Token - The Open Banking Enabler for the Payments Industry

A leading open banking enabler for the payments industry, Token is driving the shift to faster, fairer, frictionless payments by helping payment providers efficiently launch and scale with open banking capabilities. Token’s whitelabel-ready platform is purpose built to enable PSPs, gateways and acquirers to easily launch and scale account-to-account payment propositions. Token’s best-in-class connectivity for AIS and PIS in the UK and Europe reaches over 80% of bank accounts in 15 countries, all through a single API and interface. Token processes tens of millions of payments annually for over 80 customers and partners, including Mastercard, HSBC, Computop and other major payment providers.

For some time, payment service providers (PSPs) have been squeezed between the card schemes’ rising fees and merchants demanding lower costs. The result: PSPs’ margins are eroding.

Consumers and merchants are hungry for Open Banking payments, leaving payment service providers with two choices: Payment providers can aggregate local account-to-account payment APMs (which pay notoriously little back to the gateway). Alternatively, Token’s turnkey, whitelabel-ready solution is uniquely enabling payment providers in the UK and Europe to efficiently launch Open Banking payment capabilities to their merchant customers while generating greater revenues and higher margins than aggregating other alternative payment methods.

Token also offers payment providers sophisticated, reseller-friendly features, such as merchant management, customer billing, certificate management and programmable authorisations. Partners can also choose whether to use Token’s licence or their own in the UK and Europe, and whether to use Token’s embedded payment flows or to design their own.

Token is an Open Banking payments platform enabling payment providers, gateways, acquirers, banks and large merchants to efficiently launch and scale with Open Banking payment capabilities.

Account-to-account payment volumes are predicted to grow 100x globally by 2026, with Open Banking-enabled A2A payments reaching $87 billion of Europe’s transaction volumes. Open Banking is fundamentally changing the payments landscape, with Open Banking-enabled payments posing a genuine threat to cards and wallets. As the leading Open Banking enabler for the payments industry, Token is driving the shift from these traditional payment methods to faster, fairer, frictionless Open Banking-enabled account-to-account (A2A) payments.

In 2016, Token made history by conducting the first end-to-end payment through a public bank API in the UK in 2018. In the following four years, Token’s focus on payments has enabled it to develop deep functionality that makes accepting bank-direct payments elegant and simple. Combining the broadest, out-of-the-box Open Banking coverage to over 80% of bank accounts in 15 EU countries and with a unique “platform for platforms,” Token has emerged as the leading Open Banking payments platform in Europe and the UK.

Token aims to make A2A payments a true competitor to cards and APMs as it pushes the boundaries of functionality beyond regulation through new capabilities, premium APIs and value-added services. In the past 12 months, a key focus has been delivering Variable Recurring Payments for non-sweeping services (allowing ecommerce merchants to replace card-on-file with account-on-file) in the UK. Token will roll out similar capabilities in Germany and the rest of Europe once banks in Europe support these.

Historically, merchants have been willing to pay the high costs of cards and wallets because they offered broad reach and high conversion rates. But today, Open Banking enabled account-to-account (A2A) payments can enable merchants to reach anyone with a bank account, and convert better than cards in many markets — at a significantly lower cost.

Against a backdrop of rising payment costs, Token is making Open Banking enabled account-to-account payments a true competitor to cards and alternative payment methods. Open Banking payments are 2-20x lower cost than traditional payment methods. In addition, there are no scheme or interchange fees or additional expenses related to PCI compliance and chargebacks.

Open Banking payments enabled by Token also enhance the customer experience and boost conversion for merchants. With Open Banking payments, there is no onboarding, training, or repetitive data entry. Instead, consumers authenticate most open payments using their face or finger, directly in their banking app through seamless app-to-app redirection. Success rates are now better than cards in many countries, reinforcing the intuitive and frictionless nature of Open Banking payments for consumers — which is ultimately the driving force behind consumer adoption.

For merchants, Open Banking payments not only offer cost savings but better cash flow by settling instantly or within minutes, rather than days. Open payments also have bank-grade security baked in. Token’s Open Banking payments platform is 100% API-based and never relies on screen scraping. Payments are authenticated directly by the consumers’ bank, leveraging existing KYC, AML and screening. Merchants never share or store confidential cardholder or user details, which reduces the risk of fraud, data breaches and mobile hacking. Incoming funds can also be allocated seamlessly for faster, easier reconciliation than invoicing and accepting bank transfers.

Since 80% of merchants do not control their own checkout page, Token’s focus on supporting the unique needs of large payment service providers, gateways and acquirers ultimately helps deliver Open Banking payments to more consumers, while allowing easier access for third party providers.

As the leading Open Banking enabler for the payments industry, Token’s broadest, out-of-the-box Open Banking coverage across the UK and 16 EU countries reaches over 250 million potential end-users of Open Banking services.

With transaction volumes growing by 20x per year, Token processes over €8 billion in Open Banking payments annually for over 80 payment service providers, acquirers, gateways, banks and large merchants. Token is proud to work with Mastercard, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Computop, Paysafe, Trust Payments, Nuvei, Contis, Deutsche Payments, Prommt, Rewire, InPay, Volt, Straal, Zoho Books, Sonae Universo, Ecommpay, Everpay and other major payment providers.

Bank- and developer-friendly by design, Token is authorised as an Account Information Service Provider (“AISP”) and Payment Initiation Service Provider (“PISP“) by the FCA in the UK and BaFin in Germany. Token is PSD2, SCA and PCI-DSS compliant and has earned the highest levels of security certifications, including ISO27001.

www.token.io