Startup Roundup: The Name Of The Game Is Speed

While all startups are doing their own thing and trying to solve different problems, many of those problems boil down to the same core issue: From onboarding to payouts and everything in between, the old way of doing things is just too slow.

For the four startups with whom PYMNTS checks in each month for our Startup Check-In series, speed is the name of the game. “Speed” also happens to describe how things have been going for these companies lately as they gain momentum and exposure.

Here’s what they’ve been up to this month.

nanopay: Bringing Speed, Security To Cross-Border Digital Payments

Frictionless payments firm nanopay maintains a payment platform facilitating business-to-business (B2B) payment solutions and real-time payment tracking, “almost like UPS tracks parcels,” said Laurence Cooke, nanopay’s founder and CEO.

The FinTech’s technology uses cryptography – not blockchain – to secure payments, allowing for faster, more secure transactions with the ability to achieve greater scale. Cooke explained that the underlying rails are secured so that only the intended recipient can receive the payments.

Unlike the faster payment solution released in the U.K. several years ago, which cost around 1 billion pounds to put in place and can handle 2,500 transactions per second, Cooke said that nanopay runs in Amazon Web Services and therefore calls for only $100,000 worth of hardware, yet can process 3,000 transactions per second.

Cooke said nanopay is lined up to launch in several new countries soon, and is gunning for millions of transactions per second in the not too distant future.

Tipalti: Easy Early Payments Drive Adoption

The timing of supply chain payments can be a point of contention between companies and suppliers. Tipalti CMO Rob Israch said both sides want to optimize cash flow, but while suppliers want to get paid as soon as possible, that can be tough on the payer’s working capital.

Tipalti, which automates the accounts payable and payments cash flows, recently rolled out early payments to help smooth that contention, and Israch says it’s been a win for everybody: Suppliers get their instant payments, and companies are rewarded with a discount for paying early.

In the past, Israch said, companies and their suppliers had to sit down with the financial institution to set up early payments, and that process had to be repeated for every supplier in the chain that wanted them.

Once Tipalti removed the accounts payable friction and made early payments a one-click, no-negotiations process, the startup saw the adoption rate climb to 15 percent. The program’s popularity continues to rise, Israch said, as customers get their heads around it.

Emailage: Embarking On The ‘FinTech Roadshow’

Emailage, the identity verification company delivering risk scores to financial institutions (FIs) and online merchants based on customers’ email addresses, is about to go on tour as it hits its major growth area.

Although it’s not a cybersecurity company, by shoring up financial institutions’ defenses, Emailage sends the fraudsters packing so FIs can invest their time and resources in serving their real online merchants. Therefore, making connections in the FinTech industry is an important strategic move, the startup said.

First, on Oct. 9 and 10, Emailage will have an exhibit table at the LendIt conference in London (of which it is also a sponsor). Next, Oct. 11 through Oct. 13, the company will be in Dallas, Texas, for LEND360. The “FinTech Roadshow” concludes at Money20/20 in Las Vegas on Oct. 23 through Oct. 25, where Emailage will have a booth and is again a sponsor of the event.

Jewel Paymentech: Putting Banks On Par With FinTechs

Done the old-fashioned way, it can take four to six weeks for banks to review a merchant’s application for a traditional point-of-sale (POS) terminal, a mobile POS (mPOS), and other payments and eCommerce solutions. The merchant has to demonstrate why they need the terminal and submit to a risk assessment process.

Jewel Paymentech aims to optimize that process using artificial intelligence (AI), putting banks on par with many of the FinTechs out there.

Automatic onboarding combined with web and social monitoring – two of Jewel’s core products – have proven to be a powerful risk assessment mix, since negative social comments can help predict the probability of chargebacks. Jewel’s third core product is a fraud wall that enables the provider to shut down terminals if a fraud attack is detected.

The three major banks that own Singapore’s domestic payments networks are now rolling out the technology to take on small merchants, where previously they would have only accepted larger merchants, reported Jewel CEO Sean Lam.

FitPay And NXT-ID: Forging Ahead On Wearable, IoT Payments

Startups FitPay and NXT-ID joined forces earlier this year – one a contactless payments enabler and the other a security technology company – to build a comprehensive Internet of Things platform by partnering with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and financial institutions to bring fast, secure payments to a variety of form factors. The startup team took three major steps toward that goal this month.

First, it was announced that FitPay would power Garmin Pay on Garmin’s new smartwatch, which will be available later in October. This is the first commercially live application of the FitPay payment platform.

Second, the team entered into an agreement with Bank of America to collaborate on accelerating adoption of wearable and IoT device payments. Bank of America customers will be able to pay securely with their IoT and wearable devices at any NFC-enabled location, as well as interact with NFC-enabled Bank of America ATMs. This is the first bank partnership the startups have publicly announced.

Third, FitPay will be powering payment capabilities for a new platform by FinTech startup Radius. The platform serves Radius’s biometric key fob, which stores up to 20 payment cards and loyalty programs. That comes on the heels of a token ring FitPay powered earlier this year.