Greensill clamps down on extended SCF payment terms

Supply chain finance (SCF) firm Greensill has issued a statement outlining it will not allow its SCF facilities to be used by Australian clients to extend payment terms to SME suppliers beyond 30 days. The company says it will discontinue the use of its SCF facilities to clients that use the facilities in this way.

In February, the company informed all of its Australian clients that it expected compliance with its public statement to not let clients use Greensill’s SCF to push out payment terms to SME suppliers beyond 30 days. The firm notes that virtually all of its clients in Australia are fully compliant with its statement for SCF facilities provided by Greensill.

Greensill has allowed a period for the remaining clients to complete their internal reviews stemming from the request. It has given formal notice to those clients that their SCF facilities will be discontinued unless they ensure that they do not use the SCF facilities to push out payment terms to SME suppliers beyond 30 days.

 

European Digital Payments Industry Alliance launched

Ingenico Group, Nets Group, Nexi, and Worldline have announced the launch of an EU advocacy alliance bringing together European independent payment services providers. The vision of the European Digital Payments Industry Alliance (EDPIA) is for Europe to become a global leader in digital payments, which can fuel the completion of the Digital Single Market for the benefit of consumers, businesses and the public sector. It will do so by engaging in EU policy discussions impacting the EU payments sector, and by helping bring instant, secure and frictionless payments closer to EU citizens, businesses, and public bodies.

The EDPIA believes in a strong and properly enforced European policy framework that enables intense competition between transparent and market-based solutions that compete for trust of payment services users.

While the EDPIA joins an already busy landscape of EU payments trade bodies, it says it is the only trade body that represents specialised digital payment services providers that are all headquartered in Europe and do not engage directly in banking services. To support a rules-based competitive single market in which innovation thrives, the EDPIA believes the payments sector needs a better ecosystem.

To stimulate an innovative payments ecosystem, the EDPIA believes the EU should build on the EU’s SEPA project, which will allow new technologies like account-to-account payments to thrive, including on a cross-border basis. Though card payments will remain important in the future, these new technologies bring welcome diversity.

 

Late B2B invoice payments targeted by linked2pay

Risk management and payments technology provider linked2pay has announced the launch of CustomerConnect, a solution designed to eliminate late B2B invoice payments. A business fully utilising CustomerConnect unifies and automates credit applications, result assessments, invoicing, and collecting of payments to agreed terms.

CustomerConnect offers flexibility in terms of how a business can apply it. As an example, if a business does not want to change their existing invoicing software, they can still automate credit applications, assess results, and collect payments to agreed terms by integrating the API.

CustomerConnect supports existing merchant accounts on the following card processing gateways: TSYS Multipass/Transit, Heartland Portico, First Data, NAB Velocity and Authorize.Net. It also supports the linked2pay and Paya ACH gateways. Banks and resellers (ISOs, ISVs and developers) can also white label the solution.

 

ING invests in SME business banking app

ING has led a £4m investment in London-based start-up, Countingup. Founded in 2017 and live since March 2018 in the UK, Countingup uses a mobile banking app to simplify the life of freelancers and the self-employed by reinventing the business current account.

Small businesses can open a Countingup business current account on their smartphone in under five minutes and the account comes with both banking and accounting features. Countingup has also recently launched its Accountant Hub, a web-based accounting system that helps accountants manage and collaborate with their SME clients.

The investment is particularly important for ING, which has the goal of growing its SME client base. The bank led the investment round and were joined by Triple Point, BiG Start Ventures and CVentures.

 

Currencycloud and Carta Worldwide partner on real-time FX

Carta Worldwide, a provider of digital transaction processing, and Currencycloud, which provides embedded B2B cross-border solutions for platforms, have partnered in a move designed to bring increased transparency, real-time foreign exchange at the point of sale, and an enhanced customer experience to international card transactions.

Currently when traveling abroad or making an international card transaction, cardholders are faced with a complete lack of transparency on what fees they pay and what the exact exchange rate is. The exchange rate that customers ultimately end up paying is not the rate given to them at the point of sale. This poor experience has been addressed by a wave of challenger banks with real-time FX rates and cheaper, more transparent fees being offered. This partnership is designed to allow issuers to easily offer similar services to start-ups and existing challenger banks.

Currencycloud and Carta are currently in the development phase with the first joint product expected in the second half of this year which will be available for issuers.