Ep. 12 - 10m UK Open Banking users, Coinbase and the FCA reach agreement, Apple & Patreon face off ends, PotN, BotN & more..
Grant Evans
Partnerships Leader @ Nomupay | LinkedIn Top Voice | Writer of The Payments Shed ??
Welcome to a slightly delayed episode 12 of The Payments Shed following the birth of my amazing new son at the beginning of August.
The benefit of a delayed episode is that I have a huge amount of payments news from the past month to provide my musings on, so it is going to be a double set of editions coming your way this week.
I also returned to LinkedIn late last week to find out that the platform had made me a ‘Top Voice’, which is in no small part down to the subscribers of this newsletter for your continued support, so a big thank you to all of you as ever for reading, commenting and sharing this newsletter.
Right then, let’s get into episode 12..
The UK sees Open Banking users surpass 10m figure.
Given I bang on about Open Banking and Pay by Bank all of the time, I can’t not begin this episode with some news from late July regarding Open Banking user adoption figures in the UK.
As announced by various sources, six years since inception the UK now has 10m consumers and small businesses utilising the open banking ecosystem.
Most interestingly for me, the volume of Payment Initiation Service users is said to be up 61% year on year, which is tremendous growth for Pay by Bank as a payment method.
As I have referenced before, I feel like the narrative around Pay by Bank has started to soften over the past 12-18 months and positive growth figures such as this will only continue to aid in developing further growth of Pay by Bank as a mainstream payment method.
Given more and more household name brands are beginning to offer Pay by Bank now, I'll be very interested to see what these numbers look like in another 12 months.
You can read more on this story via Finextra and Open Banking Expo via these links:
Coinbase reaches financial agreement with the FCA
It was interesting to see the FCA fine Coinbase a handsome sum of ￡3.5m in late July for providing payment services to more than 13,000 high-risk customers.
Although it makes a point as the first fine of its kind for a cryptocurrency platform in the UK, ￡3.5m is realistically a drop in the ocean for a publicly listed Nasdaq company like Coinbase, especially given 13,000+ is not an insurmountable amount of high-risk customers to have been servicing, which included the likes of PEP's (politically exposed people) according to reports.
Platforms like this need to get much better AML policies in place or this is just going to become a vicious cycle of similar fines moving forward, as has been the case in the US already.
You can read more on this story below via The Financial Times and also directly on the Coinbase website to see the more wide ranging response from Coinbase regarding the investigation and outcome:
Patreon concedes in Apple face off over in-app purchase fees
An article in The Paypers last week regarding the cost impact of the transition to in-app purchases that Apple has mandated on creator powerhouse Patreon caught my eye.
Patreon has responded to Apple surcharges by developing an optional tool for their members that will uplift prices to offset the relevant 30% fee that Apple will now be leveraging. Patreon says creators can choose to increase prices, or swallow the fees themselves, creating a bit of a predicament for their creator community.
That is all well and good, but ultimately you end up with a position whereby the end customer is now paying an additional 30% on top of what they paid before as a sort of ghost surcharge.
There is a further exception in their subscription model, but this just goes to show yet again how much power Apple has over their app store and the impact mandates like this can have on a business, their customers, and their customers customers.
You can read the full article in The Paypers here:
领英推荐
Revolut Secondary Share Sale peaks industry interest
I feel like Revolut has been the talk of the payments town for a few months now, with record profits, finally getting a UK Banking License and now a large scale secondary share sale taking place.
The ￡45b valuation is staggering at a time when many FinTech businesses are still licking their wounds from heavily diminished valuations, but is it justified for such a fast growing company as Revolut?
Some of the figures in the press release below lean into why the valuation is so high seemingly; 45m customers worldwide, $2.2b revenues, pre-tax profit of $545m, 80% YTD revenue increase.
An interesting next step for Revolut anyway.
You can read more on the secondary sale directly on the Revolut website here:
Podcast of the Newsletter
I've gone a bit mainstream with this one, but it was such a good listen that I have to recommend it to you all.
PotN for this episode is a recent Diary of a CEO podcast from 1st August with Marc Randolph, co-founder and former CEO of Netflix.
His commentary around being replaced as CEO of the business by his co-founder and original angel investor in Netflix, Reed Hastings, is a fascinating listen in particular.
Marc Randolph has also recently released a new book chronicling his journey at Netflix called 'That Will Never Work', which I'll be adding to my reading list.
Book of the Newsletter
BotN this episode is Sales Enablement: A Master Framework to Engage, Equip, and Empower A World-Class Sales Force, by Byron Matthews and Tamara Schenk.
It is a great guide for any sales managers, both new and existing, to really consider the best approaches to creating the highest performing sales team you can.
You can pick up a copy on Amazon of course (link below), or try and find a second hand one if you can, as there are some great book resale companies like World of Books (link below) out there these days:
_______________________________________________
Thank you for reading as ever and don't forget another episode is due out later this week.
Sources: Finextra | Open Banking Expo | The Financial Times | Coinbase | The Paypers | Revolut | Inner Peace | Amazon | World of Books |
Helping businesses with payments. Payments Leader @ Nomupay | LinkedIn ‘Top Payment Systems Voice’
6 个月Another day, another thing learned. Really good read mate! Congrats again on the Top Voice. Absolutely deserved