.
Thought Leaders: A day in the life of an in-house recruiter
Magaret Buj gives us a deep insight behind the scenes of tasks and challenges
as an in-house recruiter at Yieldify.
14
17
18
Spotlight: Paystand
We talked to the makers of the payment-as-aservice
platform.
Hot Jobs
Looking for a new role and exciting challenges?
Check out our latest job opportunities!
Events
Here we showcase the most exciting upcoming
events in the payment industry.
003

By Jide Akindele
November 30, 2015
Thought Leaders Corner
global
business
This is the third edition of Jide Akindele’s series
focusing on the developments in the payment
market in Sub-Sahara Africa
Unlocking Mobile Wallet Payments
in Sub-Sahara Africa
With the ubiquity of mobile phones
across Sub-Sahara Africa, it is
apparent that many lives have
improved on the communication
level. More and more people across the
continent are gaining access to the internet
additionally enriching themselves with
information from across the globe. According
to a recent GSMA report as at December 2014,
Sub-Saharan Africa has 146 million registered
wallet accounts of which 61.9 million are active
accounts.
The growth of mobile wallet payments is fuelled
by the limitations of other payment methods
and the accessibility to majority of the Sub-
Saharan population.
The Keys to unlocking adoptability
Interoperability: In the West African region most
of the Mobile wallet rollouts have been closed
looped, with continuous fighting for dominance
amongst providers, the up take has not been
as dynamic as predicted considering the total
population. Lessons from East Africa particularly
Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda show that there is a
clear advantage in interoperability, and that this
is a recipe for growth and stimulation of mobile
wallet payments across the region. There is
more value in being able transact through other
providers as illustrated in (Figure 1). Results have
been far reaching in the 4 countries that have
stepped up to the plate, transaction volumes
have risen and continue to grow.
© SES S.A
004

Loyalty incentives: Incentives drive repeat
purchases and recommendations, if mobile
wallet users know that they are bound for some
kind of incentive for being loyal users, then it
is bound to fuel continuous use of the wallet
medium. Many non-adopters currently do not
see the full advantage of using a mobile wallet
over cash or other mediums, as they cannot see
any price differentiation, therefore, a compelling
proposition must be in place to stimulate usage.
Consumer behaviour data: “Big data not
just transactions” should be seen as a great
opportunity to get direct access to consumer’s
behaviour, this in itself is a gold mine. The Sub-
Sahara region has been plagued with minimal
accurate consumer data. Such rich data would
help forecasters provide meaningful analytics,
for local and international investors and other
business decision makers. Big data as a strategy
would stimulate future growth of both B2B and
B2C activities.
Consumer education: a lot of consumers
within the Sub-Sahara African region still prefer
cash purchases face to face and take away what
they have paid for, due to concerns of security.
However, this is also the case with merchants
concerned with fraud and its impact on cost of
sales. Consumer education and assurances that
mobile wallet payments are a secure payment
channel, would most likely allay fears. In the case
of merchants, fraud reduction is highly reduced
especially issues surrounding “charge backs” and
“not present” M-commerce online purchases
which is a steady growth area in Sub-Sahara
Africa.
Competitive low fee structure: This is high
on the agenda for many existing or would be
merchants looking for alternative payments. A
high fee or complicated structure would be seen
as a barrier to entry, therefore, minimising the
chances for rapid growth. The same applies to
consumers, it has been stated that some users
cannot afford the cost of maintaining a bank
account due to cost. The strategy for mobile
wallets providers should always be to reach
volumes at low costs as a means to incentivise
the growth of wallet uptake.
Content availability: Content is king! If
consumers have a variety of services and
products to purchase with their wallets, growth
adoption will follow. As it stands P2P, Airtime
Top-up, bulk pay and Bill pay dominates the
volume of transactions to date. M-commerce is
set to follow, with the introduction of a lot more
variety of services. As recent as November 2015,
a large well known Middle Eastern airline tied up
with a mobile wallet provider in Kenya, enabling
acceptance of mobile payments for flights. This
is indeed exciting news, other major service
providers around the globe should set to follow,
due to relative ease and cost effectiveness of such
services for both the providers and consumers.
Conclusion
There are several keys required to unlock mobile
wallet adoption in Sub-Sahara Africa, not a single
key. Despite the current successes witnessed in
the region, a good strategic mix will ensure that
adoption growth would continue in an upward
trend. In short the ecosystem must look into the
pressure points of the consumers in order to get
their continuous attention and loyalty.
005

MMIT, Mobile Media Info Tech, is a mobile payment processor with a mission to
revolutionize the mobile payment process.
MMIT focuses on the Sub-Sahara Africa market and partners with financial institutions
and international merchants to provide value added services to mobile wallet providers
and users. Please visit MMIT at www.mmitonline.com.
Jide Akindele, Founder,
MMIT
Jide is a visionary entrepreneur with a deep and wide
knowledge of technologies based in the mobile money and
payment transaction space. Mr. Akindele has held various
directorship positions for companies in West Africa and has
worked in USA, Nigeria and the UK since 2007.

eCommerce
Africa Confex
WATCH OUR VIDEO
commerce
Africa
Follow @eCommerceConfex and @KineticEventsSA on
Twitter for daily updates and news feeds.
Advisory Panel
RAPHAEL AFAEDOR
EMILIAN POPA
VINNY LINGHAM
17 & 18 FEBRUARY 2016 | THE CTICC, CAPE TOWN
WWW.ECOMMERCE-AFRICA.COM
JOE OKLEBERRY
SIMDUL SHAGAYA
CAREN GENTHNER-KAPPESZ
Sponsors,Exhibitors & Partners
DiGAME
Co-Founder, Jumia/CEO &
Co-Founder, Supermart
Principle, Digital Growth
Africa & Middle East
Co-Founder and CEO,
Gyft
Internet Strategist,
Naspers
Founder and CEO,
Konga Online Shopping
CEO,
MIH/ Naspers
An award winning and
celebrated businessman in
Africa, Raphael heads up the
biggest online retail platform
in Nigeria, Supermart and has
taken the African business
scene by storm. His previous
work with one of the biggest
online companies, Jumnia,
launched him to success, and
cultivated his passion for Africa
and its development.
Emilian’s passion for
eCommerce and online
trends shines through when
he speaks. He describes
himself as an eCommerce
and global entrepreneur and
has headed up some of the
biggest companies in South
Africa, as well as the rest of
the world including Rocket
Internet, Groupon and Zando
among others. He is currently
living between South Africa
and the Middle East with his
investment initiatives.
Most will instantly recognise
Vinny straight from the small
screen and his position on
South Africa’s Dragons Den,
and others will know him
as the co-founder of some
of the biggest initiatives in
online tech in South Africa:
Clicks2Customers, Gyft and
Silicon Cape Initiative. He
has since moved to the actual
Silcon Valley and is rubbing
shoulders with big names
like Richard Branson among
others.
It has been said that anything
that this man shares will be
deep and thought provoking.
Joe used to be Mary Meeker’s
right hand man, and was part
of the team that took LinkedIn
and MailRu public. Described
as the most experienced man
in internet in Africa, his skills
and expertise are in high
demand and he was pounced
on by Naspers to hold a
position here in Cape Town.
Sim is the Founder and
Executive Chairman of
DealDey Limited. He has over
13 years experience in New
Media & Investment Banking
and worked with leaders such
as MicroStrategy, Lucent
Technologies and Real
Networks. Sim also served
as the Africa lead for Google.
He graduated from George
Washington University,
Dartmouth College & holds an
MBA from Harvard Business
School.
Former CEO of Kalahari.
com, Caren was relocated
to Cape Town from Berlin,
with prior roles including
a nine year stint at eBay
as general manager for
shopping.com Germany, and
as a director and GM for eBay
Express Germany. Caren
has also worked as COO
at brands4friends, an eBay
subsidiary in Germany.
The eCommerce Africa Confex gathers 1500+ Exhibition Visitors, 70+ Sponsors & Exhibitors, 500+ Conference
Delegates and 90+ Guest speakers.
Connecting the regions’ leading merchants; major retailers; brands; developers; designers and eCommerce experts,
the summit is focused on exchanging inspired and innovative ideas, discussing emerging trends and making lasting
connections.
Organisers, Kinetic, have secured some of the best global solution providers who are ready to provide the African
continent with great products and services at the most exclusive and by far the largest Commerce gathering on the
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To get involved with the show, fast track your sales or even network with industry leaders;
Click here to get your free expo pass OR Register for a full delegate pass at 15% discount.
For general enquiries and/or information about sponsorship, contact marcia@kineticevents.net

Trends merchant services market
10 things you should do to keep your customer satisfied
Fighting for new business is a
priority for many organisations.
But keeping your existing
customers can actually be more
rewarding and cost your business far
less. Existing clients are the bread and
butter of any business. But how often
are they taken for granted and virtually
ignored - apart from making sure they
pay on time - until they decide to take
their business elsewhere. Follow these
steps to make sure your customers
remain engaged and loyal:
1. Customers are special – never treat
them as if they are commodities
While it may be true, your clients
never want to think they are simply
a means to your ends. Remember
your customers are people first and
foremost and should always be treated
with respect and consideration. This
notion should directly influence how
you communicate and work with them.
every day or even every week, but do
make an effort to talk with one of your
best customers every day; it does not
have to be about business. Everyone
likes to be made to feel special and you
can go a long way to developing a deep
relationship with a just little effort each
day
3. Be willing to go beyond the call of
duty
Aim to over deliver. Try to do a little
more than they expect and delight
them by your commitment to their
business. It is hard to put a value on
that dedication, but many customers
will appreciate your willingness to go
the extra mile – and remember this
when contracts need renewing.
4. Honesty is the best policy
There are going to be times when you
don’t understand why something has
gone wrong. Be up front about it. Your
customers will respect the fact you
can be open with them. But make sure
you are already working the problem,
and you have a solution. Honesty is
important, but competence is even
more so.
5. Offer a loyalty scheme
Loyalty schemes don’t need to be
formal structures and processes; they
can exist within your head. Make sure
your customer knows you appreciate
their loyalty; make them aware that
they are close to some incentive or
special that isn’t available to all your
customers.
2. Check-in with clients regularly
People like to be reassured that all is
well and that you are accessible. You
don’t need to talk to every customer
Axcess your partners for payments
008

6. Take some time to get to know
your best clients
During the sales process you may have
gone out of your way to cultivate a new
client. Don’t waste the sweet talk you
shared earlier. Think of each customer
as your partner; what are their interests
and how do they matter to them. Do
they have a favourite team and does it
really hurt when they lose? Using this
knowledge can make a real difference
to how they feel about you and your
business.
7. Think in terms of ‘lifetime value’
Never think of a client in terms of their
last job or payment. Think of them
in terms of their value over a lifetime.
What might their business be worth to
you over an extended time? Appreciate
them as an investment that can keep on
giving. Look after your investments and
they will look after you.your customer
knows you appreciate their loyalty;
make them aware that they are close
to some incentive or special that isn’t
available to all your customers.
8. Make the link between your
business and your customer
Keep your clients in mind when your
business reaches a milestone: an
important date, a new employee, an
award or new client. Make sure your
existing customers know that it is only
due to their support that your business
is where it is and you could not have
done it without them.
9. When things go wrong be ready to
put them right – quickly!
Invariably, things go wrong. When this
happens be quick to solve the problem
and keep your client informed. This
highlights that you are on top of any
issue and they are special in being
kept advised. Think about having some
incentive available as a recompense
– even if a fault was not your own
– customers will be more willing to
forgive and forget if you make even a
small gesture towards them.
10. Treat your customer as you would
like to be treated yourself
You would be cross if something you
expected from a supplier was late or
didn’t work. So, put yourself in their
shoes when you deal within your
organisation and make sure everyone
appreciates how important it is to
get the job done correctly. Managing
customers isn’t just about sweet talk;
make sure everyone understands how
important your customer is to everyone
in your organisation!
About Axcess Merchant Services
Axcess work with a wide range of banking partners that allow them to provide businesses like yours with exactly
the right banking partner, tailored for your individual needs. Based in the UK, and working across a wide range
of vertical markets, the Axcess team has an enviable reputation for providing reliable and effective payment
solutions for discerning business owners.
Nick Fox
by
Managing Director, Axcess Merchant
Services
Nick is the Managing Director of Axcess Merchant Services, and
a highly regarded salesman and team motivator. He has made a
specialism out of turning impersonal institutions into responsive
business partners. Nick knows how important it is to treat each new
contact as if they were the most important person in the world!
009

E-commerce
By Yves Lalieu
November 30, 2015
© pixabay
e-commerce in Europe, new environment, new challenges
We are at the verge of major changes in the European
payment market, e-commerce has reached maturity and
mobile commerce and payment is now possible. However
there is still a long way to go to have a smooth payment
experience. If the Uber In App payment can be seen as a
model for convenience, it still limited as it does not accept
the local debit cards.
In the coming months two major regulations will shake up the
European e-commerce environment
• As of 9 December all transactions will have the same
interchange regardless if it’s a proximity or e-commerce
transactions.
• The PSD2 will allow third parties to have access the bank
account.
The new interchange will drive issuers to review their
e-commerce security as the e-commerce fraud rate may be a
killer in regards of the 20 or 30 basis points interchange. On the
PSD 2 side third parties will now be allowed to access the bank
account. This is a great opportunity for new disruptive fintech
companies, even if the customer “strong” authentication and
the resulting liability are still vague and need to be clarified
urgently.
The European patchwork
Unfortunately we all know that a borderless e-commerce is a
dream and that the European reality is much more complex:
different languages, different regulations and a payment
environment still deeply influenced by the legacy of the
domestic schemes.
Credit cards and PayPal may commonly used the same way
throughout Europe, however if you want to maximise your
turnover you must offer debit payment, and that’s where you
will discover the European payment patchwork.
Convenience versus security, solving the big dilemma
We have two main models around Europe for e-commerce
the “High Convenience Model” using low security product like
MasterCard or Visa, and the “Secure Model” using high security
010

product like Maestro or various domestic brands.
The Secure model is always using 3D Secure (or equivalent
technology like Ideal) to stop fraud. Unfortunately at the
expense of convenience and sometime transactions
conversions.
The problem is a Cornelian dilemma if you are offering
convenience you will be hit by fraud and if you want to secure
the transactions you will not maximise your sales.
• Merchants experiencing very little fraud (because they
are excellent in managing it or they are in a vertical not
fraud prone) can continue without 3D Secure
• Merchants having low fraud can use Dynamic 3D Secure
• Merchants who cannot demonstrate their ability to
manage fraud must use 3D Secure.
Working this way would reduce fraud cost to an acceptable
minimum for all payment stakeholders and deliver the
required convenience for In App payment. And this is feasible
for all products Visa, MasterCard, Maestro all domestic
brands, SEPA Credit Transfer or “Ideal like” solution.
Yves Lalieu
Founder of Transfeo
Yves Lalieu has worked 20 years at
MasterCard. In charge of Maestro
product management he has
introduced Maestro on e-commerce.
Working with merchants leaders
in their industry he has developed
innovative solution like Dynamic 3D
Secure or PINless solutions in the
proximity environment (Parking,
Vending, etc…)
As we can see solutions exist to bring e and m payment to
the next level in Europe, and we can easily picture what will
be the future of digital payment. The remaining question is
who will build this future in the new payment environment
banks or FinTech?
About Transfeo
Yves has created Transfeo Consulting to help all stakeholders to optimize their payments solutions. Transfeo
philosophy is to focus on customer experience and merchants needs to deliver added value to the whole
payment chain. Transfeo has a strong experience of the merchant needs built with leader in their industry.
011

A day in the life
of an in-house
recruiter
Margaret Buj is a Head of Recruitment at
Yieldify and Interview Coach. She has 11 years
of international recruitment experience and
in the last 9 years she’s helped hundreds of
professionals across the globe get jobs and
promotions they really wanted.
Margaret Buj
Head of Recruitment at
Yieldify & Interview Coach
There are 2 things I will see every day –
an inbox full of applications and emails
from candidates and managers (there
are days I receive about 250 emails).
In any given day, I will meet with line
managers to discuss specific roles or
candidates, I will source and interview
candidates, negotiate salaries and make
offers. I’d also respond to up to 10
recruitment agencies who contact us
daily – these approaches never stop but
we operate a direct sourcing model and
only use a few select agencies for hard
to fill engineering roles.
I also find events to attend to expand
my network or as a team, we’d
brainstorm ideas for e.g. improving
candidate experience or getting more
quality candidates for specific roles.
We get a lot of applications every day
but some roles are quite niche and I
only get good candidates by finding
them and approaching on LinkedIn or
by employee referrals. You’d think all
candidates who read a job description
would pay attention to the minimum
qualifications before clicking the ‘Apply
Now’ button. This is definitely not
always the case and we receive lots of
applications of candidates who have
zero or hardly any relevant experience
for a specific position.
I do use LinkedIn to conduct searches
- I not only find specific people with a
certain skill set, but I ask other people in
my network who they know. Of course
employee referrals are a great source,
too. As I speak to candidates, we can
quickly ascertain whether what Yieldify
has to offer to them will fit their needs.
It is a two-way street. Yes, in these
economic times candidates may be
more flexible, but we want to hire smart,
motivated, talented people from top 20
universities, who want to work for us.
I might have to talk to 10 or even more
people to find one or two really good
people who will work within our culture
– it is a very fast paced environment and
we’ve grown from 2 to 155 people in
2.5 years, so change is the only constant
here. Once I have completed a phone
interview and we both feel comfortable
we should move ahead, we arrange
interviews with the hiring manager
and a few others within the business.
Typically, the candidate will meet the
hiring manager and a couple of other
managers or peers and on some
occasions, there will be a presentation
or a case study involved. In an ideal
world, the candidate is a perfect fit and
the hiring process runs as smooth as
silk. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal
world so many times, even after the final
interview, you need to start the process
from scratch – sometimes a candidate
will drop out of the process for personal
reasons or they will accept another
offer.
Why do I do it? For one, helping
people progress in their career is a
wholly satisfying experience. Secondly,
helping Yieldify grow by finding the
best and brightest brings a sense of
personal satisfaction. Being able to
directly impact a company’s success by
ensuring the right people are in place is
an opportunity few other careers offer.
The challenge of reworking your strategy
and game plan in an ever-changing
environment means that I rarely have
the same work day twice. When I talk to
some of our new hires who love working
for us and are doing a great job, I do feel
a sense of satisfaction that I played a key
role in getting of them to work for us.
012
Yieldify believes that marketers want to convert
visitors, easily. We are specialists at creating
more conversions in the lower funnel using
our Exit-Intent Technology. Yieldify’s technology
simplifies the marketers’ ability to predict and
adapt to visitor intent across all devices.

Spotlight
Think you have what it takes to start a business in a
super-hot market?
PCM takes a close look at some of the most
innovative and promising startup companies in the
payment industry.
Using Your

“WE BELIEVE
IT’S A NOBLE
GOAL TO
HELP CHANGE
HAPPEN”
Jeremy Almond, co-founder & CEO, Paystand
Many different financial
services have made big
gains over the last years.
Oftentimes those are mainly
focused on business-to-consumer
transactions. However, there is also
another immense market for payments
in the business-to-business (B2B)
world. To this day, B2B payments are
known to be inefficient and expensive.
Paying invoices or moving funds
across borders can be very costly for
businesses and is full of uncertainties.
We speak with Jeremy Almond, cofounder
and CEO of Paystand, a next
generation payment & eCommerce
checkout system enabling businesses
to handle their payments in a more
efficient manner and at lower costs.
Where did your idea for Paystand
originate?
At a very high level Paystand uses
modern Internet technology to
transform B2B payments. Today in the
U.S. about half of all payments are still
done via paper cheque.
In my particular background I have
spent a long time working with business
technology companies. And I’ve seen
them try ‘crazy things’ to get away from
paper cheques. They would sometimes
build some complicated business
processes on top of ACH or move over
to credit cards, which can get really
expensive. For example, when sending
a big invoice of $50.000 you might be
charged 3% just to get paid. On the
consumer side there is a lot of great
innovation going on with payments
but there really isn’t something yet
that looks like the modern Internet on
the business side. Something that is
basically nearly instant, very low cost,
cross border and also completely
open. All the principles you know
the Internet to be. That’s where the
idea for Paystand came from. We
started building the software in 2013,
therefore, we are still a pretty young
company. But, we feel really blessed
since we’ve been growing very fast and
serving different companies from small
businesses to very large enterprises.
We just hope we can grow the business
for us as well as our customers. Our
goal is to make business payments
adapt to the Internet and modernize
the process.
How would you define your
company culture?
For us as a tech company, our culture
is very much focused on innovation,
openness and fairness. All of those
things are partly what the Internet
stands for. Bringing these values both
to our team and our customers is a very
important task. We are very customer
centric and for that reason we also made
our business model very transparent.
Since we think the industry needs
transparency all of our team members
live and breath that attitude as well.
When thinking about innovation and
openness, our team members are very
passionate about what they do. We
think that improving financial services,
which are at the heart of our economic
system, is a meaningful purpose. Our
team members with years of experience
coming from either tech companies or
financial services backgrounds came to
this start-up because we think we can
actually improve the system.
What differentiates Paystand from
other payment gateways in the B2B
payments arena?
Basically our product is centered
around a model we call payment-asa-service
platform. This concept adds
value for the business on top of seeing
payments only as a utility. To be more
specific, we mainly do three things
that separate us from other payment
gateways.
014

First, we have a fairly flexible platform
that enables a business with their own
existing business process to layer us
into their website, their invoice or their
enterprise mobile application while
still maintaining full control of their
customer experience. When looking at
companies such as PayPal or Square,
these consumer facing companies
seem to move their business into one
specific flow. We can go behind the
scenes because we don’t think it’s our
customer but the business’ customer.
Thus, we treat this relationship very
honorably. Secondly, we have this
very broad technology platform that
uses different payment rails. When
working with us, businesses have the
option to use an electronic cash or
an electronic cheque system that are
both very unique and proprietary to
Paystand. Additionally, we also allow
choice. Customers who want to use a
card for certain customers can do so.
They can use Paystand to have a single
point of reporting and a single point of
settlement. In case businesses want
to use a traditional card system for
some other customers for convenience
purposes they can do that as well.
Furthermore, if businesses want to
work with more innovative things
around digital cheques, bank to bank
transfers or electronic cash, Paystand
offers that option for their customers
too. Paystand provides the platform,
which offers many different pipes and
the business can choose which specific
ones they want to use. In the end we
provide them with all the tools which
they can use to their advantage.
The third and perhaps most interesting
thing Paystand is known for is that
its entire business model is different
from common players in payment
industry. We don’t make our profit
from transaction fees. Instead we
are a software company providing
software licenses and businesses can
use Paystand as much as they want.
Basically we give you 0 per cent network
fees that you can benefit from. If you use
our eCheque or eCash network, there
is no transaction percentage fees. This
is much more efficient for businesses
when they need to move large amounts
of money. Even if businesses want to
use the old system the costs are still
going to be dramatically lower since we
give people wholesale rates.
What are the key hurdles to grow
your business?
We believe to our core that payments
will go completely digital on the
business side. It’s going to take
quite some time though. We started
Paystand as a long-term company,
one that can make an impact by
methodically serving our customers.
Looking at hurdles, today we are
currently only operating in the U.S.. We
want to serve these customers well and
make sure Paystand has delivered the
best customer experience and solution
possible. From a broader perspective
to grow, Paystand obviously wants to
operate on a global scale. For that we
must work with the regulators in various
different countries with different sets
of rules related to moving money in a
safe, compliant and secure manner. We
take the customer’s trust very carefully
and see that as a privilege and honor to
serve them in the best way.
What opportunities do you see in
the payments industry?
Looking at the opportunity in the
industry, we’ve been very early
proponents of blockchain. If you look
a year or two ago that was very much
the bleeding edge. Now we are starting
to see other financial services whether
they are banks, exchanges or remittance
focused companies starting to realize
that blockchain is transformative
technology. If considered thoughtfully,
we think the technology of blockchain
ledger is world changing. It does solve
real financial problems but it will take
time to bleed out into the different part
of the system. When it does though it
will make the system more efficient.
We are really excited about that. To
name a few, for example settlement
is very slow today on the traditional
rails and in the U.S. ACH is very slow as
well. Another example is cross border
transactions today are very hard to
execute and they are expensive. With
the blockchain technology we think a
number of financial services can be
more efficient than a lot of the existing
legacy infrastructures. So we want to
apply the new technology in such ways
to enable businesses to pay each other,
so that their financial systems can settle
to each other and ultimately make the
system more open and more efficient.
However, finding the appropriate
A snapshot of the Paystand team located in the Silicon Valley office.
015

alance between the secure and
insecure elements will take some time
for some financial companies. But we
pay a lot of attention to building trust
and security measures to drive this
innovation.
Are you currently working on any
exciting projects within Paystand?
Over the next twelve months, we will
start selectively thinking about what
other countries can we serve outside
the U.S. Being able to provide and
operate something that works well
in other countries is important to us.
There are vastly different payment
systems in different countries so
that’s why we are pretty excited about
innovative technology like blockchain
that can help to unify the systems.
More recently we are working on
releasing a new feature of our eCheque
product, which is one of our most used
facet of our product platform. This
feature will enable direct bank transfers
to more than 15.000 banks. Today we
serve approximately 80% of all the
banks in the U.S. and with this release
we’ll have direct bank payments to
15.000 banks, which is about 98% of all
banks in the U.S. We are really excited
about this in particular for our eCheque
product because it means that our
direct bank transfer has a lot of the
benefits of card payments. To be more
specific, it allows fast settlement, the
ability to do fund verifications as well as
the option to do identity verifications.
In the U.S. none of those exist on the
traditional ACH payment. Since the
traditional ACH payment system is fairly
antiquated technology. Our eCheque
product can offer the same low cost
structure of a cheque but at the same
time have all the digital advantages of
card payment. Being able to offer this
with almost all the banks in the U.S. is
very exciting for us.
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016

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Events
Date: Dec. 8-9, 2015 | London
This event is where the next
generation of early stage start ups
stand shoulder to shoulder with
established FinTech blue chips
and the emerging band of scale
ups who have been disrupting the
traditional finance scene in recent
years. Featuring over 100 exhibitors
and 2000 visitors, FCL also plays
host to a keynote auditorium with
inspirational case studies.
Date: Jan. 27-28, 2016 | Paris
This event provides the Retail
Banking professionals actionable
knowledge to succeed in the digital
era. Combining workshops and
interactive insights sessions, the
conference focuses on impactful
tech shifts such as m-banking,
branches digitisation, PSD2,
FinTechs, Blockchain...a blend
of case studies and technology
updates.
018
Date: Jan 25-26, 2016 | Copenhagen
This event will examine why the
importance of a good strategy
has never been more significant,
especially with the large increase
in new market players competing
with the traditional banks. The
conference will also discuss the
future of real-time payments
and possible risks banks need to
consider.
Date: Jan 6-7, 2016 | Las Vegas
This is an annual research
and industry event hosted by
international research firm Parks
Associates at CES in as Vegas.
This executive event features two
days of panel discussions on the
smart home, Internet of Things
and connected entertainment,
with trends and implications
for connected consumers and
opportunities for companies to
build new revenues and innovative
business models.

You think you are a good match or know
someone who is?

WE ARE HIRING
Cape Town OFFICE
Country Manager
South Africa
Where: Cape Town
Experience: 3 years +
Type: Full Time
charles@paymentsandcardsnetwork.com
You think you are a good match or know
someone who is?

2016
The Payments & Cards Network family
would like to thank you for your support
& trust in our services.
We wish you cheerful & festive times!

Payments and
Cards Network
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