One of the partners of the "Powered by EBRC" program, active in financial services, is Bankable, led by CEO Eric Mouilleron. As a provider of an exhaustive range of payment solutions, under a "Banking as a Service" model, we were excited to have him in the panel of experts for our report "Finance and Fintech Innovation 2025 – Hybridization Designs the Future of the Finance Industry", in collaboration with The Banking Scene.

Instant and real-time is the new normal

Bankable is one of the companies that flourished during the pandemic. While the economy slowed down, consumers switched to digital payments and expected real-time, instant transaction services more than ever.

Innovative entrepreneurial organizations ensured that they didn't miss the opportunity and found a partner in companies like Bankable to accelerate their digital roadmap and demonstrate resilience in uncertain times.

"Our priority is to enable our banking clients to become real-time", explained Eric. "The way we do that is we tend to marginalize the existing core banking so that it does what it's supposed to do (balance sheet), not real-time. We add another layer of services on top that become a real-time source of truth, so the customer experience is real-time and the old core is synchronised."

Real-time is going to be the norm, according to Eric. This will require more standardization from banks and FinTech to ensure interoperability across the entire ecosystem they are connected to. Companies that can deliver this have a bright future in a world where finance is increasingly more embedded in third-party journeys.

The power of a network

Eric believes that larger banks may have a head start, as they have a great distribution network and understand how to build and manage standards. Companies that don't have these assets can fall back on partners to avoid missing the train.

Of course, partners in this context need to demonstrate that they can scale. A large bank will not set up a digital bank with any given FinTech company. These are strategic projects that require a non-stop 24/7 service on top of their, often old and proprietary platforms.

Being a trusted name with many years of experience in a heavily regulated industry like financial services demonstrates the required leadership to be recognized as a trusted brand and a network.

In the future, Bankable will add more banks to its network and serve more corporates. In the context of embedded finance, they will take care of the matchmaking between these banks and corporates to help them grow their markets and services offerings.

The future of financial services is everywhere

Eric: "Corporates active in multiple countries cannot start in one country; they need to scale this from day one to all their countries. The network of a partner bank for us is essential. So we will continue all the efforts we've made so far. These partner banks are, for us, a prerequisite to facilitate embedded finance."

The future will be marked by a new reality where non-financial organisations will create the ultimate customer journey. They will fall back on financial players to ensure this end-customer can sign up for financial products whenever they need it, without explicitly being there. This embedded finance will make finance products even more invisible than they are today.

This is also the value Bankable offers. As Eric explained it: "Our clients focus on their brand and distribution, and we do the rest."

If you like to know more about the future of financial services. In that case, we recommend you to read the white paper "Finance and Fintech Innovation 2025 – Hybridization Designs the Future of the Finance Industry", including insights of Eric Mouilleron and many more key stakeholders from the world of finance.

More articles of different contributors to this study can be found here.

At The Banking Scene Conference 2022 Luxembourg on February 22, you get the chance to join the conversation. Together, we investigate how banks should pivot their role in society to continue being a trusted partner for their stakeholders in the future.

Source : Article originally published on The Banking Scene