Industry roundup: 15 November
by Kylene Casanova
Standard Chartered streamline bank transactions through SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity cloud solution
With the SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity solution, Standard Chartered joins SAP’s network of member banks, offering an improved experience to corporate clients in meeting their transactional banking needs, simplifying onboarding processes, and providing both traditional and new banking services.
The rapid shifts from traditional banking to digital banking motivated corporations to automate and support real-time payments from their banking partners.With SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity, businesses can automate financial transactions between them and their financial institutions through a software-as-a-service cloud solution integrated with SAP S/4HANA and SAP ERP.Some of the benefits for clients who join the community include end-to-end payment processes, real-time cash position updates and automated reconciliation.
According to Standard Chartered, this new application programming interface (API) with SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity integration provides clients with on-demand real-time debit and credit notifications when cash is received in their banking accounts, and activates a customer credit line to be replenished, enabling new purchases or shipment of goods to occur.
Standard Chartered added they will continue to enhance their first API-enabled account with SAP corporate-to-bank relationships with more speed and productivity. In addition, the Managing Director at SAP Singapore, Eileen Chua, commented on how Standard Chartered leveraged the cloud approach to “become an intelligent enterprise in support of its business transformation strategy, and to drive sustainable, inclusive growth as financial ecosystems become more competitive.”
Standard Chartered Bank continues to innovate through fintech
Standard Chartered Bank’s newest fintech innovation, letsbloom, was recently launched by SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s investment and venture division. In regulated industries, the process of building, deploying and running applications tends to be slow and expensive, especially since compliance costs are high. Additionally, the strenuous requirements to build and protect client information from cyber threats are critical components. Nonetheless, letsbloom technology will enable clients (particularly those in financial services, healthcare and government) to create, install and execute business applications on the cloud in a secure, expeditious and cost effective manner.
According to Gartner, a research consulting firm, predictions on global public cloud spending is expected to cultivate around 23% per annum to close to USD 400 billion in 2022. letsbloom’s vision is to be the leading platform for building and deploying client experiences in any regulated industry on leading cloud platforms.
The press release shared two platform capabilities by letsbloom:
- letsbloom Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): enables safe onboarding applications to any cloud platform from development to production such as pre-built bank grade security, compliance controls, and continuous integration / continuous deployment (CI/CD).
- letsbloom Marketplace: a “low-code” marketplace platform utilizing certified third-party applications to provide firms the ability to increase revenue by selling to clients through letsbloom, a secure and compliant module.
Lokesh Sharma, CEO of letsbloom, further commented on letsbloom’senhanced ability to address the continuous challenges faced by regulated industries. “What used to take months can now be done in days on letsbloom’s platform, and at a fraction of the cost”, said Sharma. Michael Gorriz, Standard Chartered Group CIO and letsbloom Board Director, stated the collaboration between banks and fintech partners will enable banks to provide superior customer experiences in a secure and regulatory compliant environment. Alex Manson, SC Ventures, added that “security and compliance is a key theme” for SC Ventures, and letsbloom enables these controls in the transformation of financial services in an expeditious and safe way.
For more information, please visit www.sc.com.
Global open banking payments revolutionizes into the Brazilian market
The open payments fintech company, Volt, announced its expansion into Brazil’s domestic instant payments network Pix and established a physical location in Sao Paolo. Currently, Volt’s second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) solution enables payment service providers (PSPs) to securely process transactions between accounts held at more than 5,000 banks in the UK and EU.
By integrating real-time payments in Brazil, Volt clients can access Latin America's fastest growing market. With this capability, settlement times will be reduced from 28 days to two seconds in addition to reduced card costs and increasing payment conversion rates. Volt also serves as the merchant of record in Brazil for those without a domestic presence, managing currency export, FX and Central Bank of Brazil declarations.
Pix, the system created by the Brazilian Central Bank enabling real-time payments, has grown to over 90 million active accounts since November 2020. In October 2021, it processed 500 million BRL, showing it as the preferred digital payment for Brazilian consumers. Additionally, over 17 million new users joined from September to October 2021.
“Brazil’s rapidly growing e-commerce market and traditionally underserved customer base has created a landscape ripe for payments innovation”, said Andre Faria, Ex-Adyen VP and Volt Founding Director, LATAM. Faria further commented on leveraging the current instant payment network to provide domestic and export payments for local and international businesses at a faster pace.
As the development of real-time payment networks continues rapidly around the world, furthering the goals of obtaining a unified payment interface and reducing fragmented systems, merchants will be able to receive payments account-to-account securely in real time.
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