Our Chief Commercial Officer and Co-Founder, Scott Lucas, sat down this week with The Paypers: Insights Into Payments and Beyond to discuss all things Monavate.
Please provide a brief overview of Monavate and its core business offerings in the fintech industry. How long has Monavate been providing card programmes and financial services?
Monavate is an expert payment solutions provider working to help ambitious, discerning businesses launch financial products at scale and speed, enabling them to navigate the complex network of relationships and technology choices needed to launch card programmes. The business was founded in 2020 in Cambridge, and has scaled rapidly, following a GBP 5 million seed round investment from major US investors in Spring 2020.
At our core, we’re working to cut through the unnecessary complexities of the payments food chain and enable better, simpler, and faster payments, via a single point of integration. Since day one, we have built our systems from scratch, and today our platform, MonavateOne, provides our customers with all the fundamental features required to set up a card programme, including BIN sponsorship, card issuance, processing, Banking-as-a-Service, real-time funding, acquiring, and much more.
We are currently a principal member and upper-tier partner of major card scheme providers Visa, Mastercard, and Discover, as well as dual-licenced by both the FCA in the UK and the Bank of Lithuania in the EU. To date, our cards programme and payments platform has enabled us to issue more than 4 million cards, power over 80 million transactions, and process over GBP 2 billion in customer spend on Monavate-issued cards, in over 32 countries.
Could you explain the key features and benefits of card programmes?
Monavate’s card programme and our proprietary Monavate One platform have been designed to remove the complexities and traditional barriers to entry often faced by businesses when they set out to launch and scale financial products.
Instead of working directly with the card schemes, which requires significant time, effort, and in-house expertise, businesses can work with Monavate directly to gain access to the fundamental features needed to launch a card programme. Some of these features include, but are not limited to: BIN sponsorship and card issuance, processing, real-time authorisation, real-time funding, acquiring capabilities, IBANs, card bureau integration, and fraud prevention.
We work very closely with our customers, including companies such as Zilch, HyperJar, and Connexpay, and provide them with all the consultancy needed to combine the various elements into a payments infrastructure that helps their business launch, scale, and thrive.
MonavateOne currently integrates services from major, world-leading solutions providers, including, but not limited to, Marqeta and Episode 6 for issuer processing services, Circle for stablecoin capabilities, Banking Circle, LHV and Clearbank for IBANs, Tribe for Acquiring processing, and Tag Nightcrest and Idemia for card fulfilment, offering clients an end-to-end platform with all the features businesses need to bring their financial products to life.
How can the security and privacy of the consumer financial data and transactions be ensured? What compliance standards and regulations does Monavate adhere to in the countries it operates in?
Monavate’s payments platform is designed to offer its customers complete peace of mind by reducing, or even de-scoping, certain aspects of PCI DSS on behalf of its customers.
As this is a key priority, which we place at the very core of the superb client experience we aim to provide to customers, Monavate was one of the first organisations in Europe to certify against the latest version of the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS v4.0).
By tokenising sensitive data even during real-time processes, such as 3D-Secure authentication or real-time card funding, Monavate not only reduces its customers' PCI DSS scope, which cuts time and effort from the customer's side, but it helps them simplify the process and speed up their time-to-market.
Could you share any success stories or case studies of clients who have benefited from using Monavate's card programmes?
One of Monavate’s first-ever customers is UK’s fastest ever unicorn, BNPL company Zilch, who started working with us in 2020. Fast forward to the end of 2022, Zilch reached a significant milestone of over 3 million users, an achievement we’re proud to have supported.
Another example from earlier this year is US-based payments platform, Connexpay, who partnered with Monavate on its path to global growth. Monavate provides the payments architecture that enables them to launch virtual cards across the UK and Europe.
What new features or improvements does Monavate plan to introduce in its card programmes in the near future? Are there any expansion plans for Monavate's services into new markets or regions?
Monavate was recently included in Mastercard’s highly selective new track of the Engage Partner Network, which focuses on blockchain innovation and digital assets. This enables Monavate to participate in the development of real-world applications for Web3 products and build on the existing work with Mastercard to empower our customers to build bridges between trad-fi and de-fi with new crypto card programmes.
As a Mastercard principle partner, we are now a recognised partner for blockchain innovation and digital assets - a milestone we are particularly excited about at Monavate, as it reasserts our capabilities as a payments expert, and acknowledges our track record of achievements across card and payments issuing, acquiring, processing, and compliance.
We already have several record-setting achievements as part of our partnership with Mastercard, one of these being the first end-to-end cloud payment on a Mastercard card, the first Stablecoin transaction in Europe with Mastercard.
To find the interview in full and review more of The Paypers articles please select the link below: https://thepaypers.com/interviews/card-programmes-moving-past-traditional-complexities--1264675
