PARTNERSHIPS A good partnership is the key to many successful fintech ventures. We asked Louisa Murray, COO Europe for Railsbank, and Aaron Holmes, CEO of Kani Payments about how you build a strong one, the fallout from Wirecard, and how open banking is shifting the dial
Unlocking the power of
partnerships The Wirecard scandal was a standout moment in a year of standout moments for the payments industry. The repercussions continue to be felt, but it’s encouraging to see other fintechs and financial institutions stepping in to help contain the damage. Earlier in the year, Railsbank, the London-based banking-as-a-service platform, agreed to purchase Wirecard Card Solutions, taking on its card technology and associated assets, including existing client business and some employees. 2020 has been something of a landmark year for Railsbank. Following its $37million fundraising round, the rapidly growing fintech has just announced, at the Singapore Fintech Festival, the launch of its Houston no-code platform and Open Railz application programming interfaces (APIs), which will make embedding finance into apps and customer journeys as simple as ‘point and click’. It has achieved this by deconstructing all financial products into core digital components, enabling Railsbank to do for financial services what Apple’s iTunes did for the music industry. It’s therefore a busy time for Railsbank, and the company relies on its partners to share the load. One such is Kani Payments, which develops software that helps www.fintechf.com
fintech companies run their operations and finance functions more efficiently. It takes data from processors, card schemes, banks and more, and creates automated reconciliations and best-in-class reporting. Railsbank has been working with Kani Payments (which was recognised by the European Payments Association as the 2019 Leading Payments Start-up) for around 12 months. Interestingly, Kani’s CEO Aaron Holmes started his career in Newcastle Building Society’s card solutions team – which was then acquired by Wirecard, which, of course, has now been acquired by Railsbank. We brought Holmes and Louisa Murray, Railsbank’s new European COO, together to delve into the power of partnerships, hear their thoughts on the importance of a clear and comprehensive dataset, and how they see open banking progressing.
Unless you’ve got an absolutely enormous budget behind you and a cast of thousands, you need to partner smartly to get to where you need to be Louisa Murray, Railsbank
THE PAYTECH MAGAZINE: Can you tell us a little more about the companies you work for and your specific roles? LOUISA MURRAY: I’ve been at Railsbank pretty much since the beginning. I was employee number four, and we’re up to 200-plus people now. I’m head of everything customer-facing at Railsbank, and that includes sales and marketing. We’re an enabler. We have a platform that allows any type of company, whether it’s a fintech, an insurance company, or a retail company, to embed financial products into its offering. It’s white-labelled, so we do all the heavy lifting in the background; we’re the building blocks that allow our customers to concentrate on their frontend, and their customer acquisition. AARON HOLMES: I’m the founder and CEO of Kani (a play on the word 'canny', meaning good with money and also a north eastern English phrase meaning 'good'). As you might guess from that, we’re based in the Northeast of England! But we are rapidly expanding to other countries now. Prior to this, I was the COO, and then chief innovation officer, at Global Processing Service, the transaction processing platform behind many fintechs you’ll be familiar with, such as Starling Bank, Revolut and Curve. I Issue 7 | ThePaytechMagazine
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