New York, New York | March 16, 2023 – Amsterdam-based fintech startup Silverflow, is expanding into the US market bringing its modern, omnichannel, cloud native acquiring processing platform to acquirers, PSPs, payment facilitators, and marketplaces.
Founded by some of the world’s leading payments industry veterans, Silverflow believes that payments should be as frictionless as possible. Silverflow’s goal is to upgrade the payments industry by providing value, efficiencies, and opportunities for all payment-providers – whether they are renowned incumbents or up-and-coming fintechs – giving them an alternative to the antiquated, legacy processing technology still in use today.
Silverflow has already made an impact on the European market by providing clients such as Unifiedpost Payments and others with a modern and easy-to-use proprietary cloud platform for global acquiring processing with a direct connection to the card networks. Thanks to this innovative use of technology, Silverflow gives its clients full and consistent data transparency leading to higher approval rates, uniform chargeback data, and valuable cardholder information.
“We are excited about this next step in our expansion into the US,” said Anne Willem de Vries, Co-founder and CEO of Silverflow, ” By establishing a local office in New York we have improved our ability to serve our existing European clients with their North American expansion as well as service local customers. We believe an overhaul of the US payment infrastructure is long overdue and you can expect to hear much more from us on this topic in the coming months.”
Silverflow will be operating out of a new office in New York and is working to onboard several acquirers and PSPs. Due to the seamless infrastructure of the Silverflow technology, US businesses are able to get started and process payments through Silverflow in a matter of days – compared to the months or years it normally takes to set-up with a legacy processing solution.
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud native platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology provides value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital, Coatue, Global Paytech Ventures, along with notable angel investors from Marqeta, Square/Block, Pay.On, First Data, Booking.com, and Adyen.
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Silverflow is excited to be attending MPE in Berlin at the end of March! We are looking forward to meeting up with customers, partners, and our payments community at this incredible annual event.
Silverflow is also proud to be shortlisted for the Best Startup Innovation Award at MPE this year. We are thrilled to be showing off the innovation of Silverflow at this event!
This event covers three days of world-class content delivered by 160+ top industry leaders and influencers, and 90+ solution providers showcasing cutting-edge payments and POS solutions. Meet us and over 1300 Merchants, Acquirers, PSPs, and POS Software and Hardware vendors March 28-30 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Berlin.
MPE is one of the industry’s best conferences. With great attendees, compelling content, and amazing networking opportunities, MPE delivers a quality event! We took a peek at the agenda and found a few topics that we are really excited to see on the agenda. See below for our top pick of topic (see what we did there?!).
There were many compelling topics to choose from, but the one that caught our attention the most was on Thursday- The Power of Data. Silverflow believes data is key to the current and future success of businesses in today’s global landscape. The payments industry has been slow to respond to customer demands in terms of the systems used to process payments. Most of these legacy systems are using technology that is 30-40 years old! Silverflow was created to upgrade this technology and provide better data!
You can check out the rest of the agenda here.
Meet the Silverflow team at the event and discover how we have helped other organizations level up their payments through innovative and data-rich payment processing.
Okke Mönking, Senior Sales Manager
Jeroen van Wesemael, Senior Sales Manager
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Silverflow is hitting the road in 2023! We are heading all across Europe and North America this year to participate in some amazing industry events. Check out the current list of events for the first half of 2023 and contact us today to set up a meeting at one of these shows. Can’t wait until the event? Contact us today to set up a meeting.
Toekomst van het Betalingsverkeer (Future of Payments)
March 16, 2023 | Amsterdam
Register Here
Fintech Meetup
March 19-22, 2023 | Las Vegas
Register Here
Pay360 Conference
March 21-22, 2023 | London
Register Here
Merchant Payment Ecosystems (MPE)
March 28-30, 2023 | Berlin
Register Here
NEAA 2023
March 29-30, 2023 | Boston
Register Here
ECOM21
April 12-13, 2023 | Latvia
Register Here
Global Association of Women in Payments Symposium
April 19-20, 2023 | London
Register Here
ETA Transact
April 24-26, 2023 | Atlanta
Register Here
Retail Technology Show
April 26-27, 2023 | London
Register Here
Finnovate Spring
May 23-25, 2023 | San Francisco
Register Here
Merchant Risk Council (MRC)
May 29-31, 2023 | Barcelona
Register Here
Money 20/20 Europe
June 6-8, 2023 | Amsterdam
Visa Payments Forum
June 7-9, 2023 | San Diego
Want to meet up before one of these events? Contact us today to schedule a meeting.
Silverflow is excited to be attending the Global Association of Women in Payments 2023 Symposium in London this April! This is a must-attend event for any woman who’s serious about accelerating her career in the payments industry.
The theme of this year’s symposium is “Women- Driving the Pulse of Payments.” The keynotes, panel, and break-out sessions will keep you on top of industry trends. You’ll hear from women leaders on a variety of subjects including current payments issues and initiatives, fintech, and leadership. You’ll also have the opportunity to network with women at all levels and with diverse backgrounds in payment and fintech.
We took a peek at the agenda for this event and we are excited to hear from these expert speakers on a variety of relevant payments topics, but the session that really caught our eye is “How to Enable Global Instant and Frictionless Payments” at 13:35 on Day 2. Frictionless payments are no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Read more on why frictionless payments are vital for merchants in the blog post below.
You can check out the rest of the agenda here.
Want to meet up with us at the event to learn more about how Silverflow can help you achieve frictionless payments? Contact us today to set up a meeting with Nadia Bernikova!
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Silverflow is excited to be attending ECOM21 in Latvia from April 12-13! This next-generation event held in Riga provides a dynamic program of workshops, exhibitions, and networking opportunities for attendees. We are excited to see our customers, partners, and payments community at this one-of-a-kind event.
ECOM21 is the premier international conference for eCommerce and Fintech, bringing together industry leaders and decision-makers to discuss the latest trends and challenges in the post-pandemic world.
We checked out the agenda for ECOM21 and we are excited to hear from such an amazing panel of speakers at this event! We are particularly interested in the first-day keynote session “Sailing the Troubled Waters on the Sea of Payments.” There has certainly been a lot of change in the payment industry lately and being agile and innovative enough to pivot to customer demands is key to the success of any payments organization today.
We are also looking forward to learning more about embedded finance as there have been a lot of developments in this space recently. Sandra Mianda from Paypr.work has a keynote session on Day 1 “From Niche to Mainstream – Understanding the Impact of Embedded Finance”. Silverflow as the card-acquiring payments processor can help streamline the internal processes of large and small acquirers and deliver improved performance with simple and easy infrastructure.
Want to meet up with us at the event to learn more about how Silverflow can help you stay agile and innovative? Contact us today to set up a meeting, or reach out to Nadia Bernikova!
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Today we are going to talk a bit about scheme fees. We know these can be a ‘black box’ for acquirers and merchants, but don’t fret- we are also going to talk about how to keep scheme fees under control! After a brief introduction on scheme fees and their impacts, read on for details on how quality payments data can help you to manage and reduce them.
In 2015, the Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) became effective in the European Economic Area. In addition to putting a cap on the interchange fees for consumer debit- and credit cards, this legislation mandated that payment processing fees should be ‘unblended’ by acquirers, driving more transparency in interchange fees, scheme fees, and the acquirer mark-up. As a consequence, unblended ‘interchange ++’ pricing structures were adopted more widely and applied by acquirers, resulting in pressure on margins for acquirers (especially acquirers that were offering the majority of their merchants blended acquiring fees). Although this legislation provided more visibility of payment costs for merchants, it also made understanding the actual costs more complex.
In the years following the implementation of the IFR, acquirers have seen an increase in scheme fees. Not only in the form of financial impact, but also in terms of additional complexity (Brexit impact for example!) and the different types of triggers that cause fees to be applied. As opposed to interchange fees for which feedback per transaction is provided by the card schemes after clearing, this does not apply for scheme fees as these are applied in the form of daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly fees.
Understanding and estimating scheme fees, as well as passing them through effectively for merchants that have agreed interchange ++ pricing is therefore increasingly important to manage profitability. Having a processing platform that can provide and help to make sense of transaction level data at each stage of a transaction as it flows through the ecosystem is essential for several reasons:
So what’s the key takeaway here? You need quality payments data in order to quickly assess, adjust and implement scheme fees. These three examples show the increasing importance of having the right technology partner to process your card payments. If you would like to understand how Silverflow can enable you with data and insights to manage profitability while offering competitive pricing to your merchants, drop us a line below.
Check out this blog post Why data integrity fees are increasing and how acquirers can avoid them by Silverflow CEO, Anne Willem de Vries.
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Silverflow is thrilled to be attending the Fintech Meetup this March in Las Vegas. We are looking forward to meeting up with our customers, partners, and of course, lady luck at this unique Fintech event.
This one-of-a-kind event takes place at the Aria hotel in Las Vegas from March 19-22, 2023. With 3,000 Fintechers, 65 sessions, 175 speakers, and 30,000 facilitated meetings, this event is sure to be a huge success!
Check out the full agenda here.
We took a peek at the agenda for Fintech Meetup and we are super excited to check out some of the sessions we saw. One session in particular that caught our eye is Why the Cloud is Critical to Your Transformation. Silverflow believes that the cloud is immensely important and is an absolutely necessary piece of any fintech transformation. Check out our blog post on 3 Reasons Why The Cloud is Critical To Your Fintech Transformation below.
Be sure to catch Jon at this event and hear about how Silverflow can help you level up your payment processing by leveraging the cloud!
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Long gone are the days of the cloud being a scary, misunderstood, unsafe place. Now businesses all around the world rely on cloud technologies for many key functions within their businesses. And cloud technology is completely changing the financial services industry as we know it. Over the past 5-10 years, The Cloud has matured from a new, untested technology to a robust, stable solution able to support financial companies of all sizes. What factors have lead to this change? We see three key features of cloud technology that will allow financial institutions and fintechs to confidently transform their infrastructures to meet known and yet-to-be-imagined requirements:
1) Scalability: Cloud technology is designed to support high transactional volumes through infrastructure features such as containers, micro-services, and elasticity. Gone are the days of adding expensive servers to handle increases in volume. Cloud infrastructure auto-scales, meaning it senses increases in volumes and automatically increases processing capacity as needed. The infrastructure will also decrease capacity automatically as volumes decrease. Companies pay for actual usage rather than deploying costly servers in data centers.
2) Agility: Cloud technology is built for efficiency. Much of the administrative work required to maintain and operate cloud infrastructure is standardized and increasingly benefiting from automation. This means that developers can spend more time working on the business needs of a financial company, rather than spend time on generic system maintenance.
3) Security: Cloud infrastructure security is typically comprised of three pillars known as CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability). These pillars not only work to ensure maximum reliability of the infrastructure through monitoring systems, artificial intelligence, and system redundancy but also ensure an efficient means to a hyper-secure environment. Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) have become so specialized in cloud infrastructure security, they offer a level of security that is difficult for financial companies to match.
Scalability, agility, and security are the three key features of cloud technology allowing financial institutions and fintechs to completely transform their infrastructures. This allows them to keep up with the latest innovations and ever-changing customer demands.
At Silverflow we’ve got our head in the clouds! Our cloud-native platform is democratizing payment processing and disrupting an industry in a way that wasn’t thought of before. Want to find out more? Let’s meet up or contact one of our cloud appreciation teams below.
Check out this video Nigel Thacker on the Benefits of Silverflow’s Cloud Native Processing.
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Picture this: you’re shopping online at a store you’ve never shopped at before. You find something you absolutely love so you place it in your cart. You go to the checkout, but surprise- you need to create a login before you can pay. 5 minutes later you are ready to checkout, but now the shipping costs are added and they are insanely expensive. You give up and shop somewhere else, frustrated. Sound familiar?
Research shows that roughly 76% of customers abandon their carts while shopping online. They do this for a variety of reasons like hidden fees, high shipping costs, or being required to create an account. You can imagine how important frictionless payments are for merchants. The easier the experience is for the customer, the more likely they are to buy something from the merchant. Frictionless payments help merchants increase revenue, reduce their costs and improve their customer experience.
A frictionless payment is one that’s easy to use, secure, fast and convenient. Uber is famous for bringing this type of experience to taxi rides, and Amazon is trying to do with its new store concepts. But how can this be made available to every interaction cardholders make?
When all of this is done right, it minimises the time it takes to complete a transaction, making it as easy as possible for customers to complete their purchases.
As we discussed in another article, there are a few entities involved in the payment process and if any of these are not optimised for volume, speed or security, this can cause a big problem.
According to research, consumers abandon their shopping carts 50% of the time because the checkout process is too long and complicated. Consumers also say that on average they are willing to wait less than 10 seconds for their credit card to be verified.
In fast-paced, often impulsive sectors such as gaming, this is more important than ever. If a payment takes too long to process, this can seriously interrupt their game experience. Gamers globally expect to see familiar payment methods available as well as speedy and simple checkout flows.
Removing friction from the payments experience can have a significant impact on revenue, conversion rates, and customer loyalty.
If you’ve not done so already (don’t stress!), check if your acquirer is using the latest technology for processing your payments. Payment processors are third-party companies that are responsible for verifying transactions directly with the schemes such as VISA, Mastercard and others on behalf of the acquirer.
As many of the traditional payment processors still use legacy systems (some are up to 40 years old), this can add friction resulting in low authorisation rates and frustrated shoppers. We know that for merchants, the cost of customer acquisition has never been higher. You’re already having to deal with complex e-commerce platform rollouts and order fulfilment processes – don’t let sub optimal payments processing distract you from focusing on your valuable customers.
Merchants are taking more direct control over their payment flows, acting as a PSP (payment service provider); directly connecting to the card networks to be able to remove as much friction as possible, improving cardholder experiences.
Because PSPs are struggling to find acquirer processing platforms that match their speed of deployment, ease of use, true cloud-first and API approach, more and more PSPs are becoming acquirers themselves. This allows them to improve the service they offer their customers (the merchants). Cloud-native platforms, such as Silverflow’s API, provides one connection to all the card networks- meaning no more multiple connections, no more complicated integrations, and faster and more secure payments.
In conclusion- frictionless payments is no longer a “nice-to-have.” It’s vital to keep your customer experience smooth and easy, enabling your customers to buy your stuff! Now get out there and lower that cart abandonment rate- one frictionless payment at a time!
Silverflow is thrilled to be attending NEAA 2023 in Boston this March. This event brings together industry experts from Banks, Card Processors, Financial Services Companies, ISO’s, POS Companies, and more!
The NEAA’s 2023 annual conference and tradeshow is being held at the beautiful Westin Boston Seaport District Hotel, conveniently located in the heart of the Boston Seaport District, just 3 miles from Boston Logan Airport. 2023 is expected to be the biggest event yet!
You can check out the full agenda here and be sure to register below for this event!
Want to meet Jon at the event to learn more about how Silverflow can give you a competitive edge? Contact us today to set up a meeting.
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Silverflow is excited to be attending the PAY360 event this March in London. We are looking forward to meeting up with our clients, partners, and members of the wonderful payments community at this premier event!
This annual meeting held at Old Billingsgate Market in London on the 21st and 22nd of March brings together 2000 of the most senior representatives from banks, merchants, government, investors, fintechs, FIs, card providers, consultants, and solutions providers. It boasts over 150 speakers, 40 hours of dynamic sessions, and over 2,000 attendees. PAY360 attracts the most senior executives from the industry, with 67% being VP or C-Suite level.
Check out the full agenda here.
We took a peek at the agenda for PAY360 and are super excited to check out some of the sessions we saw. One session we found particularly interesting was “The Power of Payment Data” on the 22nd of March at 14:50.
Silverflow believes data is key to the current and future success of businesses in today’s global landscape. The payments industry has been slow to respond to customer demands in terms of the systems used to process payments. Most of these legacy systems are using technology that is 30-40 years old! Silverflow was created to upgrade this technology and provide better data!
Want to meet up with us at the event to learn more about how Silverflow can give you a competitive edge by leveraging superior payment data? Contact us today to set up a meeting!
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Robert Kraal, payments industry veteran and Co-Founder of Silverflow, is speaking at Toekomst van het Betalingsverkeer in March. Robert will be speaking on a Breakout Fintech Panel Session. Read on for details about this breakout session, Robert, and this fantastic event!
Check out the details of this panel discussion below.
Topic: Now that the initial infatuation between fintechs and banks has cooled, is there still a future for a lasting relationship?
Date & Time: 16 March @ 10:35
Moderator: Conny Dorrestijn , Moderator, Founding Partner BankiFi
Panelists:
You can see the entire agenda here.
This premier one-day event is held at Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam on Thursday, March 16th, 2023. Join the community of Banks, PSPs, Fintechs, Government Institutions, credit card companies, and more for a day deep diving into the following topics:
Robert Kraal is one of the few people in the world with over 20 years of experience in online payments.
After completing his degree in Geophysics, he started his career at Bibit, the first global Payment Service Provider (PSP) which was acquired by RBS/Worldpay. At RBS/Worldpay he went on to lead account management, before moving on to Google Netherlands. He joined Adyen in 2010 in the role of COO, where he was responsible for building and running the global acquiring and processing service.
As Co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Silverflow, Robert is responsible for maintaining relationships with the card schemes, acquirers, PSPs, and regulators.
Check out Robert on LinkedIn.
Meet Robert or Jeroen at the event and discover how we have helped other organizations level up their payments through innovative and data-rich payment processing.
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Think you know what happens when you tap your debit or credit card while shopping, or on the bus, or when your card is billed for your favourite monthly subscription?
In this series Silverflow’s payments fanatics will help you gain some insights into the complex, but fun (we think so anyway) world of card payments processing.
Today we’re talking about payment processors.
Payment processors are responsible for verifying transactions on behalf of the acquirer or the issuer. In this article, we will focus on the payment processors on the acceptance side of the ecosystem. Payment processing is a complex process of passing request and response data messages between the acquirer (and their payment gateway) and card schemes (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Diners, JCB, etc.). Some acquirers will have their own in-house payment processing platforms, but many will use a third-party payment processor.
Payment processors are responsible for ensuring that payment processing data is secure at all times while also processing your payment quickly (fun fact: it takes 0.9 seconds for a payment request to make a round trip from your favourite coffee shop payment terminal – to the payment processor and back – that’s quick!).
What happens during the payment process?
In the context of a card transaction, you will always have the cardholder, the merchant and possibly an ecommerce platform, or point of sale system (POS). For now, let’s focus however on three entities: the acquirer, the issuer and the payment network, e.g Visa, Mastercard.
The acquirer is an entity that owns the relationship with the merchant and is responsible for the settlement (payout) of funds received from the card networks to their respective merchants. The acquirer or their gateway transmits payment requests to their payment processor. The payment processor formats, transmits this on to the card schemes and transmits the responses back to the gateway in the right format.
An Issuer is a financial institution that provides credit, debit and prepaid cards to consumers (you and me!).. During the payment transaction process, the issuer acknowledges the payment request and confirms whether the cardholder has the funds available for that transaction. The payment transaction is ultimately confirmed at the merchant website or store.
This informational flow is just the first step as the transaction may also need to be captured & cleared and the settlement of funds will need to occur from the Issuer to the card network to the acquirer and then finally to the merchant so they can be paid for the goods and services they have provided.
What happens during the payment process?
Payment processing is becoming more focused on meeting customer needs.
Payment-processing companies are not all created equal .There is an ongoing, persistent problem that acquirers, PSPs, Payment Facilitators (PayFacs), and Marketplaces face daily with payments processing. This problem is costing them time, money, lost revenue, and customer insights.
So how do you know which processor is the best fit for your business?
Here are some important things to consider when looking into a payment processor:
Fees
Firstly, make sure they’re up front about fees and nothing is hidden (such as additional gateway charges and professional services fees).
Data
Look closely at the data you’ll have access to. Not only will this help reduce fraud, it can also help you make critical business decisions. For example, at Silverflow, by providing a direct connection to the card networks, we give our clients full and consistent data transparency leading to higher approval rates, uniform chargeback data, and valuable cardholder information, allowing for frictionless payments and the ability to make critical business decisions based on ALL available data.
Ease of use and set up
What does the implementation process look like? How quickly can you go live and start processing? In this day and age, clients should be able to go live and start processing quickly.
Technology
What technology do they use and how does that currently work with your infrastructure? Is this cloud-based? Is this secure and is it set up to scale?
Scale
As above, you need to understand how quickly your payment processor can grow with you. Can they handle a sudden influx of transactions or expanding globally and into new markets and sectors?
How aligned are they with the card networks? Can they adapt by adding their value-added services quickly and efficiently?
Next-generation payment processors are in it for the long haul
Payment processors have become a necessity as our world becomes more digitised and next-generation payment processors are in it for the long haul. They’re looking for long-term relationships with companies they believe can grow and prosper. They want to be a part of your success, so they’re willing to invest time and resources into helping you grow your business.
At Silverflow, we are committed to our clients’ growth. We offer a flexible and unique cloud-native payments processing solution with unrivalled access to data and ease of set up.
Clients are able to go live and start processing quickly, efficiently, and at a fraction of the cost of the normal decision of buy or build. Silverflow offers easy integration via APIs, full dispute resolution management capabilities, a 3DS (v 2.2) endpoint, interchange, and scheme fee calculation when the transaction clears, and making available all card network data.
If you are an acquirer, PSP, PayFac, or Marketplace, we would love to talk to you to see how we can help you grow your business. Contact us today!
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud-based platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology provides value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital and notable angel investors from Pay.On, First Data, Booking.com, and Adyen.
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Black Friday conjures up images of long queues of shoppers waiting hours to buy the hottest items in electronics, toys, clothing, etc., at huge discounts. The reality of this image has changed over the past few years. Online shopping had been on the increase pre-Covid, but the Pandemic saw a major shift in shoppers’ buying habits. While there are always die-hards willing to brave Black Friday crowds for the thrill of finding a deal, more and more shoppers are inclined to make the purchase online to save the time, expense, and risk (think Covid) of shopping in person. According to Deloitte, 69% of holiday shoppers say retailers offer comparable deals online and in-store during the BFCM week. And while Cyber Monday still plays out primarily online, price transparency has created a more channel-agnostic Black Friday.
Despite overall inflation concerns this year, Deloitte found that consumers will spend $500 on average during the week of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, a 12% increase from 2021.
The BFCM week is becoming more appealing to consumers as they are looking for bargains and for their money to go further. And online shopping will continue to grow as savvy consumers are looking for more comparable deals.
The various components of the payment stack have traditionally handled Black Friday and Cyber Monday in a very linear fashion—Merchants advertise the bargains they are offering and make sure there is enough staffing to handle the crowds. PSPs and gateways ensure that as many payment methods as possible are available to shoppers. Processors make sure that their systems can handle the huge increase in transactional volume their merchants will experience.
Is there another element that is being missed? Are merchants missing out on opportunities due to a lack of card transaction and card holder data? I would argue the answer to this question is a resounding yes. As we have discussed in previous posts, modern card processing is all about the data. Accurate and consistent data allows for less friction, better conversion, reduced fraud, and ability to enhance the overall customer shopping experience.
The card networks provide all this data to acquirers on every transaction. The question becomes 1) Are the acquirers (specifically their processing solution) able to ingest the raw data from the card networks and pass it along to their merchants, and 2) are acquirers able to help their merchants interpret the data in a meaningful, actionable way, which includes:
The use of data should not be limited to a few high-volume shopping days per year. Savvy acquirers need to make data a central part of their solution and offer this type of data every day. Offering the data alone is not enough. Acquirers need to help their merchants interpret the card network data that they are providing, allowing their merchants to improve their overall processing, implement programs to benefit their customers and ultimately increase merchant satisfaction and retention.
Get in touch
Email us at [email protected] to talk more about how data and Silverflow can help your business.
Jonathan Fuller has held numerous client and partner-facing roles over the course of 18 years in payments at companies including ChasePaymentech, RBS Worldpay, Adyen, Vantiv, Silicon Valley Bank and Gulf Oil. Jonathan is leading the Silverflow expansion in the United States.
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud-based platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology provides value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital and notable angel investors from Pay.On, First Data, Booking.com, and Adyen.
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Silverflow is thrilled to be attending the ICE London event this February at ExCel London! This event brings together an international community of over 35,000 global gaming professionals to gather ideas, network with peers, vendors, and partners, and learn about the latest news and trends in the industry.
Not only are we excited to network with our customers, partners, and the gaming community, but there are some very interesting topics on the agenda that we are itching to hear about. The one that really caught our attention was Optimizing Customer Experience with Frictionless Payments. We believe frictionless payments are vital for the future of e-commerce. Read more about our thoughts on Frictionless Payments below.
Meet the Silverflow team at the event and discover how we have helped other gaming organizations level up their payments through innovative and data-rich payment processing.
Nigel Thacker – Chief Commercial Officer
Nadia Bull Burnikova– Senior Sales Manager
Russel Coultart – Senior Account Manager
Learn more: www.silverflow.com
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
The Silverflow team are back from Vegas and the biggest event in the fintech calendar, Money 20/20.
Following a great few days talking to lots of people in our industry, we noticed a few concerning recurring themes that kept coming up.
We’re on a mission to revolutionise the payments industry so, here’s what we heard on the ground and how we think they can be solved:
Banks are losing customers to fintechs
Fintechs are moving more and more into the banking space. They are adding Bank Accounts (Adyen, Square), Issuing cards (Adyen, Stripe, Square) and Lending (Adyen, Square). So banks don’t only risk losing their payment revenues, but also the customer as a whole.
Solution?
Banks should look at BIN sponsorship and/or improving their card processing capabilities as a way to retain their customers (a.k.a stickiness)
Poor data is costing more in fees
The card networks are implementing behavioural pricing which adds various processing fees when data sent is incorrect and/or inconsistent. This is being done as a way to force acquirers to send consistent, correct data on every transaction. The result is that data is becoming more important than ever for acquirers which means they are being held back by their legacy processors.
Solution?
Use a processor that can provide as much data as possible and will work with you to help analyse and interpret the data. The end game is to send consistent data on every transaction thus reducing the chances for additional, behavioural fees being added to transactions.
Not understanding customer behaviour is costing revenue
Revenue is more important than ever for fintech, banks and merchants. Customer retention and subscription/recurring products are tools that these organisations are using to generate and maintain revenue streams.
Solution?
Data is gold. The more data an organisation has, the better they can support recurring/subscription lines of business, as well as learn valuable information about their customers. But having the data is not enough. Knowing how to interpret and apply the data is just as critical as having access to it.
Jonathan Fuller has held numerous client and partner-facing roles over the course of 18 years in payments at companies including ChasePaymentech, RBS Worldpay, Adyen, Vantiv, Silicon Valley Bank and Gulf Oil. Jonathan is leading the Silverflow expansion in the United States.
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud-based platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology provides value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital and notable angel investors from Pay.On, First Data, Booking.com, and Adyen.
Learn more: www.silverflow.co
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Money 20/20 is arguably one of the biggest dates in the fintech calendar and the Silverflow team are excited to touch down in Vegas next week to join fintech’s biggest conversation.
Soon after the agenda was released, the below topics piqued our interest. Check out our POV below and if you’re in Vegas 23-26 October, get in touch to meet up.
Not only are we looking forward to meeting with fellow industry comrades face-to-face, we are going to be galvanising the conversation around the future of payments.
Wallets, boletos and cards, oh my! There are dozens of payment methods being used every day in Latin America. With 20+ countries and over 600MM people in the region, cultural norms, access to the internet, use of mobile phones, and economies all factor into buying habits, which vary by country. Merchants should expect and will need a country-by-country approach to payments: Customer demand for installment payments in some, preference to pay with cash-based products rather than credit cards in others, and inability to use credit cards internationally throughout the region.
Using a payment orchestration platform to offer and organise many of the payment variables in Latin America is becoming a popular option. A good orchestration solution should offer a wide range of payment methods and ways to pay, but it should also offer smart routing and consolidate data so users have a complete view of all data from all payment methods.
Embedded payments give companies an opportunity to provide a unique buying experience for their customers. Whether it’s a cup of coffee through a mobile app or purchasing insurance through a website, the ability to buy goods/services on your website and/or mobile app is a must have for any company with aspirations to expand domestically and internationally. This also gives consumers a frictionless payment experience, and in many cases helps build brand loyalty.
Offering this ability to make payments does come with challenges. Merchants need to understand the markets they are selling in and offer the right mix of payment options, whether they should sell in the local currency, and what risk and fraud exposure exists. Using partners that offer omni channel solutions is a critical piece that gives companies a uniform view of their customer’s details regardless of the channel they used to make a purchase.
Access to data, data and more data from the card networks, and then knowing how to apply this data to transactions. Many data integrity fees are caused by the EMV tag value being sent in the authorisation record is different than the value being sent in the clearing record.
Some are caused by submitted EMV values not being recognised due to the POS device being used is operating on older software and needs to be updated. Still others are caused due to errors made by the acquirer during the merchant onboarding set-up–these could include incorrect state code, incorrect zip code or null values in these data fields. When the clearing records are sent with the incorrect information there is a data discrepancy and the data integrity fee is assessed.
Get in touch
Set up a time to meet with us at Money2020 or email us at [email protected]
Robert Kraal has over 20 years of experience in online payments. As Co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Silverflow, Robert is responsible for maintaining relationships with the card schemes, acquirers, PSPs and regulators.
Nigel Thacker is another payments veteran with 20 years experience in online payments. As CCO of Silverflow, Nigel is responsible for the sales and go to market strategy, heading the commercial team across Europe and beyond as Silverflow expands its reach.
Jonathan Fuller has held numerous client and partner-facing roles over the course of 18 years in payments at companies including ChasePaymentech, RBS Worldpay, Adyen, Vantiv, Silicon Valley Bank and Gulf Oil. Jonathan is leading the Silverflow expansion in the United States.
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud-based platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology provides value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital and notable angel investors from Pay.On, First Data, Booking.com, and Adyen.
Learn more: www.silverflow.co
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
We are seeing more and more Mastercard transactions being assessed with the Data Integrity Fee, meaning data that is being sent in the clearing record does not completely match the data being sent in the authorisation record. Mastercard is keen to ensure their members are passing data correctly and accurately and as a result, we expect the network will continue to tighten their focus on data. This will lead to an increase in data integrity fees being assessed and an increase in declined transactions. Both being ways in which Mastercard will try to alter and improve the behaviour of their acquiring members.
Mastercard introduced its Processing Integrity Fee in 2011 as a way to monitor compliance to their authorization guidelines and ensure transaction details contain accurate and clean data. Also known as Data Integrity Fee, it applies to all Mastercard authorised transactions that are not followed by a matching Mastercard cleared (settled) transaction, or in the case of a cancelled transaction, not properly reversed.
Mastercard charges $0.055 per item that does not follow the guidelines listed above. Additionally, declined transactions will increase by not sending the correct, matching data in both the authorization and clearing record. So not only is the sale potentially lost, but the acquirer could be assessed the Data Integrity Fee, which they will pass onto the merchant in question.
Access to data, data and more data from the card networks, and then knowing how to apply this data to transactions. Many data integrity fees are caused by the EMV tag value being sent in the authorisation record is different than the value being sent in the clearing record.
Some are caused by submitted EMV values not being recognised due to the POS device being used is operating on older software and needs to be updated. Still others are caused due to errors made by the acquirer during the merchant onboarding set-up–these could include incorrect state code, incorrect zip code or null values in these data fields. When the clearing records are sent with the incorrect information there is a data discrepancy and the data integrity fee is assessed.
Acquirers, PSPs and PayFacs should be mindful that data sent in authorisation and clearing records should be consistent with card scheme specifications and regulations.
It is important to make sure that all merchant POS devices are updated to the latest version of software if possible.
Onboarding records should be audited to ensure that there is no incorrect and/or missing merchant data that could trigger a data discrepancy.
Acquirers, PSPs and PayFacs should work closely with their processing partners to ensure they are receiving as much data as can be passed.
These organisations should be adamant that they use a processing partner that is willing to work with them to research and assist with root causes of data integrity fees, as well as any other card networks fee or cost.
Get in touch
Set up a time to meet with us at Money2020 or email us at [email protected]
As Co-founder and CEO of Silverflow, Anne Willem is responsible for product and the overall commercial, financial and operational activities.
After finalizing his degree in Applied Physics, he joined the Amsterdam office of Bain & Company. He moved on to work in Private Equity where he was responsible for portfolio companies in the Netherlands and Germany. He gained experience in cards payments at Adyen, where he was part of the cards acquiring team.
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud-based platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology provides value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital and notable angel investors from Pay.On, First Data, Booking.com, and Adyen.
Learn more: www.silverflow.co
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
There is an ongoing, persistent problem that Acquirers, PSPs, Payment Facilitators (PayFacs), and Marketplaces face daily with payments processing . This problem is costing them time, money, lost revenue, and customer insights— and what’s worrying is that some of these organisations don’t actually realise they have a problem and how deeply it affects them.
The vast majority of these companies are stuck using legacy credit card processing systems that are built on mainframe technology that is 30+ years old. These platforms are limited in the card network data they can ingest, rigid in how they function, expensive to implement, and even costlier to maintain.
This legacy technology has forced these organisations to treat card payment processing as a commoditised product, focused on how their processor can move transaction information from Point A to Point B at the lowest price. What these companies fail to grasp is that the current (and future) state of card processing depends on modern technology that allows organisations to innovate in terms of data transparency, speed of onboarding merchants, and fast time to market for new card payment features.
Silverflow, the payments technology start-up has pioneered a new processing platform that specifically addresses the complications these customers face. Developed and built in-house, our cloud-native payment processing solution provides global direct connection to the card networks, processing 10,000 transactions per second.
Operating on 3 core principles, the company not only delivers greater efficiencies and growth opportunities, they directly address the issues that are critical for modern card processing today:
Data: Silverflow is first and foremost a data company. By providing a direct connection to the card networks, Silverflow gives its clients full and consistent data transparency leading to higher approval rates, uniform chargeback data, and valuable cardholder information. This allows for more frictionless payments and gives our clients the ability to make critical business decisions based on ALL available data.
Did you know that there are over 100 response codes that card issuers provide?
Silverflow makes all these available via our REST API.
Ease of Use: Silverflow is about simplicity. Clients are able to go live and start processing quickly, efficiently, and at a fraction of the cost of the normal decision of buy or build. Silverflow offers easy integration via APIs, full dispute resolution management capabilities, a 3DS (v 2.2) endpoint, interchange, and scheme fee calculation when the transaction clears, and making available all card network data.
The latest live acquirer completed their authentication, auth and clearing integration in production in under a 5 weeks.
Innovation: In addition to offering a flexible and unique cloud-native processing solution, Silverflow disrupts the status quo by aligning with the card networks, allowing them to push their value-added services to clients quickly and efficiently. Clients can select our preferred partners to add services such as fraud mitigation and merchant onboarding. This gives our clients the ability to offer a truly best-in-class card processing solution.
We would love to hear from you on how your payments journey is going.
Set up a time to meet with us at Money2020 email us at [email protected]
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud-based platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology provides value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital and notable angel investors from Pay.On, First Data, Booking.com, and Adyen.
Learn more: www.silverflow.co
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Silverflow, the cloud-based payments processing start-up, has opened its first UK office; indicating exciting growth opportunities for both the company and the payments industry.
The firm, which was founded in 2019 by ex-Adyen Alumni and payment-technology experts, is set to transform the online payments industry by providing technologically innovative payment processing for PSPs, acquirers and merchants, shielding them from the current antiquated legacy technology still in use today.
This is the first office to be opened outside of the Amsterdam HQ and is located just 30 minutes by train from London, in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.
Welwyn Garden City was the second garden city to be founded in England (1920), and one of the first new towns, designated in 1948. It was designed to be the ‘perfect town’ – combining the benefits of both the city and the countryside. In the same way, Silverflow is the perfect solution to accelerate technological innovation in the global payments industry.
Left to right: Stan Rusike, Senior Account Manager; Nadia Bull Bernikova, Senior Sales Manager; Russel Coultart, Senior Account Manager; Nigel Thacker, Chief Commercial Officer.
Nigel Thacker, CCO of Silverflow, said: “We’re delighted to have opened our first office here in the UK. Although the pandemic showed us that remote working works and we don’t need to be based in central London, we still felt that it was important to have a physical presence here as we continue to grow as a business.”
Robert Kraal, co-founder, added: “We have the best of both worlds with excellent transport links into London, but away from the hustle and bustle with beautiful countryside all around us. This UK office opens new opportunities for us as a company and for the clients that we serve as it brings us closer to the exciting UK payments marketplace.”
Silverflow’s cloud-based platform offers a direct connection to the card networks so Acquirers and PSPs can now access credit card networks, instantly add new functionality and significantly reduce costs – all to better serve their merchants.
Following the opening of its new office, Silverflow is one step closer to becoming the global payment technology company connecting to the networks.
Silverflow customers already include Deutsche Bank, Pay U and Intergiro.
UK address:
Suite 03-08, Gate House
Fretherne Road
Welwyn Garden City
Hertfordshire
AL8 6NS
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud-based platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology provides value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital and notable angel investors from Pay.On, First Data, Booking.com, and Adyen.
Learn more: www.silverflow.co
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
In this newly launched panel discussion, led by Chris Jones from PSE consulting, payment industry leaders from Silverflow, Fraudio and Intergiro will be talking about how the partnership between these three fintechs is setting a new pace in acquiring.
Chris is talking with Silverflow’s co-founder Robert Kraal, product manager at Intergiro Ivan Ferdelja, and the co-founder of Fraudio Joao Moura.
As a new acquirer, Intergiro had challenges with traditional acquiring solutions available to merchants. In todays market there are few easy to integrate, data-rich & cloud-based processing solutions that provide merchants the next level acquiring they deserve. The solutions available were not using the latest technology (such as cloud) or surfacing the latest innovations from Visa and MasterCard. Intergiro wanted to offer its new innovative banking solutions alongside a similarly modern acquiring stack.
At Silverflow we see that many Neo banks (as well as payment service providers) want to become acquirers so they can provide their merchants with customer centric and innovative services. They are looking to innovate in terms of data transparency, speed of onboarding and fast time to market for new card payment features. This type of modern acquiring is not readily available on the market, especially if the acquirer wants to cherry-pick their own partners for onboarding, fraud, etc. That is why Silverflow set out to build a new processing platform and help these types of customers with the very real problems that they face. Firstly It’s about the simplicity we aim to bring allowing new acquirers to quickly go live and being easy to work with during the partnership. But it doesn’t just include the messaging between Visa & MasterCard, as we also solve the other side of acquiring such as exposing all the data and innovations that an acquirer needs to make critical business decisions which the current legacy acquirers cannot do.
At Fraudio they saw an opportunity to provide a modern fraud solution that not only focused on the cardholder flow, but also helps acquirers manage the growing problem of merchant initiated fraud (think online marketplaces!) Fraudio’s approach uses a shared database & AI, allowing the acquirer a single API and data pool for cardholder and merchant fraud engine that completely outperforms the legacy rules-based systems. This in turn and decreases friction for shoppers while increases revenues for acquirers.
What makes the partnership between Intergiro, Fraudio and Silverflow so compelling is the shared vision of how payments processing, acquiring, and fraud management can be built around the end-users requirements. Next to that they are all truly cloud-native (not migrated to cloud), built from the ground up and are a dream to integrate for modern DevOps teams. We hope you enjoy the talk. We would love to hear from you on how your payments journey is going. Set up a call with one of our payments nerds or email us at [email protected].
Read more Silverflow blogs and stay up-to-date.
Industry leading payment orchestration platform IXOPAY, partners with Silverflow, the Global payments technology company. This partnership will allow IXOPAY clients to upgrade their card payments process by switching to cloud based acquiring.
The world of online payments is a new and constantly evolving ecosystem. PSPs, Gateways, risk and fraud engines, APMs (alternative payment methods), are unlikely to be older than 20 years and those that are have been revamped and modernized since inception. But for card payments, which still have the majority share of online payments, the last mile of delivery is processed via platforms that are at least 20 years old. This limits them in terms of the data they can carry, the functionality they can provide, and makes them cumbersome to work with. In many cases, valuable information provided by the card networks is dropped or distilled and acquirers and merchants cannot react to auth/decline/chargeback reason codes and lack an accurate view of scheme/network costs.
Silverflow solves these issues. Through a single API, users can establish or retain an existing commercial agreement with any acquirer without having to connect to that acquirer’s legacy platform. Once the acquirer’s BIN/ICA is loaded onto the Silverflow platform, card processing becomes available to those users as well as full data and cost transparency coupled with simple, fast onboarding and advanced chargeback handling. Scheme updates, mandates, and innovation are deployed at speed on Silverflow’s platform.
IXOPAY clients, such as financially licensed institutions, payment service providers, and ISOs, will benefit from state-of-the-art cloud based acquiring, cascading, and unparalleled risk management functions. From one platform, users benefit from simplified integrations of acquirers, payment service providers, and risk service providers.
“The partnership with Silverflow is very exciting, by combining our best of breed platform with cloud based card acquiring our clients will have access to the best payments technology providing their merchants with a best in class service.” Said Rene Siegl, Founder and Chairman of IXOPAY
“IXOPAY is an industry leading payment orchestration platform and we are pleased to be selected as one of their partners as it highlights the strength of our technology. Together we can provide clients and their merchants a world class payments setup.’ Added Anne Willem de Vries, Co-Founder and CEO of Silverflow.
Upgrade your payment setup with IXOPAY and Silverflow.
About IXOPAY
IXOPAY is a payments orchestration platform enabling independent, flexible and global payment processing. As a highly scalable and PCI-DSS certified “fintech enabler”, IXOPAY fulfills the needs of large merchants as well as those of “white label” clients: payment service providers (PSPs), acquirers and independent sales organizations (ISOs). The modern, easily extendable architecture offers smart transaction routing & cascading, state-of-the-art risk & fraud management, fully automated reconciliation and settlements processing, comprehensive reporting as well as plugin-based integration of acquirers, payment service providers and alternative payment methods (APMs).
IXOPAY is part of the IXOLIT Group, founded in Vienna, Austria in 2001. With local entities in Austria and the USA, IXOLIT supports national and international customers across various industry verticals. The owner-led and -financed company has grown from 2 to more than 65 employees and is focused on building innovative solutions for eCommerce.
Please find more information about IXOPAY here: https://www.ixopay.com
About Silverflow
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud-based platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology brings value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital and notable angel investors from Pay.On, First Data, Mastercard, Booking.com, and Adyen. Learn more: www.silverflow.co
Frankfurt & Amsterdam – May 19, 2021 – Deutsche Bank and Silverflow have announced a cooperation to support the bank’s payments strategy. The partnership will include two new payment services, which are expected to launch in Autumn 2021.
Kilian Thalhammer, Head of Merchant Solutions at Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Bank, said, “Deutsche Bank is creating a new digital payment ecosystem, working with best-in-breed tech players like Silverflow. With Silverflow’s cloud-native payment technology, we can offer our customers high-end, best-in-class services that set new standards for bank-supported acquiring services and digital payments.”
Deutsche Bank will enable PSPs across Europe and the US in the first step to accept debit and credit card payments through Silverflow’s cloud-based card acquiring service.
Silverflow will also provide innovative new solutions for Deutsche Bank corporate banking customers. Initially launching in Germany, Silverflow’s will provide access to its machine-learning powered merchant chargeback API to manage disputed payments from card issuers on behalf of a cardholder. This is an industry-first approach to automate a largely manual mail and fax-based process, which will help merchants make substantial cost savings.
Founded by experienced online payments experts, Silverflow is the first card payments processor with a cloud-native platform with simple APIs, robust data and direct card network integration. Based on today’s service-based technology approach, Silverflow helps customers easily add new features, markets and scale processing capacity as needed.
Anne Willem de Vries, Co-Founder and CEO of Silverflow said, “Silverflow is building a new payments tech stack for the modern age that aims to replace the legacy systems that the industry has long viewed as an immovable force. Silverflow enables customers and partners to setup, scale and automate manual tasks such as managing chargebacks, alleviating headaches and supporting growth. Signing Deutsche Bank as our global partner is a significant achievement for Silverflow that shows the strength of our technology and team, bringing best-in-class card payments processing to banking customers.”
About Silverflow
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud-based platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology brings value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital and notable angel investors from Pay.On, First Data, Mastercard, Booking.com, and Adyen. Learn more: www.silverflow.co
About Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank provides retail and private banking, corporate and transaction banking, lending, asset and wealth management products and services as well as focused investment banking to private individuals, small and medium-sized companies, corporations, governments and institutional investors. Deutsche Bank is the leading bank in Germany with strong European roots and a global network. www.db.com
Our CCO, Nigel Thacker talks about the benefits of Silverflow’s cloud native processing in his conversation with Chris Jones.
PayU, the fintech and e-payments business of Prosus, today announces its partnership with Silverflow, the cloud-based payments processing startup, to offer Payment Service Providers (PSPs) globally a new card acquiring process. By combining Silverflow’s direct connection to the card networks with PayU’s expansive acquiring capabilities, the move will revolutionise processing and settlement within the card acquiring process and drive innovation across the wider payments industry.
By allowing direct access to card networks through a single API Silverflow’s platform enables PSPs to instantly add new functionality, streamline quality data flows and significantly reduce costs. This means PSPs no longer have to connect to acquirers multiple times over, reducing the complexity and cost of managing a network of card processing solutions. PayU’s unique compliance expertise and Acquiring Licences streamline the process further, saving valuable time and resources for PSPs.
PSD2 has encouraged many PSPs to look into improving their acquiring capabilities and becoming acquirers themselves to future-proof their businesses. However, PayU’s global expertise combined with Silverflow’s cloud-native platform creates a cheaper, managed service.
PayU’s partnership with Silverflow indicates their common goal to drive technological innovation in the global payments industry, creating greater transparency, efficiency and security to benefit merchants and cardholders.
Mario Shiliashki, CEO of Global Payments Organisation at PayU, says, “We’re excited to be partnering with Silverflow and their unique solution. By combining their offering with our deep expertise and experience in the domain as well as our state of the art acquiring platform and its capabilities, the combined product is uniquely positioned in the market to enhance and even replace PSP legacy systems and make them more suitable to the needs of today’s data-driven world.”
Anne Willem de Vries, Co-founder and CEO of Silverflow, says, “Today’s card payment infrastructure is based on 30 to 40-year old technology which hasn’t evolved with the payments landscape. Partnering with PayU, we have the potential to change this. PayU’s global connections and experience with Acquiring Licenses coupled with our cloud-native platform, we can make a demonstrable difference; reducing the time, money and resource the current card processing technology requires. We ultimately believe our platform will facilitate more innovation for the whole card payments system.”
Adyen alums get €3m to launch Silverflow, the first cloud-native card payments platform that connects directly to card networks
Crane Venture Partners and Inkef Capital back Adyen alum startup Silverflow to transform online card payments processing providing an instant upgrade to thousands of industry payments services providers.
Amsterdam and London – 22 October 2020 – Silverflow, a global payment technology company, is announcing a €2.6m seed funding round, led by UK-based seed-stage investor Crane Venture Partners with participation from INKEF Capital and notable angel investors and industry leaders from Pay.On, First Data, Booking.com and Adyen. With this seed round, Silverflow has now raised €3m in total funding.
Silverflow is a payments technology company building a modern and easy-to-use cloud platform for global cards processing with direct access into the card networks. Founded by long-time online payments industry veterans and seasoned startup founders CEO Anne-Willem de Vries (who was focused on card acquiring and processing at Adyen), CBDO Robert Kraal (former Adyen COO and EVP global card acquiring & processing of Adyen) and CTO Paul Buying (founder of acquired translation startup Livewords), Silverflow will launch its card payments processing technology in early 2021.
Anne Willem de Vries, CEO and cofounder of Silverflow, commented, “Today’s card payment infrastructure is based on 30 to 40-year-old technology that’s still in use across the global payment landscape. The payment technology infrastructure costs everyone time and money: consumers, merchants, payment-service-providers, and banks. We founded Silverflow with the belief that the payments technology stack needs an upgrade.”
Silverflow is the first card payments processor with a cloud-native platform built for today’s technology stack, with simple APIs and streamlined data flows, that is directly integrated into card networks. Silverflow is made for payment service processors (PSPs), acquirers and global top-market merchants that are seeing €500mn-10bn in annual transactions. Instead of customers needing to manage a complex network of acquirers across markets and maintain dozens of bank and card network connections Silverflow provides card acquiring processing as a service that connects to card networks directly through a simple API.
Krishna Visvanathan, Partner at Crane Venture Partners, added, “Our mission at Crane is to back entrepreneurs who are redefining the enterprise technology stack and Silverflow epitomises this as it relates to global card processing. Whilst payments power the digital economy, existing backend processing technology is old, costly and inflexible – and ripe for reinvention. Silverflow’s founders are a powerhouse team of payments industry experts with a unique insight to building a product that transitions PSPs, acquirers, and merchants from inflexible legacy systems to a fully cloud-native modern architecture. We are proud to be supporting them as they launch and scale their card payments-as-a-service platform globally.”
Silverflow is a team of five employees based in Amsterdam. The new seed funding round will enable Silverflow to double its team by the end of 2020, adding new developers and a commercial director. Silverflow has been in development for over two years and will be ready to launch in early 2021.
Angel investor Marcus Mosen, senior payment executive, industry advisor and early investor in fintechs like Iyzico or N26, added, “I’m proud to support the founding team at Silverflow as they get ready to launch a truly innovative payments technology platform. Silverflow is the solution to bring innovation to the payments tech stack through intuitive card network connections and processing. Reducing the complexity and cost of managing a network of card processing solutions, Silverflow brings modern technology, smart data insights and the ability to roll out new products across markets with its new card payments processing technology.”
About Silverflow
Silverflow is a global payments technology company, founded by online payments industry veterans, with the mission to accelerate technological innovation in the payments industry. Silverflow’s cloud-based platform provides a state-of-the-art upgrade and direct access to the card networks for payment services providers, merchants and acquirers. Its intuitive product and scalable technology provides value, creates efficiencies, and drives new opportunities for all. Based in Amsterdam, Silverflow is backed by Crane Venture Partners, INKEF Capital and notable angel investors from Pay.On, First Data, Booking.com, and Adyen. Learn more: www.silverflow.co
About Crane
Crane is a London-based VC firm focused on early-stage investments in European start-ups that are solving real problems for the enterprise and enterprise workers. We back ambitious founders building category defining companies who are redefining the enterprise stack. Crane’s portfolio includes 7Bridges, Axiom, Foundries, Harbr, Onfido, Shipamax, Tessian and Virtuoso.
About INKEF
INKEF Capital is a venture capital firm based in Amsterdam, backing promising early stage companies in Europe. Notable recent investments include Gitlab, Geophy, Urban Sports Club, Happeo and Remote. INKEF takes pride in being a patient, long-term investor with the ability to support companies through several rounds of funding. From the early stages of a technology or life science venture, INKEF Capital supports entrepreneurs building their ideas into successful international businesses. Learn more: www.inkefcapital.com.
Exchange rates are hard. Constantly converting amounts between for example Euro’s and GBPs is cumbersome. Having to deal with buy and sell rates makes this even more painful. But the hard thing about exchange rates is not doing the conversion. The hard thing about exchange rates is that they change. They change all the time. In most cases they only change a little bit, but this is enough to completely mess up your reconciliation. If you don’t know what exact rate to apply at the time of your transaction you will never be able to reconcile.
To make things even worse is the fact that in dual messaging (which is the case for most card payments) the exchange rate applied at the time of authorization differs from the exchange rate applied at the time of clearing due to the time lag between authorization and clearing. So the 100 Euro purchase shows up as a hold of 91 GBP in the cardholder account at the time of the transaction (authorization), but the cardholder is charged 92 GBP two days later (at the time of clearing).
As of August 11th, 2020 Mastercard will apply the same exchange rate during clearing as was applied at the time of authorization. Visa will do the same starting April 2021. These adjustments will make it easier for PSPs, merchants and cardholders to deal with multi-currency transactions.
However, some exceptions do apply, for example:
So how about refunds and chargebacks? In this case the exchange rate is used at the time the refund or chargeback was submitted to the card network. Depending on the time passed since authorization and the exchange rate fluctuations the amount debited for a refund or chargeback can be more then the amount received earlier on.
A lot has been written about PSD2 and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). This blog post provides insight into transactions where SCA does not apply. A quick reminder: enforcement of SCA is mandated by the ECB as of 31 December 2020. The exception being the UK, where SCA will be enforced per 14 September 2021.
Enforcement will not happen by the ECB itself, but by the national authorities. The PSD2 mandate is for the banks, not for merchants. However, if a merchant does not support SCA, issuing banks will start to refuse their transactions. To avoid this, both Visa and Mastercard require merchants to support EMV 3DS 2.1 or above.
Merchants and their payment service providers need to support transactions where SCA is not applicable (out-of-scope/excluded of PSD2), not desired (exempted of SCA to avoid shopping cart abandonment), or not possible (when the cardholder is not interacting with the merchant’s platform).
Exclusions (SCA not applicable)
Transactions excluded from the PSD2 mandate are:
Unless the merchant requests so, issuing banks will not apply strong authentication for the above transactions.
Exemptions (SCA not desirable)
Both the acquirer and the issuer can initialize an exemption to the SCA mandate.
The following are exemptions applied by the issuer:
In the above cases the merchant is best off by initializing a 3DS authentication. If an issuer exemption applies, the cardholder will not notice that 3DS authentication was initialized. Fraud liability lies with the issuer if the merchant has initialized 3DS authentication.
The following exemptions can be requested by the merchant:
Fraud liability lies with the merchant in these cases. It is up to the issuer to decide whether to accept these exemptions or not. The issuer may also soft decline a transaction by indicating this in the authorization response. In that case the merchant should retry the transaction, but with SCA authentication. Ideally the payment service provider will retry this automatically for the merchant.
Recurring Transactions and Merchant Initiated Transactions (SCA not possible)
In the case of transaction series where the subsequent transaction is not triggered by the cardholder (for example subscriptions, bill payments or additional charges) the SCA mandate applies only to the first transaction of the series. One-click purchases – where the card is stored on file for later usage triggered by the cardholder – are included in the PSD2 SCA mandate.
Fraud liability of a subsequent transactions depends on the status of the first transaction of the series. Therefore it is important to indicate that a transaction is the first of a series during the authentication. For subsequent transactions the authentication value of the first transaction can be reused to get the liability shift from merchant to issuer.
The SCA authentication is not a standalone process, but also impacts authorization and clearing messages, and needs to be supported by your acquirer.