Standard Chartered and Assembly Payments create e-commerce joint venture
by Ben Poole
Standard Chartered and payments solution provider Assembly Payments have set up a joint venture to deliver next generation payment solutions for the global e-commerce industry.
The new company will be headquartered in Singapore with the intent to grow the business globally, and will offer a digital payment platform to manage transactions across multiple payment types and countries, including online, mobile and point-of-sale, digital wallets, debit and credit cards and real-time payments.
E-commerce is growing exponentially in emerging markets. The venture will roll out its payment services to global merchants, and is designed to support their ambitions to scale and solving key challenges they face in managing risk, fraud, integration, reporting and reconciliation.
“Payments is a critical pillar of banking services,” commented Michael Gorriz, group chief information officer of Standard Chartered. “Enabling real-time faster payments and high volume transactions has been a core area of investment for Standard Chartered in line with the evolving needs of clients, particularly with the growth of e-commerce platforms and wallet apps. Our venture with Assembly Payments complements these capabilities, giving our corporate clients a complete offering for high throughput inward and outward payments.”
“As the world moves towards platform-based e-commerce, the need for the next generation of tools to empower merchants and enable financial inclusion continues to grow,” added Alex Manson, head of SC Ventures. “We identified payments as an area where we wanted to make a strategic investment.”
“This deal creates a once in a lifetime opportunity for Assembly,” commented Simon Lee, co-CEO of Assembly Payments. “We have created a significant business in Australia and now, together with Standard Chartered, we are well placed to crack the international payments market and exponentially grow the business.”
Standard Chartered has actively been experimenting with new business models to meet the evolving needs of banking clients. In Hong Kong, it has established a strategic joint venture with PCCW, HKT and Ctrip Finance to deliver a standalone digital retail bank in Hong Kong and has set up virtual banking partnerships in Taiwan and Korea. It has also set up a digital open platform, Solv, to help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India and other markets grow by providing a range of financial and business services.
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