On June 3rd, a consortium of major companies launched b.yond, a financial innovation platform that will enable banks and businesses to quickly utilize several innovative fintech payment services.
The customers of digital services demand the best and most innovative solutions and constantly want more sophisticated services.. b.yond allows consumer-facing businesses to be in the driving seat of customer loyalty, retention and engagement. The consortium partners’ expertise, innovation and scale will also be beneficial to the users of the b.yond.
Businesses wanting to launch a payments programme can use b.yond to access a financial technology platform of high-quality, innovative payment solutions using Visa’s rails, which they can deploy for customers in less than 8 weeks.
B.yond is a platform that will try to reduce some of the complexities of launching a payment programme such as the difficulty of dealing with multiple stakeholders in different levels. Consumer-facing businesses and financial institutions will be able to launch a payments solution with only one contract and launch the following for their customers: on-boarding and KYC process, P2P transfers, card control, Agency Banking, physical or virtual cards, visualisation of statements/spending and alert notification – with Multi-FX, account load, Multi-language, chat support, rewards and cash-back, saving pots, tokenisation, and more.
b.yond allows businesses to utilize specialised vertical add-ons for travel and forex; expense management; ecommerce wallets; gift, loyalty and employee recognition; insurtech; money remittance and membership. Businesses can test and monitor their propositions’ performance.
Smriti Vicari, the Head of Fintech at Visa added the following comment on the new partnership and launch:
At Visa we believe in the power of partnership to bring the best possible solutions to both emerging payment players and our existing clients and partners. The launch of b.yond is another big step towards enabling our clients to gain rapid access to the capabilities that lie within Visa’s global network to power their own ideas.
Neil Harris, Co-Founder of b.yond said:
b.yond is breaking the mould with its consortium of industry leading companies who are coming together to drive fintech innovation to a new level of simplicity and speed. The project has been all about collaboration-led innovation and with an established list of other leading companies wanting to join the consortium, we expect the initial propositions to grow exponentially as we onboard new organisations and regions.
B.yond is a true game changer for digital banks and fintech startups, as the companies will able to familiarize VCs and investors with their product. For other brands, the solution will allow them to better test their product in advance, in a more economical and efficient manner.