Cross-border B2B transactions — done in real time — are on the cusp of being as simple as domestic real-time payments (RTP).
Higher borrowing costs will test the resiliency of BNPL
Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Payments, Transfers, Rewards
BNY Mellon: Collaboration Between Banks and Fintechs Key to Avoid Client Disintermediation
BNY Mellon | Oct 10, 2022
BNY Mellon, in collaboration with Aite-Novarica Group, today released a report finding that financial institutions (FIs) servicing business clients are being disintermediated by fintech payment providers. But it also found that banks are slowing the trend by partnering with larger banks who have already built connections to fintechs.
- Survey: The findings of the report – produced in collaboration with Aite – are based on feedback from a survey of 790 employees of midsized and large organizations in seven North American and European countries.
- Innovation lag spurs disintermediation: With today’s capital constraints, regulatory burdens and cost pressures, it can be challenging for financial institutions (FIs) to keep up with the pace of change and abundance of choice in payments. Because of this lag, businesses can sometimes be enticed to circumvent their banks by engaging directly with fintechs to solve for points of friction in the payments process.
See: Canada’s Open Banking Journey: Interview with Huw Davies, Chief Commercial Officer OZONE API (UK)
- Collaboration enables opportunities: This so-called “disintermediation” is amping up the sense of competition between FIs and fintechs, but also enabling many opportunities for innovation and operation between them — with both sides having much to gain. The potential for collaboration is driving a surge in innovation as the industry races to meet new end-user demands. The future of payments should see a lot more synergies between banks and fintechs as they collaborate on new ways to drive growth.
- In this research, several supporting trends have been identified:
- Qualitiative:
- Many FIs are modifying their strategy roadmaps to partner and collaborate with fintechs to bring better, more robust capabilities to market quicker than they could by utilizing only internal resources and development teams.
- Overall, businesses report that they would actually rather partner with an FI than have to seek other third-party fintech providers.
- Some 62% of businesses are already working with a fintech provider and 28% are working with multiple fintech providers.
- Only 34% of businesses feel that their FI fully understands their needs when it comes to payments. This represents a large opportunity for FIs to invest and differentiate to meet the individual needs of their end clients, including by partnering up with other banks or purchasing white-labeled solutions.
- Qualitiative:
See: UK banks publish fintech collaboration toolkit
- Almost 60% of businesses report that the speed of payment and settlement is the biggest gap in their current payment strategy.
- An overwhelming 88% of businesses have already made a significant investment in improving their payment technologies or processes, and this number is expected to remain high.
View the original release --> here
Download the 13 page PDF report --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Google Cloud to Let Users Pay With Crypto via Coinbase
CNBC | Jordan Novet | Oct 11, 2022
Google
said Tuesday that it will rely on Coinbase to start letting some customers pay for cloud services with cryptocurrencies early in 2023, while Coinbase said it would draw on Google’s cloud infrastructure.
- Coinbase shares rose as much as 8.4% in Tuesday’s trading session, although the stock is still down over 70% for the year.
- Coinbase, which generates a majority of its revenue from retail transactions, will move data-related applications to Google from the market-leading Amazon Web Services cloud, which Coinbase has relied on for years, said Jim Migdal, Coinbase’s vice president of business development.
- Coinbase Commerce supports 10 currencies, such as Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin, Ethereum and Litecoin and will earn a percentage of transactions that go through it
See:
Google Cloud is expanding it’s blockchain business and hiring
Google’s Fusing Street View with AI to Create Metaverse like ‘Immersive View’
- Google is also exploring how it can use Coinbase Prime, a service that securely stores organizations’ cryptocurrencies and allows them to execute trades. Zavery said Google will experiment and “see how we can participate” with managing cryptocurrency assets.
- Blockchain technologies such as nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, have become a bigger focus for Google’s cloud division. Previously, Google’s cloud chief, Thomas Kurian, has pushed for growth in major industries such as media and retail. This year it announced the formation of teams to drum up blockchain business and build tools that third-party developers can draw on to run blockchain applications.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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US-Euro Real-Time Payments Expected to Launch in 2022
PYMTS | Oct 12, 2022
Cross-border B2B transactions — done in real time — are on the cusp of being as simple as domestic real-time payments (RTP).
- Russ Waterhouse, executive vice president for product development and strategy at The Clearing House (TCH), told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster that after months of development, joint efforts between payments services providers will streamline the compliance and technical heavy lifting needed to link real-time payments systems around the globe. Those linkups are no easy task, given the fact that it is the bank-to-bank interaction where the complexity sits.
- Beyond the mechanics of initiating payments and linking up with application programming interfaces (APIs) to get FX rates, there are additional messaging requirements and compliance mandates that include destination banks’ information. Cross-border payments require the participation of one bank that provides the actual foreign exchange and another bank that provides liquidity downstream.
See: X-Border Payments: European Central Bank Report says CBDCs Could Be ‘Holy Grail’
- Unifying Systems and Payments
- As has been reported, TCH, EBA Clearing and SWIFT said last week that they are on track to begin piloting their transatlantic instant payment system known as Immediate Cross-Border Payments (IXB).
- As reported this past spring, the IXB pilot will leverage the existing real-time payment systems, RTP in the United States, run by TCH, and RT1 in Europe, run by EBA Clearing. The service will connect existing infrastructure to enable synchronized settlement of RTP and RT1 payments.
- Beyond framework and into reality: Waterhouse noted that the announcement proves that RTP has moved beyond the framework stage and has made the leap toward reality. The announced support of 25 banks, he said, underscores the acceleration toward full-scale rollout within the next few months. Roughly half of those banks — or 12 FIs — are already committed to participating in the pilot and doing the technical work behind the scenes to enable synchronized settlement of funds in an automated fashion. The efforts of TCH et al, he said, are aimed at automating the payment initiation, the compliance and the downstream interactions.
- Transparency and confirmation in seconds: Among the benefits: Corporate senders get full transparency into FX rates and when settlement will occur — all with confirmation of the transaction within seconds. That level of transparency helps solve the existing pain points of batch systems and the fact that cross-border payments are a multi-day process.
See: Bank of Canada: The Latest on Retail Payments Supervision and Survey
“My hope and expectation is that toward the tail end of next year, we really can open things up,” he said. Early use cases and adoption will likely focus on B2B payments, and banks will become more confident in RTP’s appeal, replacing wire payments to some degree (RT1 payment limits are still €100,000, so the initial uptake will be with mid-market firms).
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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As Interest Rates Climb and the Tide Goes Out, BNPL’s Resiliency Will be Tested
FP | | Sep 30, 2022
Higher borrowing costs will test the resiliency of BNPL
- The Bank of Canada has increased its benchmark interest rate three percentage points since March and governor Tiff Macklem has been clear he isn’t finished, as inflation is running at an annual rate of about seven per cent, too fast for a central bank that targets two per cent.
- So, higher borrowing costs will test the resiliency of BNPL, a type of credit popularized in recent years by digital upstarts that typically allows shoppers to pay four instalments at zero interest over a period of six to eight weeks.
- BNPL companies took off in the pandemic thanks in part to central banks in the United States and Europe dropping interest rates to zero, generous government stimulus that induced spending and the e-commerce boom, said Michael Taiano, senior director at Fitch Ratings Inc.
See: CFPB to Regulate BNPL Like Credit Card Firms
- BNPL lenders are feeling the heat. Stockholm-based Klarna Inc.’s latest fundraising round in July implied a valuation of US$6.7 billion, an 85-per-cent drop from US$45.6 billion in 2021, one of the clearest signs of dwindling confidence. Klarna cut staff by 10 per cent in May and announced a second round of firings in September, TechCrunch reported.
Block Completes Purchase of BNPL pioneer Afterpay
- Jack Dorsey’s Block Inc. finally brought its buy now, pay later (BNPL) service to Canada last week, eight months after buying BNPL pioneer Afterpay Ltd. for US$29 billion in January.
- Block is betting that the new interest-rate backdrop will separate the strong from the weak, as financial technology companies that are overly reliant on BNPL become prey for companies that offer a wider array of financial services.
- Canada’s major entries, PayBright and Flexiti Financial Inc., were purchased by Affirm and Wichita, Kan.-based Curo Group Holdings Corp., respectively, between December 2020 and February 2021.
See: Why BNPL Swedish giant Klarna has sights set on Canada
“We think we’re going to see consolidation,” said Alyssa Henry, who runs Square. “But I think we’re also going to see the rise of ecosystems like the ecosystem we have.”
“What gives me confidence is if you look at gen Z, they’re responding very strongly to buy now, pay later,” Lieu said.
“A lot of these BNPL providers just kind of popped up in the last couple of years when it was an attractive environment, but maybe they don’t have the business model to withstand some of the challenges that are currently present,” Taiano said.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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SWIFT Partners With Chainlink to Help Bridge TradFi Institutions with Digital Assets
Coindesk | Aoyon Ashraf | Sep 28, 2022
SWIFT, the interbank messaging system that allows for cross-border payments, is working with Chainlink, a provider of price feeds and other data to blockchains, on a cross-chain interoperability protocol (CCIP) in an initial proof-of-concept.
- CCIP will enable SWIFT messages to instruct on-chain token transfers, helping the interbank network to be able to communicate across all blockchain environments.
- The partnership between Chainlink and SWIFT in cross-chain interoperability will help bridge the gap between traditional and digital assets for TradFi institutions, he added. Chainlink's native token is LINK.
- This will help accelerate the adoption of distributed ledger technology (DLT) blockchains and benefit various institutions across capital markets, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov said at the SmartCon 2022 conference in New York City on Wednesday.
See: SWIFT to trial trade finance anti-fraud blockchain MonetaGo
SWIFT’s Strategy Director Jonathan Ehrenfeld Solé:
One of the reasons working with Chainlink on CCIP has been successful is that there is “undeniable interest” in crypto from institutional investors. Traditional finance (TradFi) players want access to various digital and traditional assets on one network that can connect different types of asset classes.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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a16z Leads $51.5M Series B to Catch Fishy Fintech Transactions
TechCrunch | Anita Ramaswamy | Sep 20, 2022
Image: Unsplash/Oziel Gómez
Sardine announced it has raised $51.5 million in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z) Growth Fund after closing $19.5 million for its Series A earlier this year. “Faster instant payments mean faster fraud,” Sardine CEO and co-founder Soups Ranjan told TechCrunch. That’s the thesis behind his startup, which uses behavioral, financial and device-specific user data to detect fraud on behalf of its clients in the crypto and fintech industries.
- Growth: Sardine has grown considerably since it announced the Series A back in February, growing its roster of clients from ~50 to ~135 today, Ranjan said. Its customers include crypto exchanges FTX and Blockchain.com as well as fintechs with broader mandates such as Wealthsimple and Digit, he added.
See: Consumer Protection: Fintech Complaints Have Been Rising
- Differentiators:
- Sardine’s differentiation in the market as stemming from his team’s experience and the company’s focus on fintechs.
- Another major differentiator from competitors like Socure is its instant ACH and card onramp to crypto, which allows its customers to purchase over 30 different crypto assets instantly.
- Banks and card issuers typically use fraud detection algorithms for crypto that aren’t nearly granular enough. Around half of the customers who attempt to transact using fiat-to-crypto onramps through traditional platforms are declined as fraudulent.
- It also offers direct fiat to NFT checkout in partnership with Tom Brady’s company, Autograph, and plans to expand that product to other NFT marketplaces, according to Ranjan.
- Competition: Sardine does have competition from other startups in the identity-verification space, such as Socure, which told TechCrunch last year that it counts three of the top five global banks as customers.
See: Microsoft announces plan to cut cybersecurity workforce shortage in half by 2025
Soups Ranjan, CEO and co-founder Sardine:
One of the reasons why folks haven’t dabbled or launched ACH to crypto, or even direct ACH to NFT, has been that there is no one [else] taking on the fraud risk liability. The platform allows customers to access some, but not all, of their crypto instantly. Sardine is taking on the fraud risk. [The transaction] typically settles into two-plus days, so for that period of time, we’re taking on the settlement risk, and we’re taking on the third-party fraud risk, as in, if somebody connects a stolen bank account.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Bain & Co Embedded Finance Report: What It Takes to Prosper in the New Value Chain
Bain & Company | Matt Harris, Adam Davis, Blake Adams, and Jeff Tijssen | Sep 12, 2022
A completely new proposition for financial services customers
- Research Overview: We set out to quantify the size, growth profile, and economics of the key offerings powering the rise of embedded finance, focusing on the US market. Consisting of over 50 interviews with industry practitioners, market experts, and analysts, as well as a synthesis of published data, this research also draws on our collective experience working with software platforms, enabling firms, and license and regulatory services providers.
See: Canadien blooming. The fertile “Valley” for finance innovation FLOW: OB, CAN Trends, Beyond OB: BaaS + Embedded Finance, tunl
- The rise of embedded finance marks a new era, not only for banking transactions but also for how consumers and businesses build and manage relationships with financial services more broadly.
- In 2019, we wrote about the burgeoning movement of fintech from a business model unto itself to a key ingredient in the software platform stack—the “fourth platform.” Customers benefit from contextual, seamless experiences; platforms can unlock new use cases and often use proprietary customer data to improve financial access, while reducing costs for their end customers.
- We found that embedded finance already accounted for $2.6 trillion, or nearly 5% of total US financial transactions, in 2021, and by 2026 it will exceed $7 trillion, or over 10% of total US transaction value.
- Demand will grow because the proposition promises to improve customer experiences and financial access, along with providing cost-reduction and risk-reduction benefits to companies throughout the value chain.
- End users increasingly prefer the convenience of using payments, lending, insurance, and other financial services embedded in their day-to-day software, rather than accessing standalone services from traditional financial institutions.
- Since then, the transition has been swift and unrelenting. Several platform archetypes have emerged, including e-commerce (such as Shopify), food delivery services and rideshare apps (Uber, DoorDash), and wellness (Mindbody). These offerings are supported by an army of well-funded fintech enablers, which help platforms deliver products and services.
- The new value chain favors platforms. The traditional, bank-driven value chain shifts to a new ecosystem that typically requires four main participants:
- the end customer, platforms that own the customer relationship, software enablers that help meet complex regulatory and technological requirements, and a regulatory services or license provider. Firms can take on multiple roles and models.
See: McKinsey Global Banking: Revenue pools moving to customer-ownership with embedded digital financial services
- Different sectors and services are developing at different rates. Adoption curves vary. While payments and lending will continue to be the largest segments of embedded finance, we expect to see growth in insurance, tax, accounting, and other services.
- Traditional financial services have reached an inflection point. Traditional institutions face the threats of shifting economics and adverse selection with this new value chain. Yet they can also tap tremendous growth potential, especially if they identify where to play across specific vertical segments. Investing in the right capabilities will ultimately lead to opportunities to serve the new value chain in multiple ways.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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