Accuity, a global provider of financial crime screening, payments, and know your customer (KYC) solutions, and part of RELX, has announced that it has acquired Apply Financial. The acquisition supports Accuity’s strategy of providing banks, corporates, non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs), and fintechs with global and domestic payment and account validation solutions that reduce payment processing costs while increasing the speed of transactions.

Apply Financial is a specialist provider of automated payment validation solutions that enable clients to lower the cost of payment processing, by improving straight-through processing (STP) rates. Its Validate solution uses cloud and API technology to help firms submit the correct bank account and payment details when processing a payment, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing the risk of a transaction failing. With the proliferation of faster payment schemes around the world and escalating consumer and business expectations, STP is no longer just an efficiency issue, but a competitive differentiator for firms.

Accuity’s Bankers Almanac for Payments portfolio delivers accurate bank and routing data designed to help organisations drive efficiency throughout the payment process. The  firm says its acquisition of Apply Financial will augment this existing capability with validation software to remove further friction from clients’ payment operations.

“The payments industry is in the midst of a drastic transformation, with speed and efficiency at the forefront of its evolution,” said David White, EVP Global Payments & KYC at Accuity. “In the near term, Apply Financial’s advanced technology will enable us to offer clients a cloud-based, real-time payments and account validation solution to dramatically increase customer STP rates and provide payments certainty. In the longer-term, the technology will fuel our innovation and enable us to deliver the next generation of payments intelligence solutions to meet our customers’ requirements.”

“By joining forces, we will be able to share industry expertise, deploy our technology to a broader audience, and collaborate on innovative solutions that will support the industry now and in the future,” said Mark Bradbury, director and founder of Apply Financial.

Novitas Capital Advisors acted as exclusive financial advisor to the shareholders of Apply Financial.