American Express and Ripple at Money20/20 Europe: Changing the Cross-Border Payments Experience for SMEs

News	2018-6-17 23:23

Small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make up the backbone of both dominant and emerging economies today. Yet they are the ones who are most impacted by inefficiencies in cross-border payments system — especially in the context of growing global e-commerce.

To compete, SMEs need to be able to focus on their business, not on whether their supplier receives a payment. Traditional global payments systems involve a lot of intermediaries — not only does this slows down payments, it also introduces more margin for error. According to a recent McKinsey study, 60% of business-to-business cross-border payments require a manual intervention that takes 20 minutes or more.

The challenges in cross-border payments that SMEs face set the tone for the conversation between Joy Macknight, Deputy Editor of The Banker, Colin O’Flaherty, American Express’s VP & General Manager of global commercial services UK & Russia, and Marcus Treacher, Ripple’s SVP of customer success, on the final day of Money20/20 Europe.

SMEs need to be able to move small amounts of money at high speed, with certainty. But they don’t see this is happening. According to O’Flaherty, 71% of SMEs believe cross-border payments are problematic.

“Ripple offers instantaneous, point-to-point conversations between the sender and receiver of funds,” O’Flaherty said. “And that provides a real opportunity to alleviate most of the issues our customers are facing.”

American Express distinctly understands the issues that SMEs encounter with traditional banking, from cross-border payments to access to credit. The company’s “Open Forum” is a highly regarded and popular platform for resources and support to help small- and medium-sized businesses grow.

Together with Ripple the companies are working to address the problems their customers face with cross-border payments. Ripple’s xCurrent provides a new blockchain-based infrastructure for global payments. American Express customers are connecting to this infrastructure in a way that is designed for maximum impact and the best possible user experience.

“The consumption of Ripple technology is not a heavy lift for SMEs,” Treacher explained. “This is because we’re implementing within the existing payment networks and banking world.”

With Ripple-powered blockchain helping facilitate transactions behind the scenes, American Express customers in the U.S. are already seeing quicker payments, and O’Flaherty said the business has seen a decline in customer queries about the status of payments.

But it’s not about just a technological interface, O’Flaherty stressed. Ripple and American Express have also aligned from a fraud perspective — risk, user experience and customer service. This has allowed for a “holistic experience” that’s ultimately benefited the customer.

As the conversation came to a close, O’Flaherty affirmed that American Express’s intention is to expand based on successes to date — to focus on making Ripple-enabled services available across new global corridors with the large transaction flows.

“We’re still in the early stages, learning a lot,” said O’Flaherty. “And blockchain offers a big opportunity to solve real customer needs.”

To learn more about how Ripple solutions can improve your customers’ payments experience, visit our solutions page.

The post American Express and Ripple at Money20/20 Europe: Changing the Cross-Border Payments Experience for SMEs appeared first on Ripple.

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