Category: Company News

By 2030, the global fintech market is projected to reach circa $700 billion representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.3%, it’s clear that businesses and individuals alike are continuing the trend of using technology for their payments.

With the competition in the sector fiercer than ever, and only expected to grow, speed-to-market has become a crucial factor when it comes to establishing new startups in a crowded market.

While direct scheme memberships through the likes of VISA and Mastercard can often be a laborious, time consuming process requiring significant investment, there is a quicker alternative to card issuing. BIN Sponsorship bridges the gap for fintechs wishing to offer payment solutions to their customers straight out of the gates.

Read on to find out how BIN Sponsorship can benefit your fintech business, and how B4B Payments BIN Sponsorship 2.0 could give you the tailored support needed to get your product to market quickly.

What is BIN Sponsorship?

For fintech start-ups, BIN Sponsorship is a solution that allows them to connect to the card scheme network through an e-money organisation, like B4B Payments. This allows them to perform the operations of a financial institution, before becoming principal members of card issuers like Visa and Mastercard. Drastically speeding up product launches, it is the perfect way to to bypass long and arduous direct scheme applications, and get products to market ahead of the competition. With an industry saturated with over 27,000 startups worldwide, gaining a speed-to-market advantage can prove significant.

Here’s a breakdown of BIN Sponsorship…

A Banking Identification Number (BIN) references the four or six initial numbers on the front of a payment card and helps to identify the issuer of the card during the transaction, giving fintech companies the ability to make payments quickly and efficiently between accounts.

Sponsors are third-party payment providers or e-money institutions, like B4B Payments, that connect fintech start-ups to approved BINs and account ranges. Sponsors effectively act as the middle-men to enable new businesses to offer payments solutions, allowing businesses to leverage their scheme memberships with issuers.

Looking for BIN sponsors to kick-start your fintech operations can be a tricky process. It’s important to consider a number of factors when partnering with a sponsor, including compliance, speed-to-market, and experience within the industry.

At B4B Payments, we have used our 15 years’ experience in the payments industry to evolve our BIN Sponsorship offer to the next level with BIN Sponsorship 2.0.

How does BIN Sponsorship 2.0 set you apart from the competition?

Using our extensive experience in payments, we have developed an end-to-end bridging solution for fintech startups. This best-in-market offering  provides support to businesses as they launch their service, connect with card issuers, and beyond.

We go the extra mile with BIN Sponsorship 2.0, extending our service to cover the most important areas of partners’ needs:

Functionality and compliance

Functionality and compliance are priorities for fintech businesses – often the deciding factor for whether new products and companies sink or swim. BIN Sponsorship 2.0 puts compliance at the heart of its offering, combining the responsibility to handle Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, with funds safeguarding and fraud monitoring for all partnering companies.

More importantly, B4B Payments offers complete authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Bank of Lithuania with e-money licences, as well as Mastercard Principal Member status, which can be leveraged by startups wishing to expand internationally into European markets.

Tailored support

While BIN Sponsorship is sometimes used as a quick-win when gaining an e-money licence, B4B Payments offers an extended service outside of regulated EMIs, allowing businesses to continue to outsource scheme management, collateral requirements and settlements.

BIN Sponsorship 2.0 is not an off the shelf solution, it can be tailored to Fintech needs. It offers partners the chance to use our e-money permissions while building their own relationships with card issuers.

Partnerships to suit fintech needs

With BIN Sponsorship 2.0 there are a variety of partnerships to suit fintech businesses, whatever stage in the cycle you may be at.

For unregulated EMIs businesses, we offer a full end-to-end package. This allows total use of our scheme licences and e-money permissions, with the support of our experts as you choose your own suppliers and develop your own card programme using our framework. For fintechs who require a less hands-on approach, we also offer a BIN sponsorship light package, allowing direct integration into our platform, and enabling speed-to-market. 

For regulated EMIs without a scheme licence, we offer settlement, or turnkey settlement only packages, allowing you to leverage our issuing capabilities, while building your own UI.

What’s more, B4B Payments also offers a support service for regulated EMIs with scheme permissions, providing a continued service for safeguarding, accounts and payments.

Proven Speed-to-Market success

Our BIN Sponsorship 2.0 partners’ success speaks for itself. In 2021, Juni, an e-commerce fintech, partnered with B4B Payments.Through using our solution, they were quickly able to bring their card to market without first needing to navigate the process of gaining their own e-money licence and card scheme membership.

Juni continued to lean on B4B Payments as a partner for support throughout their rapid scale-up as they became one of 2021’s fastest-growing fintech startups, taking advantage of BIN Sponsorship 2.0’s product flexibility, as well as the experience of the experts behind the scenes.

Discover more about BIN Sponsorship 2.0 with B4B Payments

Do you want to know more about how BIN Sponsorship 2.0 can make a difference to your fintech startup? Discover our memberships and how B4B Payments’ experience in the industry can help keep you competitive.

To find out how our solutions can help you, contact us today!

If you’re looking to optimise your B2B payment services, or provide innovative Fintech payment opportunities to others, there are several key challenges with overhauling or expanding payment solutions that you’ll need to deal with.

These issues are particularly significant for those working toward optimising payment, payout, and card services.

The granular complexities of payment processes can sometimes be overlooked by businesses (particularly those in the start-up phase), who will instead focus on acquiring new customers and boosting brand awareness. However, without an effective payment process in place, organisations are more likely to experience abandoned carts and delayed payouts. Two-thirds of adults worldwide now make or receive a digital payment, and 80% of B2B payments are now digital. So, the time for streamlining your online payment process is now.

A common misconception by companies building out a payment solution is that speed to market can easily be gained by using multiple third-party providers. However, managing these specific payment capabilities can be extremely challenging and time-consuming, resulting in greater investment and loss of time to market. In this article, we examine the key challenges in managing payment processes and how to optimise them effectively.

The key challenges of payment optimisation

Legacy technology

Legacy technology can be problematic for your payment infrastructure. Disconnected tech stacks (i.e. legacy tools that do not integrate with new technology) can increase the amount of internal and customer touchpoints when making payouts and receiving payments.

Shockingly, over 90% of UK financial firms still rely on legacy tech. Businesses that rely on those firms for payment solutions will likely experience a high rate of abandoned carts as customers give up on lengthy payment processes. Legacy technology can also lead to a delay in receiving payments, which could cause operational and financial problems for any business.

Multiple payment services

Implementing multiple payment services, and forcing users to negotiate the different platforms, is a serious drain on your company’s resources. Among other issues, doing so can drastically affect speed to market and create supply chain disruptions. Instead, a company should look to connect services where possible, or offer all payment options under one platform.

Multiple third parties

As with using multiple digital solutions for your payment services, relying on multiple third parties can cause delays in payment and payout processing. These delays stem from the increased approval times, spread out permissions, and extra steps in authorisation users must take when navigating a payment system that uses multiple third parties.

For Fintech companies, the solution is to utilise a platform that allows you to manage your own payment processes and retain control. Having complete authority and a solid understanding of your payment infrastructure is the key to quicker payments and payouts.

Hidden fees

Another issue to consider when optimising your payment infrastructure is if your plans have greater internal build requirements than originally planned. Without careful budgeting beforehand, you might find yourself without sufficient resources to cover the increased costs.

Partner-specific challenges

There are various partner types that have their own unique challenges. For example, utilising a bank or niche service provider to support instant payment can lead to a loss of management control and added expenses in transaction fees.

Streamline your payment process with B4B payments

A 360° payment solution

B4B Payments can help you achieve your payment optimisation goals quicker through an effective all-in-one solution. We offer an easy-to-use platform that connects services together under one roof. This includes prepaid, instant virtual, and branded card creation as well as handling, payout and payment processing across multiple countries.

By leveraging a single source solution for card issuing and payment services, companies can avoid the heavy lifting of building out functions and quickly enhance the user experience without disrupting existing services. This also means a faster path to revenue, which is an easy target to miss when you’re trying to collaborate or build out the necessary operations.

Latest technology

Being held back by legacy systems? B4B uses robust APIs and cloud-based solutions that can be embedded in their native form, which saves companies from having to develop or manipulate new infrastructures.

Flexibility & security

Our system combines all our products into an all-inclusive platform for businesses to manage their payment processes. We offer everything you need to launch a card programme in a single turnkey solution, with advanced features, full flexibility and industry-leading security.

We have built for Fintech success and ensured that internal and external management is all in one place, so payers and payees have real-time views of all payment and card functions.

Take full control of your own payment processes

B4B Payments offers a tried and tested infrastructure that allows you to manage your own payment services and permissions, and remove the need for engaging third-parties through our sleek and easy-to-use platform.

Clients are provided with the full infrastructure and permissions to manage their own payments or Fintech within the UK and Europe. Our single unified service removes the need for overloaded tech stacks and reduces touch points from both business and customer standpoints.

Payment services from B4B

Optimise your payment processes with B4B Payments. We have over 15 years of experience in innovations in the payments space, and our unique card services can help you overcome any payment service challenges.Our focus is ensuring our clients are ahead of the game with fast and efficient transactions around the globe.

Discover more about B4B Payments and the services we provide on our website. If you’re interested in working with us, you can contact our team HERE.

Keeping track of corporate expenses can be difficult for companies of all sizes, particularly those operating globally.

Tracking receipts and managing timely repayments for an extended team spread across multiple locations is a complex task. Human error and convoluted reporting systems can create much confusion and cause problems with budget monitoring.

In some cases, the expenses process might have taken a back seat during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as the world returns to a sense of post-pandemic normality, this means business-related travel, networking events and Christmas parties are back in full swing. As a result, it’s crucial to ensure that your expense management strategy is functional and serves your employees effectively.

Weak expense processes can cause dissatisfaction among employees, set your business back, and prevent your organisation from claiming back tax deductions. Read on to discover more about key challenges in corporate expenditure, and how to streamline your expenses process.

What is corporate expenditure?

Expense management determines how employees are reimbursed for business-related spending, including travel, food, supplies, and more. Typically, employees will need to fill out an expense claim form with details of their expenditure, and then the accounts team will process this information in the finance system and provide a reimbursement.

A good expense process should be quick, fraud-proof, easy to use, trackable, and provide timely repayments. There should also be a clear, enforced expense policy so that employees know what they can expense, how to expense it, and what their daily or monthly limit is.

Key expense management challenges

Complexities of numerous stakeholders, multiple locations, and manual processes can make streamlining expense management strategies a challenge. Here are a few of the main difficulties that businesses can often run into.

Manual error processes

The world is still swimming in spreadsheets and paper receipts. Over 43% of businesses still rely on manual expense processes. Manual processes make the capturing, recording and claiming of expenses awkward and prone to mistakes.

The probability of human error when manually entering data into spreadsheets is between 18% and 40%.The high error rate means there is likely to be misalignments between the receipts received and the amounts claimed, causing difficulties for the accounts team and inaccuracies when providing reimbursements.

Slow payment

Many employees cite an arduous reimbursement process as a key problem, with 40% of expense claimants experiencing cash flow issues because of slow repayments from their employer. During the current cost-of-living crisis (when many are already struggling with cash flow problems), difficulty in claiming expenses could cause serious discontentment among employees.

An estimated 38% of all employees pay for business expenses out of their own pocket at least once a month, which is likely due to a combination of payment delays and  a lack of clarity on the expenses system, or inefficiencies in the process itself.

Insufficient reporting visibility

An effective business should have complete awareness of what their employees are spending company money on and why. However, just like the ongoing use of manual processes, many businesses still rely on out-of-date tracking and monitoring systems. In fact,  26% of enterprise-sized companies have no awareness of how many expenses submitted are actually compliant with their corporate expenditure policy.

The lack of visibility means that companies aren’t able to keep track of employee spend, which could lead to expense fraud and exaggerated claims. It also means that businesses may struggle to understand how much they spend on corporate expenses. By streamlining their tracking and monitoring system, they could optimise their budget and save costs.

How to improve corporate expenses process

There are a number of ways businesses can work to improve their corporate expenditure processes. These include:

• Adopting a cloud-based expense management system to replace manual processes, reducing the the number of lost receipts and preventing delays
• Refreshing your policy to ensure it’s fair, compliant, and easy to understand
• Categorising expenses to make tracking and reporting expenses a lot easier
• Making use of mobile technology, so that receipts can be digitally uploaded instantly using an app

One way to quickly and efficiently optimise your corporate expenses program is through the use of a virtual prepaid card. Commercial card services are becoming increasingly beneficial in a cashless society, allowing customers and clients alike to make and receive payments instantly across the globe.

Card services also give companies of any size a flexible, all-in-one expense management solution that allows them to easily keep track of where money is being spent and on what. Not only do virtual cards make accounting and money management a lot easier, they also reduce the risk of theft and fraud while saving both time and money. Plus, businesses can easily access data which enables them to track spending habits and improve their financial strategy.

Enhance your expenses strategy with B4B Payments

B4B Payments provide virtual, or digital, prepaid cards which allow businesses to make a large number of online payments which are secure and within the expenses budget. Each transaction is tracked and receipt uploads are a breeze with the mobile app.

The self-managed, unified platform is quick and easy to install, and allows businesses to pay anyone overseas instantly. As a streamlined and one-stop solution, you can reload and deploy funds as you see fit to ensure that your employees are always covered for their travel and expenses. Meanwhile, the iOS and Android application lets employees track their expenditure and store photographic proof of purchase receipts at the click of a button.

Find out more about how B4B Payments could help you optimise your expense management process today, by booking a demo.

Claim your FREE Virtual Cards today and spread cheer amongst your employees.

Why let employees choose their own rewards

The festive season is here! Event planning has started, business gifts are being ordered and discussions around employee Christmas rewards have begun. Some of those discussions will soon be about a Christmas bonus that could be dependent on performance or business revenue. Although a bonus is a great way to show appreciation towards employees, it’s also taxable so they won’t receive the full benefits. Especially, when the cost of physical gifts are soaring a virtual card is the perfect cost effective option.

Businesses this year need to consider how their rewards can support employees during this cost-of living crisis. That’s why B4B payments believe you should allow your employees to choose a gift that is meaningful to them. 

Virtual cards are hassle-free easy gifts

We recently rewarded our own B4B employees with virtual cards! They loved having the choice to buy anything they wanted online or in-store. 

With virtual cards, there are no delivery costs or waiting times. You can choose any of our festive themed templates, personalise the email and send it straight to your employees inbox. It’s that easy! They can add the virtual card in their Apple pay or Google pay wallet, and spend online or in-store where Mastercard is accepted. 

Show your appreciation with the gift of choice

Studies show that businesses across the UK could do more for their employees, according to Appreciate Business Services. In their most recent report, they found at least 33% of all UK employees feel undervalued at work. And, alarmingly, it reported 74% of people said they would look for a new job if they felt undervalued.

Now you would imagine Christmas would be the perfect time to let your teams know how much their work all year round is valued. Take advantage of the festive season, and spread cheer. 

Claim FREE virtual cards today

We are offering free virtual cards this Christmas *terms and conditions apply*. But hurry as the offer ends on the 30th of December 2022! To claim or find out more, please complete our form HERE and we will be in touch.

The complex process of serving customers, balancing corporate expenses, and delivering consistent payroll can be costly and resource intense for businesses.

The complex process of serving customers, balancing corporate expenses, and delivering consistent payroll can be costly and resource intense for businesses. With the UK alone predicted to become a cashless economy as early as 2026, developing other physical ways to manage and spend has become a top priority for many businesses across the globe.

At B4B payments, we specialise in providing tailored card services to help businesses achieve their payment goals by allowing complete customisation of branded, prepaid and virtual cards, incentives and rewards, and more.

Read on and discover how B4B Payments can help take your payments to the next level with our card services.

Corporate expenses solved

Keeping track of corporate expenses can be difficult for large-scale companies, whether you’re planning a corporate event or providing ongoing travel and work expenses for your employees.

At times, juggling your outgoings through multiple platforms can increase the chance of human error, and give birth to a variety of challenges that can impact your finances too. For example, missing out on opportunities to secure contracts for events, or even forcing your staff to temporarily cover their own expenses due to slow payments, or lack of processing resources, can be detrimental to your business, and even affect retention. To remedy these situations, B4B Payments offers corporate card and payment services, allowing clients to issue employees card and platform access to complete daily expenses across the globe.

B4B Payments hands you complete control through a streamlined, one-stop platform, allowing you the power to reload and deploy funds as you see fit to ensure that your executives are always covered for their travel and expenses. Our iOS and Android application lets employees track their expenditures and store photographic proof of purchase receipts at the click of a button.

What’s more, with built-in measurement and reporting capabilities, you have complete oversight over all outgoing expenditures and the power to identify leaking pipes within corporate expenses.

Branded, prepaid and virtual pay-out cards

Commercial card services are becoming increasingly beneficial in a cashless society, allowing customers and clients alike to make and receive payments instantly across the globe. At B4B Payments, we offer a variety of card solutions that tackle our client’s individual needs and the customers they may be serving.

Our virtual cards provide instant reimbursement or payment services, giving businesses the power to pay people overseas instantly, without the need for time-draining or unsecured delivery processes. Our prepaid cards are perfect for customers without established account information, particularly useful for retail cashback schemes, or helping charities and refugee communities in a cashless environment. But, of course, there are benefits for your business, too; with our branded cards, you can alleviate the stress of setting up regular or recurring payments and generating brand awareness through a customisable look and feel.

It’s easier than ever to deploy cards with B4B Payments through our unified platform, which gives your business complete control over the design, distribution, and loading. In addition, streamlining your card operations into one platform eliminates breaks in the process caused by multiple third-party communications and approvals, allowing you to create a method of payout or payment quickly and efficiently.

Rewards and incentives

Rewards and incentives are a time-tested tradition for retaining employees and customers, and maintaining partner relationships. While there is a place for gift-giving in smaller businesses and niche customer sets and industries, it’s hard to argue with the language of cash when it comes to the perfect reward or incentive.

For larger industries, using B4B Payments physical and virtual (closed and open loop) card services will eliminate the challenges of navigating sensitive areas of requirement like gender or religion for customers, employees and partners. Cardholders also get access to an easy-to-use application, which is downloadable on both iOS and Android devices, allowing them to view card balances, and keep track of their spends and rewards. 

Using these services, your business can seamlessly offer customer acquisition and employee retention schemes through prepaid card bonuses, cashback offers, and bespoke partner reward programmes.

To wrap up

Whether you’re looking for corporate solutions or payment services for B2B, B2B2C or B2C clients, we’ve got you covered at B4B Payments. With over 15 years of experience in innovations in the payments space, and unique card services that cover all bases, we make sure that our clients are ahead of the games with fast and efficient transactions around the globe.

Strengthening your payment and payout solutions through card services has never been easier. Discover more about B4B Payments and the transparent, quick and effective card services that we provide contact us today!

Whether you’re looking to optimise your own B2B payments services or provide innovative fintech payment opportunities, B4B payments can help you achieve your goals quicker and more easily than ever before.

According to Gartner, 80% of business-to-business (B2B) transactions will be digital by 2025, which suggests that digital transformation is at the heart of modern industries. At B4B Payments, we offer a scalable and cost-effective payment solution which combines various services tailored to our clients’ unique challenges across industries.

Read on and discover how B4B Payments can provide fintechs and embedded payment facilitators with solutions to manage high volumes of domestic and international payments for B2B/B2B2C/B2C and internal payments through our tried-and-tested products.

Go big with mass bank payouts

There are many challenges when providing global payouts on a mass scale. Traditionally the process is long and cumbersome, especially when directing funds or recurring payments around the world, often leading to slow or even delayed payouts to customers.

What’s more, navigating complex and high-cost Foreign Exchange (FX) processes and tax compliance is more strenuous than ever, especially for digital-only businesses in sectors like adtech, online marketplaces, affiliate marketing, and eCommerce. Add to this the constant introductions of new ways to pay (e.g Google, and Apple Pay!) it’s easy to see why businesses could be experiencing a higher churn rate as they struggle to pay quickly and keep up with ever-changing economic landscapes.

But how do you streamline your payment process on a mass scale? Using B4B Payments for your mass bank payouts, eliminates the risk of slow or late payments when paying out to over 25 countries across Europe, with low-cost and transparent global transaction fees and FX rates.

Utilising mass bank payouts through B4B Payments enables you to begin making consistent and quick payments through branded, prepaid, and virtual payout cards, or recognisable banking rails like SWIFT, Faster Payments, CHAPS, SEPA, local clearing in the USA (ACH) and DKK.

Rapid service set-up

Start-ups or businesses moving into new markets suffer a variety of pain points throughout their journey, including the setup or overhauling of their own payment services. As new businesses in B2B SaaS or Fintech, it’s even more critical to offer quick and effective digital solutions for other businesses to grow your partner and customer relationships, and stay ahead of the competition.

If you’re experiencing an increase in human error from disconnected and complex tech stacks or draining resources from a high volume of digital touchpoints in your process, it can easily create bottlenecks in your supply chain and customer or partner churn rates.

B4B Payments provides a one-stop fix for your B2B, B2B2C, or B2C woes, and offers a tried and tested infrastructure that allows you to manage your own payment services and permissions through our sleek and easy-to-use platform.

With our payment rails, your payment services are streamlined, removing unnecessary legacy processes and distilling your tech stack, alleviating the need for multiple touchpoints and helping you increase your speed-to-market for new ventures!

Plus, with over 15 years of experience in navigating payment solutions for start-ups and established businesses across multiple sectors, you can be sure that working with B4B Payments will keep you at the forefront of innovation as your business grows.

Collaborate through one tested platform

Managing payments, payouts, and card services can be messy, especially when you’re using multiple third-party providers. Traditional sectors like travel, transport, and payroll are succumbing to increased pressure to digitally transform since the COVID-19 pandemic. New digital-only businesses in areas like B2B SaaS are bursting onto the scene, creating the expectation of instant settlements and payouts from clients and customers alike.

At B4B Payments, we recognise that using separate services can drain resources and lead to delays in payment and payout processes, and we’ve solved that problem with the main hub of our enterprise: our one-stop platform.

Using our platform, we have combined all our products into an all-inclusive platform for businesses to manage their card and payment services.

Let us explain…

Our unique platform connects services under one single User Interface (UI), including prepaid, instant virtual, and branded card creation and management, as well as payout and payment processing across multiple countries. Not only this, we’ve integrated new and popular ways to pay into our platform, like Google and Apple Pay, with more on the horizon.

Going the extra mile, we’ve also included in-depth reporting and analysis tools into the platform that measure your expenditure and payment performance, as well as making the package accessible through our robust, customisable API and readily integrated for data exchange with your existing accounting software like XERO.

Offering your own services

Start-up or growing companies in the fintech sector require deeper levels of payment integration to meet regulatory requirements and stay ahead of the competition when it comes to handling customer and business transactions.

BIN-sponsorship is a great way to separate your start-up or fintech company from the crowd, allowing you to offer your own payment solutions to your unique customer base.

At B4B payments, we offer a rapid speed-to-market solution through a full BIN sponsorship and Settlement only package. Full BIN sponsorship allows unregulated Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) to partner up on their journey towards becoming fully regulated issuers and scheme members. The BIN sponsorship offers total support with compliance and implementation of payment solutions while including fully-managed card services from settlements and reconciliation to Anti-money Laundering (AML) and fraud monitoring.

We offer a settlement-only product, too, allowing regulated EMIs the opportunity to tap into B4B Payments expertise as a global payment provider, leveraging our issuing capabilities while allowing them to build their own customer interface through APIs.

To wrap up

At this time of year, strengthening your payment services is more important than ever.. With the peak holiday season and accelerated festive spending on the horizon, we can expect businesses to be in high demand when making and receiving payments.

Not only this, Christmas is the time for giving, and B4B Payments is the perfect platform to manage your customers and even your company’s all-important festive bonuses through prepaid cards and the universally accepted language of cash whilst eliminating the faux pas associated with customised gift giving.

Discover more about B4B Payments and the services we provide to stabilise your end-to-end cash flow over the Christmas period, contact us today!