PayPoint Plc

PayPoint announces investment in OBConnect

7th July, Welwyn Garden City: PayPoint has today announced a £3 million investment in OBConnect, a leading Open Banking 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) start up. The deal will see the PayPoint Group make an investment in the company and form a commercial partnership, strengthening PayPoint's channel-agnostic payment platform and expanding the range of digital solutions to support its clients across multiple sectors, including government, local authorities and housing associations.

The investment enhances PayPoint's digital payments offering by adding Open Banking services, offering payments and account information services directly to its customers. This will help deliver improvements to customer experience, making it easier for organisations to access data for the benefit of their customers and creating additional cost-saving opportunities. In addition, this builds on the transformation that has been gathering pace over the past two years, with the strategic acquisitions of Handepay/Merchant Rentals and RSM 2000 enhancing and diversifying the payments offering to clients across cash, card payments, direct debit and Open Banking.

The momentum in Open Banking has been growing considerably over the past few years, initially through consumer use-cases enabling the sharing of personal account information to financial services providers. The emerging opportunity for PayPoint and OB Connect focuses on corporate and enterprise applications of the Open Banking solutions, particularly through Confirmation of Payee (CoP) to reduce fraud and improve the payments experience for consumers. This opportunity has gained further pace in recent weeks with PayPoint joining Pay.UK's Confirmation of Payee service to deliver services to support local government and energy companies deliver cost-of-living support payments.

Nick Wiles, Chief Executive of PayPoint, said: "We're delighted to be investing in OBConnect, which will further enhance our channel-agnostic payment platform for clients in multiple sectors. This investment will enable PayPoint to continue its diversification to digital and support our clients and their customers further with smart technology designed to improve their experience and reduce costs."

Darran Morford, CEO of OBConnect, added: "PayPoint was a natural partner for us as we seek to expand our Open Banking solutions, enabling more organisations and consumers to benefit from better experiences and lower costs. This investment will help us build on the significant progress made in the last few years and unlock further opportunities for both parties "

-ENDS-

Enquiries

PayPoint plc                                                                                           FGS Global

Nick Wiles, Chief Executive (Mobile: 07442 968960)                             Rollo Head

Alan Dale, Finance Director (Mobile: 07778 043962)                            James Thompson

                                                                                                               (Telephone: 0207 251 3801)        

                                                                                                               (Email: [email protected])      

ABOUT PAYPOINT

For tens of thousands of businesses and millions of consumers, we deliver innovative technology and services that make life a little easier.

The PayPoint Group serves a diverse range of organisations, from SME and convenience retailer partners, to local authorities, multinational service providers and e-commerce brands. Our products are split across three core business divisions:

·      In Shopping, we enhance retailer propositions and customer experiences through EPoS services via PayPoint One, card payment technology, Counter Cash, ATMs and home delivery technology partnerships in over 60,000 SME and retailer partner locations across multiple sectors. Our retail network of over 28,000 convenience stores is larger than all the banks, supermarkets and Post Offices put together

·      In E-commerce, we deliver best-in-class customer journeys through Collect+, a tech-based delivery solution that allows parcels to be sent, picked up and dropped off at thousands of local stores

·      In Payments and Banking, we give our clients and their customers choice in how to make and receive payments quickly and conveniently. This includes our channel-agnostic digital payments platform, MultiPay, offering solutions to clients across cash, card payments, direct debit and Open Banking; an eMoney offering that enables cash through to digital transactions and cash solutions providing vital consumer access across our extensive retail network

Together, these solutions enable The PayPoint Group to create long-term value for all stakeholders, including customers, communities and the world we live in.

ABOUT OB CONNECT

We are passionate about innovation in the Open Banking and Open Data space. We enable Fintechs to harness the banking sectors data and payment instructions, in order to drive a revolution in innovation that can only be good for the consumer.

Any market or global innovation that involves multiple parties can only be achieved by having a sound interoperable base from which to promote innovation of products. Our approach is to remove any barriers to entry and accelerate time to market.

Every participant Bank or Fintech needs a framework from which to innovate. We are driven to provide this in a non-competitive way. We believe people should compete on proposition not on the rails they run on.