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Compliance refers to the adherence to a set of regulations and industry standards designed to protect consumers and ensure the security of financial transactions in addition to protecting organizations from all types of risks. This includes compliance with laws such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Data Protection and Privacy Regulations, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) regulations.

Adhering to regulations and best practices for preventing fraud, suspicious transactions and safeguarding sensitive information is crucial for financial institutions to maintain a good reputation, avoid heavy fines and ensure they don’t become a target by criminals. It is important for companies to stay up-to-date with the latest compliance requirements, and to have robust processes in place to ensure they are meeting them.

Global compliance is the process of a business following all laws, standards, and regulations that apply to them across the globe. Managing compliance for different jurisdictions can be a challenging task for businesses and organizations operating in multiple countries. This is particularly true for industries that are heavily regulated, such as financial services and information technology. In order to maintain compliance, organizations must be aware of and adhere to the laws and regulations of each jurisdiction in which they operate.

The challenge of compliance

Information security is one area in which compliance can be particularly challenging. Different jurisdictions have different laws and regulations regarding data protection and privacy, and organizations must ensure that they are in compliance with all of them. This can include implementing security measures such as encryption and regular security audits, as well as ensuring that employees are trained on proper data handling practices.

Another area of compliance that can be challenging is money laundering and terrorist financing. Organizations must implement procedures to detect and prevent these activities, as well as comply with reporting requirements. This can include undertaking regular risk assessments, conducting proper due diligence on corporate clients as well as individuals, and training employees on how to identify and report suspicious activity.

To manage compliance for different jurisdictions, organizations should have a clear understanding of the laws and regulations in each country in which they operate. They should also have a robust compliance framework in place, including regular training and monitoring to ensure that employees are aware of and adhere to the requirements. Regulations across multiple jurisdictions have a lot in common, however, some details are different. Neglecting or overlooking details can lead to non-compliance and potential legal consequences. 

In summary, managing compliance for multiple jurisdictions can be challenging, organizations face significant compliance challenges when it comes to data privacy, information security, money laundering, and the financing of terrorism, particularly when operating in different countries. They should have a robust compliance program in place, including regular training and monitoring, to ensure they are compliant. Organizations should have a clear understanding of the laws and regulations in each country in which they operate.

SimpliFi, the leading Cards as a Service (CaaS) platform for MENA and Pakistan has a robust and strong compliance framework in place to ensure compliance with laws and regulations across all the countries in which we operate.

We have a dedicated team of experts who stay up-to-date on the latest laws and regulations, as we have implemented a variety of tools and processes to ensure compliance at all times. SimpliFi is fully committed to maintaining the highest standards of compliance with all regulations and standards, and we will continue to invest in the necessary tools and resources to maintain that level of compliance.

Want to find out more? Get in touch with our team today!

In 2022, people and businesses continue to use payment cards every day – if not several times a day. Cards, whether physical or virtual, are the essence of digital payments.

However, evolving business models and the emergence of a variety of new business requirements and payment options requires new opportunities and card innovations that businesses cannot find at traditional retail banks.

Luckily, new innovative payment card options have also emerged to meet the demand that can’t be met or satisfied by traditional banks or legacy systems.

These innovative payment card solutions are created and enabled by modern card issuing platforms and APIs with the purpose of powering a new era of flexible payment card options.

But where can you find these platforms? And how can organizations use them to build successful card offerings?

In this article, we’ll show you how to create a successful payment card product for your business and find a modern card issuing platform for your business needs.

Card Issuing: Banks vs. Modern Fintech

When it comes to card issuance, banks are the go-to. They’re the most popular – and for a long time the ‘only’ – issuers of cards in the world.

But fast forward to today, banks are now seen as these big entities with stringent requirements, lots of legal processes, and in many cases not flexible or scalable enough to support some modern-day business use cases.

Even more so, banks can’t offer the flexibility that innovative companies, like Uber, Talabat, and others, need when it comes to payments today.

As a result, companies like SimpliFi had to come up with ways to help companies scale payments by enabling issuing cards faster and providing more controls.

That’s what modern card issuing is all about.

By providing the necessary infrastructure, platforms like SimpliFi, help organizations to build highly configurable payment cards to facilitate and enable innovative payment experiences.

In addition, modern card issuers like SimpliFi, help businesses manage card programs in ways that legacy systems can’t – and probably never will.

In other words, if you want to know how to issue a virtual card or physical card without having to go through bank hassles and approvals, then keep reading.

How to launch a winning payment card program

Having a successful payment card program for your business means your employees can enjoy flexible payment solutions that make their jobs easier, faster, and more efficient.

At the same time, you can also offer your customers card options, whether as your main solution or as an addition to your overall service.

With modern card issuance, the ideas and opportunities are endless.

Here are 9 things you need to do to create, design, and launch a successful payment card program in your company.

The tips included here cover launching a card both to support your employees and internal systems and to provide additional benefits to your customers.

1. Determine your business goals

The first step in making any business decision is to identify your business needs and how you plan to acquire customers. Doing so will help you determine which platform and payment card solution works for you best.

By identifying your goals, you’ll also be able to – at least initially – determine the metrics needed to measure the success of your card issuing program.

2. Identify your target audience and their behavior

One of the most important steps is identifying who the target audience for your card issuance program is.

Is it your employees? Your customers? Both?

If it’s the latter, then it’s best to divide your card program into two layers or segments. You may even divide your larger segments into sub-segments and note down usage policies and specifications for each. When it comes to customers, create a customer profile with demographics and behaviors such as when they make purchases, where they make them, along with the type of businesses they frequent.

3. Identify pain points

The next step is designing your payment card solution to identify the pain points in your business and your customers’ or employees’ pain points.

Doing so means you’ll be able to clearly work on your card solution so that you can clear away bottlenecks and ensure a smooth process later on.

In this section, make sure you write everything down. From pressing problems all the way to minor issues.

Is there something that may hinder your growth in the future? Is there something your competitors are doing that you aren’t and that’s affecting your business?

Write it all down.

4. Identify your geographies and audiences

Once you’ve identified your needs and pain points, it’s time to determine which geographical locations your employees or customers can use your cards in.

You can also set up markets or industries where your cards can be used, spending limits, and other related policies.

Planning your geographies should also include where your target audience is and where you’d like to expand – as a business and service – in the future.

5. Specify the services your cards can perform

Now it’s time to focus on what your card can do and how and where they help customers. This section can focus on specific industries, include ideas, or simply show how customers benefit from your card program.

6. Is your card program part of your business model?

You should definitely consider if your card is part of a larger service or service of its own. Is it part of your business model? And if yes, how much does your card program contribute to your revenues?

This will include both estimates and actual figures that you’ll need to review on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.

If the card is the core of your business model, or an essential part of it – then you shouldn’t focus on contributions but instead compare and review how much your card program is in-line with your objectives and overall revenues.

7. Ensure your policies are working well

It’s unlikely you’ll get everything right the first time. So, once you launch your card, you’ll need a couple of weeks of trial-and-error to help you fine-tune your policies.

Use the dashboard offered by your modern card issuing provider to track spending and money movements, uncover where customers and employees are falling short or not completing their tasks. Then fine-tune your card program accordingly.

8. Train employees and customers to use your card

When creating a payment card program, you should always have an onboarding process. Better yet, a quick onboarding video will save you valuable time and will be available for customers and employees to see whenever they want to.

Based on the initial trial, you can refine your onboarding process for how different people can use your payment card.

This is one of the most important steps when launching a payment card program. Failing to onboard customers and/or employees can result in many negative experiences and results.

For employees, failure to correctly onboard them means more time spent by employees, wasted spend, longer processes, lots of frustration, and more.

For customers, a negative experience can translate into bad reviews and less business.

9. Find the right partner to team up with

Last but certainly not least, it’s time to find the right modern card issuing program provider that will meet your requirements and act as a supportive partner to your business.

Launching your Card Offering

Launching a payment card offering on your own is neither simple nor straight forward. For starters, there are a host of regulatory approvals and industry requirements a business has to go through.

Luckily, there are enablers, like SimpliFi, a payment card enabler that helps companies issue cards easily, while taking care of the regulatory headache and requirements.

Tokenization has become a major buzzword these days and is often mentioned in the same breath as data security, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs.

In payments, tokens play an integral role in adding an extra level of security to sensitive payment card data.

In this article, we will answer your question ‘What is payment tokenization?’, and take a closer look at the concept of tokenization in the payments ecosystem.

Without further ado, let’s dive right in.

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What is Tokenization in simple terms?

In the simplest terms, tokenization is the process of securing sensitive data by exchanging it for a non-sensitive equivalent.

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When applied to data security, tokenization is the act of substituting sensitive data with surrogate values – called tokens – that have no exploitable meaning or value.

These tokens are the reference, or identifiers, that map back to the original, sensitive data.

What is Payment Tokenization?

In the payments industry, tokenization is used to safeguard a card’s PAN (Primary Account Number) by exchanging it with more secure data.

The key strength of tokenization as a security measure, lies in the fact that card PAN numbers are not transmitted during transactions. When tokenized cards are used for payments, actual card details are held safe in a secure digital vault, and tokens are used instead of exposing sensitive data.

If a fraudster tries to intercept a transaction, all they will find is useless tokens, not any real card information.

Types of Tokenization

• Security tokenization

Traditionally, security tokenization – also referred to as non-payment or acquirer tokenization – has been used to protect cardholder data and personally identifiable information (PII).

When payment transactions are complete, security tokens are designed to protect sensitive information when ‘at rest’ within a merchant’s database. This involves acquirer processors tokenizing cards using specific token formats, helping merchants protect sensitive data and meet PCI requirements. Credentials can be stored for future, recurring payments, and seamless checkout experiences.

• Network tokenization

Network tokenization is a type of payment card tokenization offered by the payments network—Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, etc.—that replaces primary account numbers (PANs) and other card details with a token issued by the card brand.

When implemented properly, network tokenization ensures secure remote commerce throughout the payments ecosystem by removing the need for merchants or third-party providers (Known as Token requestors i.e. ApplePay, GooglePay,,etc.) to expose themselves to the risk of handling the raw PAN and other sensitive cardholder data.

SimpliFi helps its clients launch tokenized card products which can be provisioned on ApplePay, GooglePay,,etc. with minimal overhead work required by its clients.

What Does a Token Look Like?

Token formats are categorized as: Format preserving or non-format preserving.

Format-preserving tokens maintain the look and feel of original card data.

On the contrary, non-format preserving tokens do not resemble the data in original cards and might also include alphanumeric characters.

To illustrate:

• Format Preserving

For example:

Original Card Number

1222 1111 1111 2222

Format Preserving Token

1222 7546 3498 2222

• Non-format Preserving

For example:

Original Card Number

1222 1111 1111 2222

Non-format Preserving Token

2e5ghfjf-te635yr-7637eb-u9jy76

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Tokenization AND PCI Compliance

According to the PCI DSS, “Tokenization solutions do not eliminate the need to maintain and validate PCI DSS compliance, but they may simplify a merchant’s validation efforts by reducing the number of system components for which PCI DSS requirements apply”.

In this case, tokenization can be considered as a best practice to reduce PCI compliance scope – thus reducing the costs involved with meeting and monitoring PCI requirements.

It is simply one ingredient of an entire data security program that could qualify an organization for a PCI compliance certification.

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Want to find out more about payment tokenization? Get in touch with our team today!

KYC is one of the most important terms in Fintech, and the financial ecosystem at large.
What is KYC, you ask?
In this blog post, we explore what KYC is all about and what fintech owners need to know.

What is KYC, really?

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In Short

Know Your Customer (KYC) is a set of standards used by fintechs, banks, and other financial institutions to verify a customer’s legal identity.

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Let’s explain more…

The Essence of KYC

“Prevention is better than cure”, they say.

KYC lies at the heart of fraud prevention. The main goal revolves around fraud prevention and constraining the ability of some users who fail to meet the given acceptance criteria.

KYC verification procedures allow financial service providers to avoid working with customers involved in money laundering, terrorist financing, or other illicit financial activities.

Serving as a line of defense against fraudulent activities, KYC procedures are often done at the time of customer onboarding – where identity documents are validated before customer approval. In other words, KYC is required any time a fintech accepts a new customer. An identity check will be executed and in some cases, additional customer key personal data and documents will be requested by the financial service provider.

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KYC measurements can be further broken down into three levels: SDD, CDD, and EDD.

Each client is evaluated for possible participation in financial crimes and assigned a certain rating – referred to as ‘Risk Rating’.

KYC Risk Rating

• SDD – Standard Due Diligence (Low Risk)
  This is the lowest level of verification and a faster due diligence process that identifies low-risk clients. When there is little chance of money laundering or terrorist financing, SDD is used.
• CDD – Customer Due Diligence (Medium Risk)
  Customer Due Diligence is a basic analysis of the client and is the most common form of KYC. It is a medium-risk sphere within fintech that focuses on risk assessment and understanding the customer’s transaction habits.
• EDD – Enhanced Due Diligence (High Risk)
  Enhanced Due Diligence, or EDD, is very common with Politically Exposed Persons (PEP), or customers who are more likely to participate in financial crimes – due to the nature of their business/operations. EDD will require fintech firms to collect additional data for high-risk customers’ identity and business operations – data on wealth sources, press coverage of the customer, and more.

Each of these processes is followed by continuous monitoring and transaction documentation – especially in high-security cases.

Without these procedures in place, overseeing financial bodies would have a hard time tracking illicit activities and stopping them.

What are the challenges that you might face in the KYC process?

Given the prevalence of cybercrime and its ever-changing practices, staying in compliance with KYC requirements can be challenging for a fintech startup.

KYC is an ongoing process. A fintech is required to regularly reassess its clients’ risk levels. To protect your fintech business from regulatory sanctions, fraud attacks, and chargebacks, it is crucial to implement a KYC risk assessment for all your customers.

Between due diligence, risk management, and continual analysis of transactions, fintechs spend a lot on KYC compliance annually.

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Global spend on financial crime compliance – including KYC and transaction monitoring – at financial institutions reached $213.9 Billion in 2021.

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Unfortunately, these budgetary restraints aren’t uniform across the board.

Therefore, fintech startups are likely to struggle – especially if new to the market or fundraising.

Modern RegTech solutions help financial firms improve compliance performance by solving regulatory issues quickly, and at scale. When used correctly, RegTech solutions can provide bootstrapped fintechs with the compliance tools they need to adapt to the modern threat and regulatory landscape.

Want to learn more about Regtech? Read our blog post on What is Regtech?

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SimpliFi – Identity Verification in a Box

At SimpliFi, we empower businesses to build new payment solutions while minimizing the effort required to comply with financial regulations. We deal with third parties and local government databases on your behalf to orchestrate end-to-end KYC flows seamlessly, delivered to you via our SDKs and APIs.

We work with regulators and partners to ensure that we are updated with the latest requirements and industry standards to provide you with leading-edge innovation without ever compromising on risks.

Want to learn more about SimpliFi? Contact us today.

A Virtual Card is a payment card that exists solely in electronic form. It consists of a unique, randomly- generated 16-digit number and contains the exact card details as their physical counterparts: expiration date and CVV code. A virtual card mimics the function of a physical card to be used anywhere credit/debit cards are accepted.

How Do Virtual Cards Work?

Although commonly associated with online payments, virtual cards can be used to pay for any purchase – online or offline. When using a virtual card to pay your suppliers, customers, or workers, cards can be used the same way physical cards are used at a point-of-sale terminal or entered online.

Virtual cards can be either disposable (one-time use) or multiple-use.

Virtual credit or debit cards can be restricted to a single-use – which is referred to as disposable virtual cards. In some cases, virtual card numbers are generated for specific purchases with predefined amounts and frequency of use. Once generated, cards can be revoked as soon as a transaction is complete.

For B2B payments, you can set up a virtual card for every vendor or supplier. A virtual card number can be assigned exclusively to one supplier and turned off once a purchase is complete.

On the other hand, multiple-use cards are assigned with an expiration date and can be reused until the date is reached. Multiple-use cards can be used for subscription services or any other type of recurring payment.

Combating Fraud With Virtual Cards – Using Modern Card Issuing

With more companies, like yours, moving their services into the digital realm, fraudsters are figuring out new ways to take advantage of the world of digital payments. No matter what business or industry you’re in, it’s time to give payment security some serious thought with cyber fraud on the rise.

Virtual cards offer an ideal way to keep your business accounts secure and cybercriminals out of your wallet. These cards are becoming increasingly common among consumers, and businesses are now catching up.

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In 2025, the volume of virtual card transactions will rise to $5 trillion from $1.6 trillion in 2020 – Juniper Research

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Virtual cards enable secure online transactions by allowing you to take preemptive measures to combat fraud. Card programs created through modern card issuing providers like SimpliFi provide fine-grained controls on when, where, and how payments can be made.

Just like any card program created on a modern card issuing platform, spend controls can restrict the use of virtual cards. Cards can be created for a one-time payment for a specific amount, time, place, or merchant category where the card is accepted. These controls are verified as transactions take place to prevent attempts of card misuse.

SimpliFi’s modern card issuing APIs can help you design virtual card programs in ways that meet your specific business needs.

Explore how SimpliFi can enable virtual card programs for your different business use cases.

The magic of seamless, nearly invisible payments is spreading everywhere – on e-commerce sites, investing platforms, music apps, and brick and mortar stores. Everywhere where customers spend their time and money.

Modern card issuing is giving businesses new ways to manage corporate spend, increase employee satisfaction and stay at the heart of customers’ financial lives.

With the help of modern card issuing platforms and their open APIs, cards continue to be a key touchpoint to smarter financial services – catalyzing new commerce, business, and payment landscape.

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For over half a century, the traditional bank-led card programs have dominated the card-issuing landscape.

Cards issued by banks are characterized as one-size-fits-all products with limited features – many of which simply don’t serve the ever-changing needs of consumers and businesses around the world.

Fintechs have begun to emerge to deliver experiences that meet the needs of modern consumers and businesses. They have started building flexible, customized platforms, by embedding payments in their flows such as virtual cards with customized controls.

Modern Card Issuing – Paving the way for more accessible financial services

Today, innovative businesses are looking for ways to issue their own cards, setting up custom payment programs while bypassing traditional, burdensome card-issuing methods.

Features like OEM wallet payments such as Apple Pay, custom spend controls, and rich user data insights are on top of mind.

Pioneered by companies like Uber and IKEA, modern card issuing now allows businesses to have their own configurable payment cards and a simpler way to manage payment programs.

Modern card issuing platforms – that have already established partnerships and direct integration points with issuing banks and card networks – can help organizations build card programs to issue cards in a matter of a few clicks.These platforms are often distinguished by:

Open APIs: A card issuing platform with open APIs enables businesses to develop their own card solution, tailored to specific business needs and logic. When the needs expand to new use cases, open APIs will allow organizations to modify and customize their card experience.

Programmatic Controls: Using modern card issuing, businesses can specify exactly when, where, and how cards will be used – to reduce fraud risks and prevent unauthorized or excess spending. Card spending options can be limited by merchant name/category, channel, location, spending amount, and time of use.

Real-time Transaction Data: Having visibility into transaction data can give businesses access to consumer spending habits including the purchase amount, merchant, location, date, time, and currency. These rich, data-driven insights will provide a full picture of consumers’ behavior.

Still looking to learn more about Modern Card Issuing? Contact us now!

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Modern Card Issuing vs. Legacy Systems

Looking to launch your own card program?

#Tip By SimpliFi:

To be able to launch a successful card program, partner up with a proven partner who knows your industry, and is equipped to continuously maintain, develop and scale your card product offering. Find out where your modern card issuing provider is heading as a business. And last but not least, figure out your partner’s readiness to: a) respond to your different business use cases/scenarios and b) provide the features and capabilities that you might need in the future.

Explore how SimpliFi can help you launch your own card program today.

In any given payment card transaction there are multiple entities involved in the processing of those transactions- one of the fundamental entities found in the process is the Card Scheme.

What is a Card Scheme?

A card scheme is a payment network that processes payments made on prepaid, credit, and debit cards. Its primary role is to connect payors with payees by acting as a trusted party and managing payment transactions, including authorization, clearing, and settlement. Transactions are managed according to a set of procedures, rules, and arrangements that allow cardholders to buy products and services from retailers and other service providers.

Card schemes serve as a fundamental part of payment processes, making online and offline purchases possible without the need for cash or cheques.

As consumers, we use these schemes day in and day out in spite of the fact that there is no direct relationship between the card scheme and us – the consumer. Banks and other financial institutions are members of card schemes like Visa or Mastercard which allows them to issue payment cards.

How Does a Card Scheme Work?

Card schemes use a set of unique rules and procedures to transfer transaction information from the acquiring bank to the issuing bank.

Once a payment card is tapped, swiped, or inserted in a POS terminal, or through an online payment system, a certain pathway of communication opens up. This pathway is between the card scheme, the issuing bank, and the acquiring bank – representing how cardholder data is stored, processed, and transmitted in order for a transaction to go through.

As consumers tap their cards to pay, card schemes send authorization requests to cardholder’s bank – validating card details provided and ensuring sufficient funds are available in cardholder’s account. Once authorized, card schemes send information back to the acquiring bank. Transactions are settled typically overnight and funds are released and placed into the merchant’s account.

In short, card schemes are an essential component of successful transactions, connecting merchants and financial institutions to authorize transactions and facilitate the transfer of funds.

The global market for on-demand food delivery services is projected to reach $259.7 billion by 2027, growing at a global CAGR of 29.4% over the period 2020-2027.

The global food delivery space has been tackling various ongoing challenges since its inception – even as it continues to expand, the commercial model and economics are still evolving. The Middle East online food delivery market is heating up as well in response to soaring customer demand.

On-demand delivery concepts and food disruptors have been emerging in the Middle East integrating online platforms with offline stores.

The overall on-demand food delivery market in the Middle East has doubled in revenue in 2020, with Saudi Arabia having the highest revenue growth rate. Global players, like Deliveroo, and homegrown players including Talabat and Mrsool, are all striving to stay relevant in an ultra-competitive market.

As the industry continues to develop, payments innovation and operational efficiency will become key factors for long-term success for the various players in the region.

In search of operational efficiency, innovative companies are starting to overhaul their existing payment infrastructure, replacing inflexible systems with modern card issuing platforms.

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What are Modern card issuing platforms?

Modern card issuing platforms are end-to-end platforms that enable organizations to create, distribute, and manage physical and/or virtual cards using open APIs.

But how can this power the on-demand food delivery market?

Let’s dive right in.

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The working principle of on-demand food delivery platforms is solely based on a network of several parties including the customer, the merchant, the aggregator, and the delivery partner. Essentially, all these parties need to be constantly incentivized and empowered to sustain operations on the same platform.

On-demand food delivery companies can partner with modern card issuing providers to give better experiences to their customers, streamline operations and drive profitability.

Modern card issuing enables on-demand delivery companies to overcome long-standing payment challenges by maximizing control over daily operations and driver-related payments.

Today, food delivery companies have a golden opportunity to unlock use cases that have never been served before.

With the help of open APIs, companies can issue their own cards to delivery couriers that can be used to process payments just like any other point-of-sale transaction. This way, delivery companies can scale with an ever-expanding restaurant selection without payment settlement becoming a bottleneck – enabling delivery drivers to rely on modern card payment technology to pick up and pay for food for hungry customers on tight schedules.

How Modern Card Issuance addresses common payment pain points in on-demand food delivery

Many food delivery orders require point-of-sale payments. This means that food pickup payments are settled either directly between the platform and merchants or drivers have to pay for the order using their own payment methods when picking it up at the store.

For settlement between the platform and restaurant, platforms have to build extensive financial operations teams to reconcile and process payments which means restaurants don’t get paid for days or weeks.

And if the driver has to pay out of his pocket then that is constrained by the cash that he carries on him which in turn depends on how quickly he gets reimbursed for those orders. What if the driver after accepting an order didn’t have enough cash to fulfill the order? Well, this might result in an unfulfilled order, a disappointed customer, and consequently, missing out on a sale. And a lost sale means losing a customer as well, whether their order was small or large.

Cards are essential to enable delivery drivers to always be in the money and fulfill orders when they don’t have cash in their pockets.

But how does modern card issuance differ from traditional card issuing?

Older legacy card issuing methods are too complex and require lengthy and costly processes – slowing the onboarding of new drivers. This, as a result, will prevent companies in this ecosystem from meeting the surge in demand for on-demand delivery services.

Mrsool’s order revenue in 2020 is more than five times that of 2019, rising from 59% in Q3 of 2019 to 77% in Q1 2021.

To meet the crush of orders, many on-demand delivery companies are scrambling and working 24/7 to hire thousands of delivery couriers and operations associates.

Modern card issuing is enabling on-demand delivery companies to thrive in a crowded market with fierce competition.

Using modern card issuing platforms and their open APIs, cards can make it into the hands of drivers in short time frames. The faster these cards are in the hands of new drivers, the faster they can begin fulfilling orders. Once drivers pass a background check, they are good to go.

On-demand delivery companies need modern card issuing to:

• Gain control over driver payments

Modern card issuing platforms not only make it possible for on-demand delivery companies to get physical and virtual cards in the hands of new drivers quickly, but they also add security layers. This additional security is even more important today given the rising volume of fraud.

In an on-demand delivery case, companies can issue cards for their couriers with predefined spending controls — for example, restaurant ID and the exact total amount of purchase — to avoid card misuse at other restaurants or fraudulent add-ons. Restricting when, where, and how these cards are used provides additional protection and ensures cards are used for their intended purpose.

• Generate new revenue streams

Business expenses can be turned into a revenue generator. By issuing cards through modern card issuing platforms, companies will be able to generate new revenue streams by earning transaction fees on every card payment made by delivery drivers.

• Obtain end-to-end insights

Through modern card issuance, delivery companies can gain end-to-end, real-time insights over every transaction to help them and their restaurants learn more about delivery preferences – to better serve end customers’ needs and wants.

Figure out how SimpliFi’s corporate spend card programs can help you streamline driver-related payments and power your on-demand food delivery business.

According to a study carried out by Visa, 77% of the surveyed gig workers endure times where they need money and only 12% describe themselves as financially secure.

The challenge for gig companies today is to recruit and nourish their gig workforce as a long-term, dedicated pool of labor. As gig economy companies look to retain their workforce relationships, addressing payment needs to empower a financially healthy gig workforce will help them gain a competitive edge.

To secure the services and skills of the most sought-after gig economy workers, key payment facilitation issues need to be addressed.

Gig Payment Challenges and Inefficiencies

Gig workers experience unreliable demand fluctuations for their work, making income volatility a major challenge for this group of people.

For instance, during the Covid-19 lockdown, consumer demand for home delivery skyrocketed while their interest in ride-sharing dropped due to health concerns. These inconsistencies can lead to substantial swings in income from one month to the other.

Another key challenge with gig worker payments is the likelihood of receiving untimely and delayed payments. Traditional bank and wallet-based transfers that rely on batch processing and third parties increase the time between when a gig worker delivers work and when they receive payments. This makes it difficult for gig workers to access their earned wages instantaneously and fulfill their recurring financial obligations in a timely manner.

A Think Forward Initiative report shows that workers who experience such challenges encounter more financial stress, lower savings, and difficulty making ends meet.

Organizations and gig platforms need to replace their complex, slow, and costly payment processing methods with real-time payments to ensure immediate payment transfers and settlements.

Gig workers are increasingly craving efficient and flexible payment experiences. In fact, 85% of the gig workforce is willing to work more often if they could get paid faster.

Modern card issuance: Fostering Lasting Relationships with Gig Workers

By directly addressing long-standing gig payment inefficiencies, payment solutions capitalizing on real-time capabilities can help businesses a) elevate gig worker experience b) foster loyalty, and c) reduce costs of attracting and retaining gig talent.

So, how can your business reap these benefits? Through Modern card issuance.

Modern card issuance is a secure and flexible way of issuing cards by creating customizable, flexible card programs through open APIs. Your organization can issue and fund cards instantly to provide workers with immediate access to their earned wages.

Receiving payments quickly and seamlessly as soon as the job is completed is a great motivator for gig workers. Real-time, on-demand gig worker payouts can help build loyalty and engagement. According to a survey conducted by Visa and Directions Research, over half of the surveyed gig workers prefer real-time payouts.

What’s more, using modern card issuance solutions, organizations can issue their own branded cards, which can further deepen the relationship with gig workers on your team. In addition, through programmable features, companies can not only automate payouts but also customize them such as the timing of the payout and % of the amount paid by linking them to the rating of the gig worker or his tenure.

Embracing payment platforms that address gig workers’ pain points through real-time money movement and a range of flexible payment options allows your businesses to strengthen vital working relationships with gig workers and also attract top talent.

Give workers the financial peace of mind they want with the speed and flexibility of Modern Card Issuing Platforms. Explore SimpliFi’s corporate payout solutions to strengthen and streamline gig worker relationships.

For decades, legacy payment infrastructure has enabled the payment of goods and services globally in a reliable and secure manner. However, with the rise of new and complex business models, a one-size-fits-all architecture can no longer serve the demands of today’s sophisticated use cases.

That’s why innovators are turning to modern card issuing solutions in order to provide payment experiences that ensure the success and growth of these emerging business models.

|What is Modern Card Issuing?

Modern card issuing is a more flexible and secure way to issue payment cards. Usually delivered through open APIs, modern card issuing solutions empower businesses to customize, build and run card programs at scale.

These solutions enable flexible embedded payment experiences that have been difficult to provide with legacy frameworks and architectures. Modern card issuing removes the roadblocks for businesses looking to deliver unique business models and payment experiences in a scalable, flexible and secure manner whilst ensuring quick time to market with limited investment.

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Modern Card Issuing Use Cases for Merchants & Retailers

Using card-issuing APIs, businesses can create customizable, branded, physical and virtual cards to serve multiple scenarios and use cases.

Here are 4 modern card issuing use cases that merchants and retailers can leverage to scale their payments:

Use case 1: BNPL & Virtual Cards

Buy now, pay later has become one of the most in-demand financing options around the world, sweeping the consumer landscape. Today, customers can buy now and pay later for just about anything and everything. As the name suggests, this kind of financing provides customers with point-of-sale installment loans to purchase items and pay for them in small installments – breaking up the cost over predefined time periods.

Modern card issuing is an easy way for BNPL platforms to provide their customers with BNPL payment options through instantly issued virtual cards. To illustrate, when a customer initiates a BNPL purchase at a merchant’s store or online, a card is issued to pay the merchant instantly and is accepted through a standard POS system. This creates a seamless onboarding experience for the merchant since complex POS integration is not required beforehand and the BNPL platform can scale on the back of the payment acceptance networks.

Use Case 2: Consumer Spend Cards

More businesses across various industries are implementing payments as a core part of their business model to stay at the heart of their customers’ financial lives.

Modern card issuing APIs can provide merchants such as retail marketplaces with increased visibility into customer spending patterns and lifestyles to gain in-depth actionable insights. By collecting more data on how, when, and where customers are spending their money, merchants can provide more relevant, tailored offerings to enrich customer experiences.

Use Case 3: Corporate Payout Cards

Merchants can conveniently pay employees, workers, contractors, and suppliers by pushing funds to cards that they issue. Modern card issuing provides an alternative method for payroll, enabling organizations to pay salaries on reloadable prepaid cards. This helps today’s B2B organizations adapt to emerging trends like remote workforces, gig economies, and supply chain diversification.

It’s not just that. When it comes to merchant-supplier disbursements, modern card issuing facilitates supplier payments and breaks down the amount of complexity in a typical B2B payment process. Online and offline merchants and retailers can quickly onboard suppliers and provide them with instant access to their money through prepaid cards.

Use case 4: Corporate spend cards

Corporate expenses and reimbursements can be painfully troublesome for both employers and employees alike.

The challenge lies in how employees can receive the money and transact, and the ability of employers to place controls to align employee spending to corporate policy. Modern card issuing resolves both issues.

Dynamic spend controls for virtual and physical cards can monitor spend and approve transactions in real-time. These controls can be set to restrict spending options to specific channels, and/or different user groups or individuals, or by different amounts for different merchant category codes.

Across numerous industries, merchants and retailers can now create next-generation payment experiences that set them apart. Looking to launch a card program for your business? Learn more here.

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Partner up with a modern card issuing provider like SimpliFi to develop your own card issuing solution or launch your own card program. Using our open APIs and SDKs, card products can be built quickly, tested in a private sandbox, and delivered to market in a short time frame.

RegTech is more than just a buzzword in the global financial and compliance community. So what is RegTech and why is it gaining prominence?.

In simple terms, RegTech is the fusion of the words Regulatory and Technology.

RegTech is the technology that applies innovative capabilities and techniques to help financial institutions improve regulatory governance, reporting, compliance, and risk management. It is making the shift from just a fancy buzzword to becoming a vital piece of the regulatory and compliance landscape.

History of RegTech

The history of RegTech can be categorized into three phases:

• RegTech 1.0 (1990): This comprised quantitative risk management practices that we are familiar with today.
• RegTech 2.0 (2000): Tools helping companies comply with regulations and improving supervision activities focusing on KYC.
• and the industry is now on the verge of RegTech 3.0: Shifting from ‘know your customer’ to ‘know your data’ – interpreting compliance-related data and improving predictability through AI to drive efficiencies and reduce risk.

RegTech is not new. However, like any other application of technology, it is developing rapidly due to the decreasing costs of emerging tech, expansion of data, and a staggering increase in computing power.

Also, the 2008 financial crisis represented a turning point in the development of RegTech. The consequent regulatory changes and technological developments have fundamentally changed the nature of financial markets, services, and institutions.

Post-crisis fines have exceeded US$200 billion, and the ongoing cost of regulation and compliance has become a primary concern industry-wide – facilitating the emergence of RegTech.

RegTech is disrupting the financial sector and in order to illustrate how, we need to deep dive into the main challenges and pressure points faced by financial institutions that RegTech is meant to address:

Challenges faced by financial institutions:

• Managing high costs of compliance
• Introduction of additional financial regulations
• Rising penalty fees on non-compliance with regulations
• Legacy systems constraints due to insufficient automation & digitization to meet the pace of regulatory changes
• Incompatible systems resulting in insufficient integrations

Current legacy solutions adopted by financial firms are ill-fitted to overcome such challenges and meet the stringent requirements continuously passed down by regulators.

And so, the demand for regulatory frameworks that give rise to more granularity and transparency has skyrocketed in the last few years.

The global RegTech market size is expected to grow from $7.6 billion in 2021 to $19.5 billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 20.8%.

Financial Institutions combating compliance and regulatory challenges with RegTech

The time is NOW for the financial sector to explore the capabilities of AI-powered risk and compliance management systems.

Capitalizing on big data and machine learning technologies, RegTech solutions analyze huge volumes of data from numerous sources at high speeds. This slashes the time needed to carry out highly complex analyses and checks, catalyzing improved productivity and efficiency gains.

For example, 10–15% of the workforce in financial institutions is dedicated to regulatory compliance matters. RegTech solutions can automate and streamline sophisticated tasks such as customer onboarding processes, enabling financial firms to potentially reduce the time and compliance costs associated with such tasks by 30-50%, according to Deloitte.

RegTech systems are paving the way for financial institutions to scale and adapt to the modern threat and regulatory landscapes through a) Identifying suspicious activity more easily and b) accelerating risk detection and remediation of complex cases.

In the past, issuing cards to customers was the product of a partnership between a large business and a bank – often referred to as co-branded cards.

Not to mention, this involved high network and processing fees, bureaucratic and infrastructural barriers, and geographic limitations.

But today, the emergence of CaaS business models has made card issuance an accessible pursuit for businesses. Organizations can design, build and launch personalized card programs to match their desired customer experiences, at scale.

Moreover, they can do it in WEEKS rather than months.

But What is CaaS?

Read on to learn more.

What is Card as a Service (CaaS)

Card as a Service, or CaaS, is an up-and-coming card-issuing model that enables companies to easily develop and launch card services as part of their business offering.

It is a modern-day approach for businesses to issue payment cards as a turnkey solution without the hassle of navigating complex regulations, numerous partnerships, painstaking integrations and managing ongoing financial operations.

Simply put, CaaS providers offer comprehensive, out-of-the-box solutions for businesses, handling the entire end-to-end card issuance process on their behalf – from managing all entities and processes across the value chain such as banks, card schemes, processors, identity verification to card fulfillment and delivery.

As an enabler of modern card issuance, CaaS is becoming the key touchpoint facilitating smarter financial services.

Modern card issuance is accelerating and streamlining the process of card creation. Using open APIs, and programmable controls, businesses can customize their own card programs to enable new business models and unique digital experiences.

While modern card issuance can enable multiple use cases, issuing cards to customers empowers organizations to reap the following benefits:

Benefits of issuing your own cards: The Modern Way

A win-win for you and your customers

• Generate new revenue streams by monetising spending

Issuing your own cards will allow you to monetise customer spending by realizing transaction fees every time they use their cards.

• Obtain valuable insights from increased visibility over customer data

Modern card-issuing platforms grant you access to a complete set of APIs to gain visibility into valuable customer spending data and key insights from customer lifestyles. These insights can form the building blocks for creating personalized services to develop more meaningful customer relationships.

• Tap into new markets and capture a new customer base

Modern card issuing provides you with great control over the card-issuing process to define the best user experience. You can set up and customize card programs to meet your desired use cases – the sky’s the limit! For example, you can tap into the consumer credit by providing customers with BNPL cards that are restricted to merchants of your choice.

Choosing the right CaaS provider

Partnering up with modern card issuance service providers is the most efficient way to build, issue and manage card programs. Choosing the right CaaS partner is one of the most important decisions to make.

Here are some critical criteria for you to consider and use to evaluate prospective providers:

1. The strategic fit between your company and your partner
2. The level of flexibility your partner poses to cater to your desired solution scope and features
3. Partner’s pricing model to match your current and future scale
4. Ability to help you scale across multiple markets
5. The quality of the technology stack and key product features

Thinking of launching your own card program?

Unlock the power of financial ownership and issue your own payment cards instantly with SimpliFi, the leading CaaS platform in MENA and Pakistan.