Based in Toronto, and founded in 2016 CreditGenie offers small and medium-sized businesses the opportunity to offer credit installment purchases to consumers at the point-of-sale. The company currently services nearly 500 merchants across a broad range of industries, in 12 Canadian provinces and territories.

The acquisition of CreditGenie follows Purpose’s investment in the building of Ario, a Toronto-based banking-as-a-service technology platform provider, and its March 2018 acquisition of Thinking Capital, Canada’s alternative small business financing provider.

CEO Som Seif says the purchase of CreditGenie is in line with Purpose's aim of developing a diversified product platform aimed at addressing historically underserved segments of the market.

“Purpose is singularly focused on driving innovation in Canada’s financial services industry," he says. "CreditGenie, with its innovative point-of-sale financing solution, represents a natural extension of our Banking Solutions platform.”

Brightly Ventures, Collector Bank and former Apple manager, Erik Stannow also participated in the latest round, bringing total funding to date to £12.3 million. Former Apple manager Stannow, who worked at Apple for 17 years, joins the firm as executive chairman.

Launched in 2017, the Kaching Retail mobile POS terminal is currently used by Ikea and Apple Premium resellers.

Swedbank plans to use its investment to beef up its mobile payments offerings under the Swedbank Pay product brand, which currently provides services to 100,000 retail customers in the Nordic and Baltic countries.

"There is a high demand for innovative, flexible and smart cash solutions, from both retailers and consumers," says Linus Singelman, head of group commerce at Swedbank and Swedbank Pay. "Through the investment and cooperation with KACHING Retail, we can further work to drive the development forward so that mobile solutions for payments can become even more flexible and efficient for both our customers and consumers."

For consumers, it means they never have to think about OCR numbers ever again. For e-commerce merchants, it decreases administrative costs while letting them maintain ownership of the consumer relationship.

With Trustly’s new Pay Your Invoice product, consumers can pay their invoice using a Trustly bank transfer. To do so, consumers can just click “Pay invoice” from the merchant’s portal, select which of their bank accounts they wish to pay from, and sign the payment with Mobile BankID. Consumers who have registered a digital direct debit mandate through Trustly can schedule the date of future payments with just one click.

This flow drastically simplifies the traditional invoice payment flow, in which consumers receive an invoice by mail or email and then log into their online bank and manually enter long receiving account numbers and OCR numbers, leaving much room for error.

In contrast to other payment providers that make consumers leave the merchant site to pay, Trustly’s solution lets e-commerce merchants own the post-purchase experience, increasing the number of consumer touchpoints and opportunities for retargeting. It also helps merchants and finance providers solve reconciliation issues and reduce administrative costs associated with processing invoices.

Swedish e-commerce pioneer Ellos is the first merchant to offer Trustly’s Pay Your Invoice product, enabling its customers to pay their invoices without having to leave its website.

Josef Darmark, Chief Product Officer at Trustly, says: “In our increasingly mobile world, paying invoices can be clunky and consumers dread typing in long OCR and account numbers. Trustly’s new Pay Your Invoice product does away with that step, making it easier than ever to pay by invoice at their convenience. It’s also a great solution for merchants because it helps them increase revenues by taking full control of the customer experience while also decreasing administrative costs.”

Trustly’s Pay Your Invoice product is currently available in Sweden and will soon go live with additional merchants in e-commerce, financial services and travel sectors.

The new offering is part of Coinfloor’s wider strategy to build a trusted, reliable and secure set of cryptocurrency financial services to bridge the fiat and crypto worlds.

Why is this important?

Speaking of the new offering, Obi Nwosu, Founder & CEO of Coinfloor said: “Crypto-focused businesses are growing at a steady pace, but until now, no reliable banking facilities have existed to help them manage fiat and crypto finance operations in an effective manner. Our partnership with Enumis will ensure that this will no longer be an issue.

With our joint pedigree and market expertise in the cryptocurrency and financial services spaces, we hope that this offering designed by members of the crypto community for the community will help the community of crypto businesses overcome their financial limitations and drive the crypto economy forward.”

Who is this service for?

The service is aimed at businesses operating in the crypto space and has been created specifically to meet the demand for a trustworthy domestic fiar current account on the Fast Payments network.

How does it work?

The crypto-friendly current accounts will allow for the deposit and withdrawal of funds via CHAPS, BACS and, 24 hours a day, UK Faster Payments. The Coinfloor-Enumis fiat current account will also allow clients to reduce costs with free GBP deposits and withdrawals into and out of their Coinfloor accounts.

What are the specific features?

Clients may access their account 24 hours a day online and will be able to undertake regular banking functions, such as setting up Direct Debits and Standing Orders. Advanced features, including programmatic API access for account automation, are also available. All current account holders will have access to Prepaid/Debit cards providing a 0.2% rebate on all transactions.