Going beyond traditional payment outlets revolving around physical financial service institutions, payment technology companies globally have been dedicated to changing the way people and businesses approach spending, increasing flexibility and speed. As organisations have gradually shifted towards conducting business with partner vendors purely online, the payments technology market has rapidly evolved to bring varied and bespoke options, and change with the times. While many companies in the space serve as payment gateways for fast transactions, others offer wider uses, allowing for back-end development, end-to-end tracking and other operations that see surging demand in today’s increasingly digital environment.
With the payments technology sector projected to be worth nearly $15bn by 2027 – most of which is being expected to be made up of value driven from digital commerce and mobile point-of-sale payments – disruption of financial services looks set to remain prominent in the coming years. Here are six companies that currently stand out in the space.
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Mesh Payments
Tel Aviv-headquartered Mesh Payments was founded in 2018 to deliver automated travel and expense management to enterprises. Aimed at business finance leaders looking to optimise internal payment processes, the platform allows for visibility and bespoke control over all staff expenses in one place, spanning travel, procurement, SaaS and other spend management.
Mesh Payments customers can make use of a virtual card, which can then be connected to a physical Visa card to track online and offline expense payments. Analytics on the platform allow for access to overview and individual insights into spending, with spend alerts coming via email, SMS or Slack. Users can browse SaaS pricing packages, establish budgets for travelling, and learn about possible opportunities to reduce expenses. Additionally, receipt generation for payments is automated, accelerating time spent by employees looking to be expensed.
The Mesh Payments platform can be utilised for free, with at least 1% cashback available for a minimum monthly spend of $50,000.
Moov
Established in 2018, fintech company Moov facilitates implementation of payment capabilities into software for developers, through an open source platform. Its real-time ledger infrastructure allows for customisation of payment set-ups, in line with specific business needs, with users able to issue, accept, store and disburse money via a single API. The user interface can be customised to cater to branding and existing experiences through the Moov Drops tool, while compliance measures including anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) are automatically put in place by Moov in the back-end.
The platform is compatible with American Express, Mastercard, Visa and Discover payment cards, as well as banks and credit unions. On top of this, developers can utilise an open source library suited to cloud-native operations.
Initially, interested businesses are able to test APIs for free to determine the tools that would best suit their needs, with pricing offered on a case-by-case basis. The platform was recently made available on the Google Cloud Marketplace.
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Paddle
Paddle is a digital billing, profit tracking and pricing business aimed at software companies. The London-headquartered fintech was established in 2012, and offers payment tools, invoicing and subscription management, along with real-time financial analytics. Its offerings also encompass global tax compliance and fraud protection measures. Users are assisted in building their own payment infrastructure with various gateways, payment methods and subscription models.
The Paddle platform’s profit analytics tool, named ProfitWell Metrics, is compatible with an array of payment stacks including Braintree, Recurly and Stripe. Possible business use cases cited by Paddle include launching, growing and selling of SaaS offerings, with customers able to continue to evolve with the platform at scale. Meanwhile, developers can make use of a sandbox for testing new capabilities, as well as a security portal and a platform changelog.
Customers can choose to pay for Paddle either on a pay-as-you-go basis amounting to five per cent plus 50 cents per checkout transaction, or through custom, tailored pricing.
Ravelin
Ravelin is fraud detection and prevention platform specialising in monitoring business payments, founded in London in 2014. Looking to mitigate the rising challenge of online fraud, which has come in part with the aid of adversarial AI, the platform encompasses account security, policy abuse and marketplace fraud, among other payment security capabilities.
Solutions offered in the platform are underpinned by machine learning, which helps keep track of billions of transactions, with graph network technology – named Connect – predicting possible threats before they come to fruition, through link and pattern analysis. Meanwhile, users can establish custom rules for fraud detection, aiding reduction of false positives regarding presence of legitimate threat actors.
Enterprises can make use of a free trial of the Ravelin platform, with full paid version pricing starting at $1,300 per month.
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Stripe
Founded in 2010, Stripe is an Irish-American company that offers a suite of payment APIs, along with virtual and physical cards, to online businesses globally. The platform caters for online and in-person retailers, as well as subscriptions businesses, software platforms and marketplaces. Users can accept payments, send payouts, and manage their businesses in one place.
The Stripe dashboard features payment and refund management, payment dispute management capabilities, and integration monitoring. Also offered are revenue and finance automation encompassing billing, invoicing and taxes. In addition, fraud protection comes in the form of behavioural monitoring and reporting capabilities powered by machine learning, implemented into the platform by default, named Radar.
In terms of pricing, an array of per-transaction percentages and fees are charged on all products not included in the core platform. Standard pricing for a complete platform totals 1.5% + 20p for UK users, and 2.5% + 20p for customers in the EU. Custom domain editions of Billing, Checkout and Payment Links are each available for $10 per month.
Wise
UK-based foreign exchange fintech company Wise (formerly TransferWise) was founded in 2011, and specialises in cross-border payment transfer. Customers get physical and virtual debit cards to receive and send money, as well as use for employee expenses. Three products are offered by Wise: Account, Business and Platform.
Business customers are able to set up local account details for nine or more currencies, allowing them to receive payments from, and pay employees in 70+ countries. Spending limits and guardrails for contactless payments made by users are customisable, allowing for alignment with day-to-day business needs. The platform is compatible with third-party business apps including Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent – aiding bookkeeping and expense management.
There is a £45 account registration fee, with outgoing transaction fees starting at 0.43%. Once the platform is set up, cards for team members cost £3 each. Conversely, 0.5% cashback is offered on all eligible business card transactions to firms with Wise Business accounts registered in the UK.
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