Digital payments with a human touch

It’s unlike­ly that small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es (SMEs) will ever be faced with a more tur­bu­lent busi­ness envi­ron­ment than they have been forced to steer through over the last few years. If the once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion dis­rup­tion caused by the Brex­it tran­si­tion wasn’t enough, the glob­al coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has pre­sent­ed tru­ly unprece­dent­ed chal­lenges for lead­ers.

For­tu­nate­ly, both events came at the end of a decade of rapid tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments, afford­ing com­pa­nies the abil­i­ty to car­ry out all nec­es­sary finan­cial tasks in a remote, dis­trib­uted work­force. Yet while tech­nol­o­gy has an incred­i­ble abil­i­ty to reduce fric­tion, it’s not able to elim­i­nate bor­ders alto­geth­er, which meant that when the Brex­it tran­si­tion peri­od end­ed on Jan­u­ary 1, the impact on finan­cial sup­ply chains was felt.

Dri­ven by uncer­tain­ty around lock­down restric­tions and last-minute Brex­it nego­ti­a­tions, the volatil­i­ty of exchange rates over the last year has affect­ed the val­ue of pay­ments that busi­ness­es need to make and the bal­ances they hold. In a recent study by mon­ey­corp and the British Cham­bers of Com­merce, one in five SMEs said cur­ren­cy risk is a greater con­cern than it was two years ago.

The same research pre­sent­ed a tale of two halves among SMEs. While 44 per cent expressed an intent to grow their Euro­pean Union exports over the next 12 months, 23 per cent said they are look­ing to reduce their EU activ­i­ty. Addi­tion­al­ly, a third of SMEs also intend to grow in inter­na­tion­al mar­kets. With com­ple­tion of Brex­it, and the government’s aim to relaunch the UK as a busi­ness hub for the rest of the world, there are clear oppor­tu­ni­ties to trade more effi­cient­ly and afford­ably with coun­tries that were unavail­able or imprac­ti­cal when the UK was in the EU.

For com­pa­nies estab­lish­ing Euro­pean offices and explor­ing sup­ply chains out of the EU, par­tic­u­lar­ly in emerg­ing mar­kets that wouldn’t his­tor­i­cal­ly have seen that busi­ness, it’s cru­cial they man­age their cur­ren­cy risk. Yet more than 90 per cent of SMEs are neglect­ing to do so, the study found, with busi­ness lead­ers blam­ing the costs of for­eign exchange man­age­ment and a lack of avail­able infor­ma­tion about their expo­sure.

They need to work with an inter­na­tion­al pay­ments part­ner that meets their unique needs, but strug­gle to find help among the two key groups of providers: new chal­lengers in the space and gen­er­al­ist banks.

“New chal­lengers, on one side, are com­plete­ly dig­i­tal-based,” says Lee McDar­by, UK chief exec­u­tive of mon­ey­corp, one of the UK’s fastest­grow­ing inter­na­tion­al pay­ments com­pa­nies. “They are very stream­lined towards the devel­op­ment of apps and the tech­nol­o­gy is good, but if some­thing hap­pens to your pay­ment, it’s extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to pick the phone up and actu­al­ly speak to some­one.

“On the oth­er side, retail banks might offer a human to engage with, but they are very much gen­er­al­ists offer­ing lots of finan­cial ser­vices to a vari­ety of cus­tomers, all the way through the spec­trum of size. Through my many inter­ac­tions with SMEs, I can tell you what they want is sim­ple, but it’s not being served by either par­ty: a spe­cial­ist provider with tech they can access when they want and strong, human-led cus­tomer ser­vice.”

It’s impor­tant com­pa­nies take a crit­i­cal look at their pay­ments process­es and con­sid­er how they can be stream­lined to pro­tect their bot­tom line, espe­cial­ly with inter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions. Some busi­ness­es are more savvy on out­ward pay­ments, but far less so on inward pay­ments. How­ev­er, if a sup­pli­er sends dol­lars to a company’s ster­ling account, for instance, it is at the mer­cy of what the bank is charg­ing that day.

To sup­port SMEs, mon­ey­corp has carved out its own space in the mid­dle of the mar­ket, pro­vid­ing tech­nol­o­gy with a spe­cial­ist, human touch. Its inter­na­tion­al bank account sim­pli­fies pay­ments, allow­ing busi­ness­es that trade with mar­kets out­side the UK to boost their prof­itabil­i­ty by receiv­ing, send­ing and hold­ing in all the major cur­ren­cies. SMEs also avoid the var­i­ous set-up fees oth­er providers impose, account man­age­ment fees, unfair con­ver­sion charges and excess admin for mul­ti­ple accounts.

Hav­ing invest­ed heav­i­ly in mod­ernising its dig­i­tal plat­form, moneycorp’s tech­nol­o­gy holds its own against the fin­tech apps. There is func­tion­al­i­ty for small­er SMEs need­ing to receive and send mul­ti­ple cur­ren­cies with a sim­ple spot or lock-in rate for a future pay­ment, up to larg­er com­pa­nies requir­ing bulk pay­ment capa­bil­i­ty, which is espe­cial­ly desir­able for busi­ness­es that upload and val­i­date thou­sands of pay­ments at a time.

To advance its tech­nol­o­gy fur­ther, mon­ey­corp has devel­oped a series of appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­faces, or APIs, where­by time-poor com­pa­nies can plug in their accoun­tan­cy soft­ware to gain a much more stream­lined way of deal­ing with their inter­na­tion­al risk, over­seas pay­ments and for­eign exchange require­ments. The abil­i­ty to plug every­thing into one place is par­tic­u­lar­ly in demand among larg­er SMEs in sec­tors such as insur­ance, ship­ping and the gig econ­o­my.

“A lot of our tech­nol­o­gy invest­ments have been focused on giv­ing trea­sur­ers, finance direc­tors and chief finan­cial offi­cers the time to focus on high­er-val­ue tasks,” says McDar­by. “We are acute­ly aware pay­ments are a big part of a busi­ness, but there are also many oth­er parts that need atten­tion from finance lead­ers, so we are very ded­i­cat­ed to inte­grat­ing dig­i­tal inno­va­tion in a way that takes the stress out of the pay­ments jour­ney for SMEs.”

The abil­i­ty to access and inter­act with a pay­ments expert also means mon­ey­corp can offer valu­able mar­ket guid­ance to SMEs, par­tic­u­lar­ly against a tur­bu­lent back­drop of Brex­it and COVID-19. Many busi­ness lead­ers do not have the spe­cial­ist knowl­edge to inter­pret a cur­ren­cy chart and deci­pher what it means for their busi­ness and they can’t get that from an app either.

Aware­ness of how a busi­ness is trans­act­ing against their bud­get rate is imper­a­tive, to avoid inad­ver­tent­ly eat­ing into their bot­tom line, so a direct rela­tion­ship with a spe­cial­ist is huge­ly valu­able.

“Cus­tomers have told us that while they are pas­sion­ate about their busi­ness­es, they are time-poor,” says McDar­by. “They can’t wear all the hats required to run their com­pa­ny, so we lend that extra, safe pair of hands. Both chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth lie ahead. SMEs can focus on their pri­or­i­ties and work­force as we help them keep an eye on the finan­cial mar­kets and stay ahead of the curve. We’re a nat­ur­al exten­sion of their finan­cial oper­a­tions and we do that well because of our tech, but also our human touch.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.moneycorp.com/future or call + 44 (0) 203 797 2944

mon­ey­corp is a trad­ing name of TTT Mon­ey­corp Lim­it­ed, a com­pa­ny reg­is­tered in Eng­land under reg­is­tra­tion num­ber 738837. Its reg­is­tered office address is at Floor 5, Zig Zag Build­ing, 70 Vic­to­ria Street, Lon­don SW1E 6SQ and it is VAT reg­is­tra­tion num­ber is 897 3934 54. TTT Mon­ey­corp Lim­it­ed is autho­rised by the Finan­cial Con­duct Author­i­ty under the Pay­ment Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tion 2017 (firm ref­er­ence num­ber 308919) for the pro­vi­sion of pay­ment ser­vices. Mon­ey­corp Bank Lim­it­ed is autho­rised and reg­u­lat­ed by the Gibral­tar Finan­cial Ser­vices Com­mis­sion. Mon­ey­corp Bank Lim­it­ed is a com­pa­ny reg­is­tered in Gibral­tar under com­pa­ny num­ber 113151 with its reg­is­tered office at suite 7/b King’s Yard Lane, Gibral­tar, GX11 1AA. Tele­phone: +350 (0) 2225 5600

Pro­mot­ed by mon­ey­corp