The banking and financial sector is undergoing one of its most disruptive phases in its long history. New payment methods and rapidly advancing technologies combined with often fragile legacy systems means that banks are in a state of flux. They know they need to embrace change but are struggling to compete against an avalanche of new players and are paralysed by the myriad of technology options at their disposal.

The competition is more intense than ever. And that competition comes from FinTechs and established tech players that are circling to pick up the most profitable financial products and services, leaving traditional banks to fight over those that are less profitable. Their margins are shrinking and transparency is increasing. Their ability to cross-subsidise products and services is diminishing. All this is putting strain on longstanding operating models.

One of the sectors ripe for disruption is the payments sector. An overhaul of cards and/or payment systems is extremely costly and requires considerable investment at a time when margins are being eroded.

Payment innovation

Australian technology company Verrency removes the challenges of payment innovation for banks. Verrency is an open API platform with a number of pre-built services that enable issuers to offer customers a variety of bolt-on payment options such as card aggregation, device management, loyalty point and reward spend, and card controls without the need for integration into existing systems. This is a win for the issuer because there is no disruption to existing IT infrastructure. Verrency also turns the challenge of FinTech competition into an advantage for both banks and FinTechs, as it enables FinTech services to be distributed by banks - benefiting both banks, FinTechs, and most importantly - consumers.

Verrency’s robust infrastructure and ground-breaking automation demonstrably reduces deployment time, deployment risk, and operational risk – critical when dealing with payments on the issuing side.

“Verrency is essentially a ‘turbocharger’ which gives issuers a low-cost model to offer a whole host of new payment services over their existing infrastructure,” says David Link, Executive Chairman of Verrency Holdings, and a former top executive at Accenture.

Experienced leader

Link spent 26 years with the global professional services company in various financial services leadership roles in the US, Europe, and Asia. He is using this global experience and his expertise he garnered in the payments and banking sector to drive Verrency.

“Given my experience implementing transformational change at global banks over multiple decades and the significant advances in technology that have occurred just in the last few years, I knew that the payments sector was ripe for this type of innovation.”

Link said Verrency already has multiple high-profile clients in its commercial pipeline and has signed several initial agreements across multiple geographies.

Verrency’s uniqueness

Verrency’s uniqueness is two-fold. Firstly, Verrency, as an API platform, operates live in the payments flow at the time of payment. Secondly, Verrency enables banks to easily convert a one-to-one relationship between a credit or debit card and the underlying funding account into a many-to-many relationship. This means Verrency can be used across multiple channels allowing multiple accounts to be used for a multitude of payment options. For example, if a customer wants to make a purchase using points from a bank-affiliated loyalty points program, it can be easily enabled across cards, online or even virtually, without any merchant POS or terminal integration – thereby offering a significantly increased level of utility for the consumer.

Verrency also enables an issuer to give consumers an unprecedented level of control over their cards and accounts. For example, if a user has a special account they use for medical expenses, controls can be set to direct all medical expenses to that account, but prevent any other charges going there – all through their regular card.