An expert enabling the world’s most trusted and visible enterprises to offer financial products to their customers & partners: Alviere

Business owners are often warned not to overreach. “Stay in your lane,” says Marcus Lemonis, entrepreneur, investor, and star of the hit TV show, “The Profit.” Likewise, prevailing business wisdom encourages businesses not to stray too far from their core competencies. Given such sage advice, why then would Walmart, the world’s biggest omni-channel retailer, step into the world of banking-as-a-service (BaaS) by cashing payroll checks, transferring money, and offering bill payer software? Well, the answer might surprise you. First of all, BaaS should not be confused with open banking or platform banking. All three are very different and serve different purposes.

Open banks offer customers' personal and financial data to third-party service providers—for example, tech startups or online financial service vendors. The data is accessed through third-party applications and application programming interfaces (APIs). Companies who have access to the data use it for both honorable and nefarious means. According to Teradata, the risks of open banking include a "lack of process execution controls, fraudulent third-party access, lack of traceability of customer data use, and a lack of accountability by all parties." Banking-as-a-platform (BaaP) enables financial and non-financial companies to provide services to traditional banking institutions through their own platform. For example, an investment company like TD Ameritrade might "rent" its robo-advisor app to a competing traditional bank, such as Bank of America, so that customers can conduct investment business from the same account as their checking account. 

BaaP allows banks to focus on their core capabilities, which are its banking products, and to use a partner's expertise for things such as infrastructure or digital solutions. Alviere offers an extensive range of customizable, white-labeled financial products and services, with expertise, support, and security unmatched by any other provider.

Banking as a Service (BaaS)

BaaS is different from open banking and BaaP. For BaaS, a solutions provider integrates an end-to-end, readymade platform that allows non-financial corporations (such as Walmart) to offer banking services directly to their customers. These platforms connect via APIs and work alongside their existing infrastructure. The Walmart Moneycard is an example of BaaS, as are the retailer's check cashing, prepaid debit cards, and financial services. In Walmart's case, this model is a way to win consumers using embedded finance tools on the platform. All of these banking services are embedded in one place to improve the customer experience. 

Walmart also offers complementary MoneyCenters in some brick-and-mortar locations to serve the customer through an additional channel. These services don't just provide additional customer services—they introduce a multitude of touchpoints between the retailer and the customer. Walmart and other BaaS users can monitor customer transaction patterns and tailor new products and services based on their likes and dislikes through these touchpoints.

Embedded Finance Into Their Platforms?

Building your own financial services infrastructure can be complicated and costly to develop, but large companies look to leverage the ready-made platforms offered by innovative new businesses like Alviere. 

To incorporate embedded financial services into a platform, a company partners with a provider like Alviere, which offers ready-made, plug-and-play embedded financial services—including banking services, payment services, branded cards, and global payments—with minimal infrastructure investment or upfront costs.

Enhances Fraud Protection

There are multiple benefits of working with a ready-made embedded finance platform like Alviere, especially when it comes to compliance, fraud and security.

Because Alviere provides one holistic platform, companies don't have to worry about different API's talking and working with one another. Everything is under one roof, so whether it's Soc 1 and Soc 2 compliance, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) or PCI compliance, your company and customer data is protected on multiple levels.

At Alviere, the team goes above and beyond with their proprietary ledger, which acts like internal blockchain infrastructure. This ledger provides a record anytime money is moved. Not only does this protect against fraudulent or illegal activity, it adds another layer of protection and transparency. Not every embedded finance platform offers their own proprietary ledger, so make sure to do your research. You want to make sure the company you're working with isn't outsourcing that to a 3rd party, because it can open the door for more nefarious acts.

Finance: An Investment in Your Customer Relationships 

Why should a company incorporate embedded finance into its infrastructure and product offerings? The simple answer is to strengthen your customer loyalty and drive more revenue. But there are other reasons to incorporate embedded finance that have more long-term opportunities.

Embedded finance technology provides knowledge that businesses can harness to develop tailored products in the future. This knowledge will shape business strategy to provide a more customized customer experience. As technology continues to evolve, companies must adapt and accelerate rather than get stuck in their lane and fall behind.

Whether it is branded debit, gift, and prepaid cards or processing global payments, embedded finance can deepen your customer relationship and take you to the next level of fintech. Contact Alviere and find out how financial services through a platform provider can add value to your business.

Meet the leader behind the success of Alviere

Yuval Brisker is the CEO and Co-founder of Alviere. Prior to Alviere, Yuval co-founded TOA Technologies, the leading global provider of field service management SaaS solutions. He led TOA over 40 straight quarters of recurring revenue growth, raising $133 million in capital from Draper, Intel Cap & TCV. Oracle acquired TOA in the summer of 2014 for the highest multiple they had paid for a company to date. Before founding TOA, Yuval spent years growing and managing technology ventures. He has a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design, a Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and also studied for his MA in Cinema Studies at New York University. Yuval was a Captain in the Israeli Air Force.

“Alviere's Embedded Finance platform enables any organization to offer financial products and services.”