Digital Payments Company Transferra Prepares for Launch

London-based fintech startup is currently undergoing authorisation by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

London’s tech scene is as lively as ever with digital payments company Transferra getting ready to launch.

The fintech startup is currently undergoing authorisation by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Transferra plans to provide payments solutions to individual customers and businesses. Users will be able to send, receive and exchange money; and they can pay bills and get instant account statements.

Its website has plenty of information about what services will be available.

Business accounts will include multi-currency e-money accounts; currency exchange at ECB rates; an e-money account manager; the ability to transfer funds via BACS, CHAPS, Faster Payments and SEPA. In addition, e-money account statements are available in PDF, XLS & CSV; and an e-money account with IBAN.

It’s not just about B2B as Transferra also offers personal accounts for the B2C segment. Features include e-money accounts in GBP, EUR, USD; and the option to transfer funds via BACS, CHAPS, Faster Payments and SEPA.

In a world of speed, Transferra says its registration process takes approximately three minutes. The onboarding process (including KYC) takes less than 16 business hours.

Payments will be possible via the website interface or the Transferra app on iOS and Google Play stores.

While Transferra is a fintech startup targeting the UK market, the two founders are Latvian. They are Anna Luize Berzina (who is based in Riga) and Viktors Kazanskis in London.

eWeek UK has contacted the duo for more details about Transferra.

The UK’s Payments Sector

The country’s payments space is one that attracts a lot of attention from startups in some shape or form. Recently, eWeek UK looked at ‘10 Tech Startups to Watch in 2021’.

In that list, there were BenePay, Kanexy, Templar Payments and Wedo showing an interest in payments.

BenePay is a payment and digital identity SaaS company for businesses and public sector entities. Kanexy launched in January this year offering money transfer and exchange services. The company provides personal and business accounts, and wants to build a “universal financial fintech platform”.

There’s no doubt what Templar Payments does. It describes itself as a Boarding as a Service, payment gateway and cloud-based CRM system. Meanwhile, Wedo is headquartered in Glasgow and describes itself as “the world’s first live streaming social platform and neobank for people to monetise their skills”. It’s looking for action in the B2B and B2C segments – and will provide chat, video and payments via one platform.

In June 2021, UK Finance released a report on the state of ‘UK Payments in 2020’.

Due to COVID, payment volumes declined by 11% to 35.6 billion. In terms of other stats, 52% of all payments were made by cards, while consumers made the large majority of the 35.6 billion payments. It’s worth noting that there were 2.5 billion B2B payments and 2.3 billion business to individual payments.

Nearly a third (32%, 17.3 million people) of the adult population had registered for mobile payments in 2020, an increase of 7.4 million people (75%) compared with 2019.

Transferra says it will offer Faster Payments, and UK Finance had some information to share on that and online banking.

In 2020 the number of people using online banking (via a computer) or mobile banking (via an app on their smartphone or tablet) continued to grow. Well over two-thirds of UK adults (72%) used online banking and over half (54%) used mobile banking.

The number of remote banking payments processed via the Faster Payments Service (or cleared in-house by banks) during 2020 increased by 21% to just under three billion. Over the past few years, the number of businesses using this payment method has increased to the point where over four out of ten business-to-business payments were made via Faster Payments or other remote banking in 2020.

Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton is the Editor of eWeek UK. He has 18 years' journalism and writing experience. His career has taken him to China, Japan and the UK - covering tech, fintech and business. Follow on Twitter @TonyFintech.
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