Simplified IBAN management crucial to banks and payment institutions

Banks, payments providers and those looking to move money across territories are looking to simplify their processes through clearer and integrated IBAN management solutions, according to Jürgen Schneider, managing director at ONPEX.

“Major clients have come to us because they’ve wanted to have easy access to our multi-currency IBAN accounts that will enable their business to grow faster,” said Schneider, who was speaking on the sidelines of Money 20/20 in Amsterdam. “For them, the most important criteria for selecting a solution is speed, automation and simplicity.”

As market participants place more emphasis on the importance of smooth cross-currency transfers and recognize the value technology can bring to the table, with initiatives such as Europe’s second Payments Directive (PSD2) providing a wealth of opportunities.

“We’re currently experiencing very strong growth – driven by EU-regulated financial institutions – like eMoney institutions, money service businesses, payment institutions and many other,” said Schneider. “We continue to see very high demand for seamless API-based financial services which is great as we’re specifically focusing on API-driven technology as to provide more accessibility towards automated, simple and transparent payments and banking.”

With PSD2 firms are now looking for leading API functionalities, with the new rules demanding the market works with them. “Another aspect of our technology environment that we place a big emphasis on is our API,” said Schneider. “It’s very powerful and allows our customers to build a solution that is extremely flexible. For example, you can open accounts, pull account statements, execute transactions of course, you can configure user rights – and it’s fully done through the API. Our customers can embed our services into their existing solution in a single, seamless way. That helps them save costs, accelerate time to market, and also reduce complexity.”

ONPEX’s multi-currency IBANs – launched earlier this year – tie into the demand for simplified cash management solutions, something the BaaS model provides easily.

“One of our recent clients is an eWallet based in the UK. We’re helping this client to make its eWallet bankable by attaching our multi-currency IBANs to their customer accounts. This allows our client to upgrade the product range of its wallets with a more simple multi-currency management and to become a fully bankable product,” said Schneider.

With trade wars developing and Brexit driving currency fluctuations, banks and other market participants are attempting to gain greater control of their foreign exchange management.

“Firms want to avoid volatility,” said Schneider. “We just launched our in-account FX solution which means that customers can handle their FX needs in a more predictable way because we’re able to give them a rate the moment they send a request to request a certain amount of money, so they don’t have to use a third party provider which would result in transferring money from the account to a third party provider and back. That always takes much longer and increases their volatility and exposures to any fluctuations in the FX rate.”

Schneider suggests ONPEX’s banking platform stands out in terms of speed of execution and security, but the functionalities inherent in the system provide clients with the simplified approach they crave.

“By multi-currency I don’t mean you have to open a new payment account for every currency – it’s all happening within one IBAN – which greatly reduces complexity because you’re able to receive funds all through one IBAN and it’s like-for-like settlement. You don’t need to operate several accounts, you can receive, convert and send sterling, euros, Japanese yen and many more currencies, all into that one account.”

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