Meet Michael Lane, VP Sales at Open Banking Enabler: Token

Token is very proud to be the leading Open Banking enabler for the payments industry. Token is driving the shift to a much faster, fairer, frictionless payments ecosystem. Our whitelabel-ready platform has been specifically built to enable payment service providers (PSPs), gateways and acquirers to easily launch and scale account-to-account (A2A) payment propositions, which are fast becoming a mainstream payment method.

Token’s best-in-class connectivity for Account Information Services (AIS) and Payment Initiation Services (PIS) across the UK and Europe reaches over 250 million potential end users of Open Banking services in 16 countries, all through a single API and interface. We currently process tens of millions of payments annually for more than 80 customers, including Mastercard, BNP Paribas and HSBC.
 
 

 

What do you think makes Token unique?

 
Token is uniquely positioned to support large PSPs when it comes to leveraging emerging Open Banking opportunities.
PSPs are currently squeezed between card schemes’ raising fees and merchants who are demanding lower costs. The result is that PSPs’ margins have been eroding, but through our Open Banking payments platform they can now easily launch their own white-labelled A2A payments capabilities.

Our platform is uniquely designed to enable PSPs and other institutions to efficiently offer direct bank payments to their customers while generating greater revenues and higher margins, rather than simply aggregating other alternative payment methods.
 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
We’ve been busy liaising with industry players to build up the complete Open Banking toolkit that they’re looking for. It enables businesses to create new capabilities and revenue streams by blending API-based payments and data to reinvent financial experiences. For example, Token provides access to aggregated bank account and transaction data for smarter onboarding and deeper insights.

Token’s platform also offers sophisticated, reseller-friendly features such as a fully-brandable merchant dashboard, developer portal and customer interface that embeds hierarchy to segment merchant reporting and functionality by distributor. Other features include self-service merchant onboarding, customer billing, certificate management and programmable authorisations. And we’re providing choice. Our customers can choose whether to use Token’s license or their own in the UK and Europe, or whether to use Token’s embedded payment flows or to design their own.
 

What can we hope to see from Token in the future?

 
We’ll be continuing to deliver on our commitment to offer best-in-class depth and breadth of Open Banking connectivity to the most bank accounts per country, in most countries. We’ll also continue to offer cutting-edge capabilities and push the boundaries in terms of what’s possible for payments.

This includes our exciting work regarding Variable Recurring Payments (VRP), which will be a real game changer. As the rollout of VRP progresses in the UK, we’re enabling our partners to take this next step into the future of payments. We already support VRP for sweeping services with all major UK banks, and recently entered into an agreement with NatWest to offer VRP for non-sweeping services, with more banks set to follow.

Our industry research revealed that the unique benefits of VRP will fuel a significant shift away from card-on-file and direct debit for subscription and utility bill payments. For example, over 80% of payment professionals surveyed indicated fast settlement times are a crucial benefit of VRP, compared to just 17% who said the same for card-on-file. VRP is one to watch closely as we enter 2023.