10 Best FinTech Companies to Watch 2020
The Silicon Review
“We focus on making sure that money is moved quickly and cheaply, with minimal hassle”
The transfer of funds on a global scale can be a tedious task. Various obstacles have the potential to limit our ability to seamlessly send and receive money around the world. These obstacles can be in the form of slow processing times, restricted transfer corridors and extravagant transfer fees.
A new wave of platforms has shaken up the traditional money transfer market over the past few years, providing forward-thinking solutions to overcome these obstacles. Bringing a new colour of start-up flair, flexibility and convenience, these money transfer platforms are unrestricted by governmental bodies and able to cover more of the world by creating new money transfer corridors for users.
Paysend is an international FinTech firm on a mission to change how money is moved around the world. It was founded in 2017 as a way to provide customers with a faster and cheaper method of money transfer when compared with traditional banking institutions and remittance outlets. Paysend’s vision is to create a world where people feel better-connected with their friends and family, no matter how many borders separate them.
Using Paysend, people can send money to over 80 countries, either to a bank account or directly to a debit or credit card. New countries are constantly being added tothe Paysend platform to improve users’ global reach. Despite operating for less than three years, Paysend is already trusted by 1.5 million people to send money abroad. It has partnerships with industry behemoths such as Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay and many other global networking platforms that improve the influence and functionality of Paysend’s services.
The Paysend offices are located in London, Edinburgh, and Moscow.
Ronnie Millar, CEO of Paysend: Interview Highlights
Internet banks or banking processes create a lack of personal relationships with bank personnel. How do you leverage modern technologies to bridge this gap?
We create relationships with customers at various levels. Our digital interface has been crafted to be simple and seamless, ensuring that complexity is minimal, and people of nearly every level of technological literacy can use our platform. We also invest a lot of time on customer service. Customers can reach us via email, the contact form on our website, or via social media messaging, which means that issues can be dealt with efficiently and comprehensively. We also encourage open and honest online reviews so that we always know exactly what our customers are thinking and feeling about Paysend. We’ve currently received nearly 8,500 reviews on TrustPilot, with a 5-star success rate of 89%.Using methods like this we can fine tune our platform so that it runs in perfect harmony with customer needs.
Artificial Intelligence is the new buzzword across tech industries. Do you think the FinTech industry should embrace AI to increase business/operations efficiency?
Absolutely! The technology is already helping tech businesses to streamline activities and maximise productivity. The ability to process data and form accurate conclusions allows marketing and product teams to design solutions that satisfy customer demand. From that point of view, AI is the ultimate tool for consumer understanding.
How do you secure your solutions without increasing the complexity of banking activities?
We work with several top-level FinTech security providers to fortify our solutions against criminal activities. We constantly scrutinise all of our activities to ensure the highest level of compliance. For us, the safety of our customers’ money has always been - and will always be - our number one priority.
How do you concentrate on improving the customer experience while also paying particular attention to data security?
We use an iterative process whereby we try to balance a simple customer journey and high levels of behind-the-scenes security. Lightning-fast, effective anti-fraud technology is essential to the overall user experience, as it allows for a very secure KYC process that’s also very simple to use. This simply wasn’t possible just a few years ago. Our business is reactive to the latest tech trends, and we constantly look to improve the overall customer experience where we can.
Banks depend on service providers like you to provide a hassle-free experience for their customers. How do you improve the customer experience?
We have customer monitoring and analysis tracking in place that tell us in real-time where improvements are needed. And on a fundamental level, the UX of our money transfer platform is clear, simple and straightforward, providing the perfect antidote to the overly-complicated processes of incumbent money transfer platforms.
How can banks endorse their products by leveraging your solution?
We offer innovative, secure and reliable money transfer services that give flexibility in how recipients can receive funds, whether this to their bank account or directly to a credit or debit card. We focus on making sure that money is moved quickly and cheaply, with minimum hassle. Paysend has a number of key partnerships with financial institutions in various countries across the globe, and these partnerships allow both Paysend and our partners to benefit from innovation in the rapidly-growing money transfer market.
How do you gain insights into creating new banking solutions?
We place a lot of emphasis on listening to consumers in a meaningful way, capturing their feedback, and passing it on to our product design team with a clear brief – what is the problem we’re looking to solve, and how can we do that in a way which is unique to Paysend? This open conversation with our customers, as well as FinTech industry experts, allows us to be a major player in the fiercely competitive mobile money space.
Ronnie Millar – A Visionary Entrepreneur
Ronnie Millar is a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years’ experience across multiple sectors such as business services, payTV, SaaS, and FinTech. He enjoys the thrill of starting with an idea and building a team with the talent to see the idea through to completion. Mr. Millar has received his Masters in Economics from the University of Edinburgh where he was Captain and Treasurer of the Sailing Club.