Small and medium-sized businesses are the lifeblood of many economies, with more than 5 million SMBs in the UK, and 99 million in the US. In the last decade, the combined effects of globalisation removing cross-border barriers, plus innovation and rapid digital change, have set the stage for SMBs to thrive in the global digital economy. Yet, there’s a feeling that the market continues to be underserved within financial services. Why?

In this episode of Payments Innovation, Piers Marais, Chief Product Officer, Currencycloud, speaks to Adam Goodall, VP of Product, Funding Circle, to discuss how SMBs can thrive in the global marketplace and consider whether the future for SMBs is actually beyond borders.

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2023 was an explosive year for Generative AI. The mainstream emergence of tools like Chat GPT generated a huge amount of excitement and hype. In the wake of this, 93% of fintechs believe that generative AI is poised to revolutionise the fintech and financial services sector. But how much of the hype has materialised into real impact?

Artificial Intelligence has long been a transformational force in finance, helping to boost efficiency, improve security and handle the vast amounts of data that the modern system relies on. So what will the impact of this new GenAI wave be? 

In 2024’s first episode of Payments Innovation, Piers Marais, Chief Product Officer, Currencycloud, speaks to Ram Gopal, Director of the Gillmore Centre for Financial Technology, to go beyond the buzzwords and learn more about the use cases being realised right now.

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Cyberattacks are on the increase, with bad actors proliferating around the world. By the end of 2023, according to Cybercrime magazine, hackers will have caused $8 trillion in global damages. In 2022, Moody’s listed banks as being at high risk of attack, and Fintech is also in the firing line. 

Financial firms hold extremely sensitive data on millions of customers, and vulnerabilities can be exploited for lucrative ransoms. Fintech is meant to be the ‘tech-savvy’ cousin of traditional finance. It’s innovative, fast-moving, and often API and cloud-driven. But how secure is it? Is the industry doing enough to protect the consumers and businesses that rely on these products?

In the latest episode of Payments Innovation, Cara Hayward, Director of Strategic Partnerships for North America, Currencycloud and Visa Cross-Border Solutions, spoke with Fraser Scott, VP of Product at threat modelling platform IriusRisk, to find out more.

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What does Black History Month mean to you? It could be a time to recognise the achievements of the Black community, to draw attention to ongoing problems with racism, or an opportunity to stand as an ally of Black friends and colleagues. October is Black History Month in the UK, and this year, under the theme of “Saluting Our Sisters”, the event celebrates the critical role that Black women have played in shaping history, inspiring change, and building communities. 

In this Special Edition of Payments Innovation, Product Manager Miada Hassan speaks to two Currencycloud colleagues, Director of Sales Development Fumbi Banjoko and VP of Banking Ola Malomo, who last year launched Currencycloud’s first Afro-Caribbean Employee Resource Group, Bl@CC (Black at Currencycloud). She digs into why Black History Month resonates for them, and what companies can learn from it.  

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Visa acquired Currencycloud in 2021. Now, leveraging the expertise from both companies, it has launched a Cross-Border Payment Solutions. With a suite of modular building blocks that can be easily integrated with a company’s existing technology infrastructure, it enables a range of capabilities, including the ability to spend in, and send payments to, more than 180 countries and territories.

For this special episode of Payments Innovation, host Piers Marais talks to Ryan Felipe - General Manager, Visa, North America, and Luciana Mosoia - General Manager, Visa, EMEA, to look at those capabilities in more detail and to understand their impact.

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In 2022, the US Federal Reserve announced that it had been developing a “wholesale” central bank digital currency (CBDC), designed to speed up transfers between banks around the world. The aim of the new network would be “to reduce settlement risk in cross-border, cross-currency transactions.”

But there are questions around the introduction of CBDCs, with some observers wondering how much value these initiatives will actually bring to end users and whether they pose serious privacy concerns. 

They are not the only digital currency being promoted. Stablecoins — a privately issued digital currency designed to hold constant value against a reference asset — are predicted to reach a value of almost $3 trillion USD in the next five years. Some say stablecoins can do everything a CBDC can do and more, with fewer downsides. 

This week, host Cara Hayward is joined by Clara Medalie, Director of Research at digital assets data provider Kaiko, and Sean Ryan, Vice President and Associate Director at business data and analytics firm FactSet, to investigate the role both CBDCs and stablecoins will play in the financial system of the future.

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Super-apps have made a big splash in Asia over the past decade. Chinese giant WeChat, with one billion active monthly users, has millions of mini apps that run inside the platform, eliminating the need for separate apps to shop, find restaurants, or check train times.

But can super-apps work in the West? X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk has promised to launch an “everything app” that combines chat with financial services — and he’s not alone among Western entrepreneurs wanting to tap into the growing super-app market. This week, host Yi Nah Yeo is joined by Pratyush Prasanna, Senior Vice President of Merchant Payments, GoTo Financial, to look at what lies ahead.

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Since it burst onto the scene in the mid-2010s, Fintech has revolutionised the way we save, borrow, and transfer money, and become a shining light of British industry. But recent news headlines have shown that maturing as a sector can be a challenging road.

Can Fintech continue its impressive trajectory? And what are the strengths it needs to play on in order to maintain its impact as it settles into the mainstream business landscape? This week, host Piers Marais is joined by Head of Fintech at FleishmanHillard, Gemma Lingham, and by Innovate Finance CEO Janine Hirt to look at where Fintech goes from here.

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As one stat after another shows how much venture capital funding is drying up, the most striking figure of all may have got lost in the noise: last year, female-owned companies received just 2.1% of the total capital invested in all startups in the US.

This week, host Cara Hayward is joined by Ruth Foxe Blader, CIO of Anthemis Group and Elizabeth Davis, Principal of the Female Innovators Lab Fund at Anthemis Group, to try and get to the bottom of this dispiriting percentage. They discuss the need for more female cheque writers in venture capital, the role VCs have to play in encouraging more female hires, and why the lack of female representation in tech is definitely not a pipeline problem.

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For nearly three years China pursued a zero-Covid pandemic containment strategy. One of the strictest in the world, the policy mandated tight lockdowns and kept foreign visitors away. 

The reopening of China’s borders has been one the biggest economic stories of 2023. The country is projected to be responsible for nearly 35% of global growth this year, thanks to an uptick in consumption and shifting consumer behaviour.

But for businesses both inside and outside China, what are the opportunities that this growth presents? What scope is there for inward investment, and how will China engage with its neighbours? This week, host Yi Nah Yeo is joined by Ruben Lim, COO at Singapore FinTech Association, to learn more about what China’s reopening means for the world.

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As a sector, Fintech has taken an investment hit, with global funding falling by a third in 2022. It’s a situation that’s leading to a radical reinvention of the way companies approach business planning, with a more strategic evaluation of the market playing a critical role. For years, venture capitalists were telling companies that they needed to grow as quickly as possible — to win market share, and only then worry about how they would actually make money.

That formula has been turned on its head now that money is more expensive and valuations have dropped. This week, host Piers Marais is joined by Leda Glyptis, Chief Client Officer at 10X Banking, to speak about the way Fintech business models are now prioritising profitability over growth. 

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