This marks a major milestone on the company’s global growth journey, providing its global client base with new inroads into the region’s high-growth markets.

Sandeep Krishnamani, the newly appointed country manager for Singapore, said “Because of the region’s advanced trade links and infrastructure, Singapore will play an important role in meeting our global vision and long-term strategic goals. We are committed to Asia and look forward to providing customers with access to the most exciting business opportunities in the region.”

Krishnamani was previously Head of Partnerships for South East Asia at SAP Concur and prior to that Head of Business Development at American Express.

With Singapore now added to TransferMate’s global regulatory framework, the company boasts an impressive portfolio of payments licences across the globe, having already achieved full licence approval in 49 US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada, the EEA, Switzerland, Jersey, Australia and New Zealand.

As well as being major a financial and trading hub, Singapore ranks among the top eleven countries in the world for digital competitiveness, according to the 2018 IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, and has a thriving SME business sector, which employs approximately 80% of Singapore’s workforce alone.

Sinead Fitzmaurice, co-founder and CFO of TransferMate said: “Gaining regulatory approval in Singapore marks a significant step for our business and provides a major boost for customers doing business in and out of Asia. Singapore’s global trading links and strong economic contribution to the Asia-Pacific region provides exciting new business opportunities and we look forward to helping our customers achieve their growth ambitions in the region.”

Payments Canada’s annual Summit drew a record-breaking 1,700 attendees over three packed days in May to talk all things payments modernization. Here are six key takeaways from this essential event.

Should we do open banking?

“Yes!”, the consensus answer, required little debate. Rather the question “how should we do open banking?”, elicited a diversity of responses with speakers urging Canadian participants to reflect on lessons learned from Europe’s PSD2:

Account for the readiness of payment service providers to open-banking-enable their infrastructures to prevent banks from defaulting to the fastest path to compliance; Incorporate all account types in the data model, not just payments initiation; Adopt an agile methodology for specification and development, avoiding the rework required in Europe when technical specifications for PSD2 were released far ahead of development; Realize that in Canada, since API-based access to banking services is already available from many banks, open banking is actually a migration, affecting existing aggregators and service providers; Ensure that any regulation covers both technical standards and governance—for example, in the UK, PSD2 wasn’t enough by itself, CMA9 was needed to make open banking a reality.

Real-time rails need real-time trains – and real-time security

Don’t focus on speed, instead emphasize the end-to-end experience made possible by the real-time rail—the “trains”, in effect, that run on the rails. The following aspects ranked high:

Having access to the payment at the point and time of need, for sender and receiver; The availability of data around the payment, to eliminate reconciliation and facilitate traceability; Whether or not the payment experience was integrated end-to-end with corporate treasury and ERP systems; The intelligence and security around the payment.

Distributed Ledger Technology / Blockchain in payments has jumped the shark – maybe?

The hope, excitement and promise of blockchain in Canada circa 2017 appears to have devolved into uncertainty, fear, and doubt. One main-stage speaker firmly said: “Don’t build payments on the blockchain”. A question to a panel on the possibility that blockchain could solve challenges in real-time treasury elicited little enthusiasm. Tellingly, only one breakout session featured the term DLT or blockchain in its title, well down from past years.

If there was a consensus at the Summit about DLT, it was: DLT has excellent applications in trade finance, contracts, and digital identity, and is realizing its promise in certain areas of payments, notably cross-border payments. But closer to home? At least in Canada, the closing statement of the Jasper project seems to be carrying the day: “the technology is not yet ready to underpin a domestic payments system”.

ISO 20022 isn’t just about message translation

Summit participants understood that the move to ISO isn’t just about a commoditized technical translation from one message format to another. It’s about:

Rethinking business processes to unlock the power of rich data that can travel with the payment Improving straight-through processing Reducing reconciliation burdens Harnessing the power of real-time payment experiences Providing customers with more effective ways to connect directly into open banking services through ISO 20022-aware APIs

To build on an oft-repeated phrase, if “data is the new oil”, ISO 20022 will help us all to collaborate and construct the pipeline networks that let this essential fuel flow smoothly through the financial supply chain.

Keeping with this theme of collaboration, the second day of the Summit saw a welcome addition to the landscape: the launch of the non-profit organization 20022 Labs, which provides consulting, education, research and ‘sandbox’ services focused on the promotion of the ISO 20022 message standard in payments.

Leave no Canadian behind

One of the best-attended breakout sessions of the week was a standing-room only panel discussion on approaches to modernization with representatives of the five largest banks in Canada. The format personified one of the unique characteristics of the Canadian financial industry, the willingness of institutions to set aside traditional competitive practices and collaborate to advance the common good.

What better way to remind the industry that payments modernization isn’t a technological or even a fiscal exercise? Rather, that its fundamental purpose is to improve customer experiences and access to banking services for all Canadian consumers and businesses: the 1m unbanked, the digitally motivated millennials who make up 28% of the population but 40% of the workforce, the 25% of Canadians who are self-employed, the gig economy workers, the 50% of small businesses who have incurred missed payment fees, as well as the large corporations who drive Canada’s economy forward.

A unique opportunity to lead

Many speakers dwelt on the concern that Canadian payments are behind the times: Canada lacks an effective B2B real-time payment capability, none of the national payment systems are as yet ISO 20022 based, other regions have already entered the open banking economy, and so on. While valid, this concern missed a major silver lining. As a follower, Canada can learn from the mistakes of the early adopters; as a leader, Canada can innovate, setting an example for others along the way. This kind of opportunity comes up at best once in a generation, and based on the 2019 Summit, the Canadian payments industry is uniquely poised to capitalize on it.

Founded by group of parents just months ago, Pixpay will offer children between the ages of 10 and 18 a mobile bank account, contactless payment card and the option to use Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Slated to launch in France for the new school year, the service will cost EUR2.99 a month.

An app will help with spending and saving management, providing real-time purchase notifications and analysis of where money goes, along with offers on popular brands.

Meanwhile, parents will be able to set spending limits, block purchases from some providers, and offer financial incentives for carrying out tasks such as household chores.

The round was co-led by Bold Capital Partners and joined by TFX Capital Partners, Techstars Ventures, and First Derivatives. The funding will be used for product development, marketing and sales, and recruitment.

While contactless cards and mobile phones have revolutionised the consumer payments scene, the B2B space is moving far more slowly, with just one on four transactions in the supply chain digitised.

Crowdz is moving into the space with its blockchain-based Invoice Exchange, with a built-in B2B payment gateway that allows companies of all sizes to automatically digitise invoices, speed up invoice-payment collections, accelerate the cash-conversion cycle, and automatically associate orders, invoices, and payments with one another.

Additionally, exchange's proprietary auction platform lets companies submit their invoices for bank or investor financing without filing additional paperwork, finding funders at the lowest possible rates.

Barclays' investment comes after Crowdz took part in the bank's 2018 Accelerator programme, which also led to a partnership with Barclaycard.

Payson Johnston, CEO, Crowdz, says: "Today, small and midsize businesses often have to wait for a financially crushing 90 to 120 days or more to get paid. It's no wonder that more than half of them suffer cash-flow problems during any given year.

"However, with the Crowdz Invoice Exchange, these often struggling companies can get paid within a few days or less-at rates usually far less than available elsewhere in the market."