Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 5 July 2018
Revolut signs up one million customers as it eyes global expansion
Revolut, one of the fastest growing fintech companies in the world, has announced that it has signed up one million customers in the UK and saved them over $330m in fees, as the London-based company continues to disrupt traditional banking.
London-based Revolut is now signing up between 6,000 and 9,000 new users every day. Further data has revealed that of Revolut’s 2.25 million global customers, around 400,000 are weekly active users and 900,000 are monthly active users. Customers have made over 125 million transactions to date with a total transaction volume of $18.5 billion.
In total, customers have saved over $740m in fees often charged by traditional banks. The data has shown that these savings have been made as a result of the removal of foreign exchange fees which affect card payments abroad, global money transfers and international ATM withdrawals.
Nik Storonsky, Founder & CEO of Revolut
“Whilst our organic growth has been exceptional, I believe that we’ve only reached 1% of our potential. Reaching 1m UK customers is testament to the great product that we’ve built and the incredible savings we’ve offered our customers. However, we are always looking to improve. Our brand awareness is growing across Europe and we’re pressing ahead with global expansion, with launches in the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand all planned for later in the year.
“I don’t believe in financial borders at the expense of consumers. The world is becoming more interconnected and financial companies should be adapting to this. People should be free to spend and transfer money globally without incurring fees and waiting days.”
Iliad launches support for RTP and API testing
Iliad Solutions’ latest release of its t3:Switch software is now available with full support for Real-Time Payments (RTP) and API testing for OpenAPI and REST based initiatives.
The company has extended the solution, which supports over 50 industry formats, so that institutions can test these new standards in conjunction with the rest of an organisation’s payments enterprise.
As US Banks move to incorporate RTP, they will need to conduct extensive internal testing before certification to ensure that they are able to interact with the TCH environment, and also that internal systems are operating correctly ahead of engagement. Iliad’s t3:Switch solution supports this requirement in full, enabling an institution to test all the message interfaces and flows required by RTP and at the same time assure the various systems that form the banks payments infrastructure are operating as expected. In addition, institutions will have access to a full end-to-end test platform that can integrate all payments testing requirements into a single technology stack.
Anthony Walton, CEO of Iliad Solutions, believes the company’s previous experience makes them ideally placed to help customers as the market rapidly evolves:
“Twelve of the fourteen member banks that first implemented Faster Payments in the UK used Iliad Solutions to ensure they were processing payments correctly across the whole organisation. A “point” solution for certification gives some comfort, but our view was always that this was only a small part of the QA process. Since then we have been able to use our experience to create a complete set of solutions for those developing and deploying Real Time Payments technology. Advances in technology also give us the option to deploy a full solution in the Cloud if required and as an SAAS solution.”
Sberbank adds auto-repayment of credit debt to mobile app
Sberbank has launched a service that allows clients to set up automatic repayment of credit card debt. It allows payment dates to be tracked and debt to be paid off on time. The function can be found in the online and mobile application versions of Sberbank Online.
The autorepayment service sends the client an SMS about forthcoming withdrawal of funds a few days prior to the payment date. If the client does not reply to the SMS, funds will be withdrawn automatically. To activate the service, simply select the debit card that funds will be withdrawn from to pay off the credit card debt every month.
“We created the credit card autorepayment service at the request of our clients. It checks whether the client has debt helps make payments on time. It is very relevant for clients who plan to go on holiday and don’t want to worry about repaying their credit card debt away from home,” commented Igor Kovalev, Executive Director of Sberbank Borrow and Save Division.
