In the fast-changing fintech world, data is the fuel driving growth. When it’s easy to see and understand, it can spur fintechs to the next level of expansion. But when data is murky, impenetrable and inaccessible, it’s the biggest obstacle to overcome. For any human, trying to understand raw data is like trying to grapple with a 300-lb gorilla.
The pandemic-driven shift to digital payments worldwide means that fintechs everywhere are scrambling to get more clarity from their data, to inform their business strategies, new service developments, and meet stringent regulatory reporting requirements.
Simply put, accurate and verifiable reconciliation and reporting of payments data is vital for payments and fintech companies to mine valuable business insights, and to scale up to meet customer demand.
Kani’s roots in fintech go back years, when fintech was in its infancy, and companies began to explore how to disrupt old ways of doing things with new payment technology.
Our CEO, Aaron Holmes, saw first-hand how payments businesses were struggling to manage complex data reconciliations, involving time-consuming manual processes. The spirit of disruption is what inspired him to establish Kani Payments, and what drives us now to deliver outstanding data reporting and reconciliation capabilities to our clients worldwide.
”It’s our belief that disruptive payments companies are changing the world for the better, but their time and resources need to be spent on their core offering, and not the back office. Our mission is simple. We want to give fintech firms, operations, finance and compliance teams control of data, and the tools they need to succeed”.
By consuming payments data no matter where it comes from, and automating manual reconciliation processes, Kani enables fintechs to understand what’s happening with their products and customers, with the assurance that money is in the right place, and always on the right side of regulatory rules – all mission-critical processes for any growth-hungry payments business. Our solutions save businesses huge amounts of staff time, helping them meet tight deadlines – something we’ve all been grateful for over the past two years.
In most cases, Kani’s reporting and reconciliation platform can complete large-scale reconciliations in just a few minutes.
Since October 2018, Kani has already reconciled over €5 billion in transactional payments data for our customers, including challenger banks, established banks, electronic money issuers, processors, payment gateways and gift card providers. We’ve significantly reduced the complexity of their payments data, helped them onboard their clients quickly and supported them in being able to launch new services to market, streamline processes, serve customers more efficiently, and scale much faster.
Named ‘Europe’s Leading Financial Services or Payments Start-up’ by the Emerging Payments Association in 2019 and a few additional, brilliant industry recognitions along the way, we’re now integrated with many of the major payments processors as well as having clients and partners within the payments and fintech industry across five continents, including Paysafe, Equals Money, TPL, Sodexo, Moorwand, Hay, OnePay and global Banking-as-a-Service leader, Railsbank.
Our journey over the past 12 months has seen us secure new clients and announce the launch of our out-the-box data output integrations with multiple global processors, but most importantly, collaboration and reducing complexity for fintechs have been at the heart of everything, and are the key ingredients that continue to drive us forward. In November 2021, Kani’s dedication to enabling fintech growth was recognised when we were awarded second place in the prestigious FinTech 50, highlighting the UK’s most innovative financial technology creators in 2021.
We’re relentless in our development of even more pioneering services for our customers and the industry, thanks to our growing team who are all passionate about helping clients with their data reporting and reconciliation challenges. In the fintech business, people are just as important as the product, and at Kani we’re recruiting a diverse team of industry experts. The whole team play an active role in taking the time to understand who our customers are, the challenges they face and the needs of each business – we build Kani with them and speak in their language right from the outset.
As for what’s in store in 2022?
Our rapid success has seen us expand into new geographies. From our very proud home in Newcastle, we’re now going global with a suite of services designed to take fintechs to the next level. We’re also developing new functionality, incorporating machine learning record matching solutions in conjunction with Newcastle University’s Mathematics Department and the National Innovation Centre for Data.
As advanced as these services are, we also offer tailored support so that firms can gain the maximum benefits from their data, including real-time training for clients, for things like chasing down reconciliation breaks, or helping them with questions about complex data.
At Kani, we do all the heavy lifting for businesses, which means they can spend more time focusing on building good fintech products. And we’re incredibly excited for what 2022 will bring.
If you recognise any of the above challenges with your own payments data, I’d love to talk to you about how we might be able to help or collaborate in some way – get in touch or reach me on LinkedIn
Melissa Beckett – Chief Marketing Officer at Kani