Collaboration, cooperation and strategic partnerships are new models of working and is what most companies are moving towards, but how do these actually work in practice? Currencycloud and Visa recently entered into a strategic partnership. As the world’s leader in digital payments, how does this partnership benefit a huge company like Visa? And what about a growing fintech like Currencycloud?
Changing market forces are giving all of us pause for thought. Initiatives in payments like open banking, faster payments and ‘request to pay’ are bringing into focus the need to collaborate and create strategic partnerships. We can already see within the financial services sector that there is a move to more of a collaborative model of working with fintechs but a strategic partnership takes this collaboration to a whole new level.
The partnership between Visa and Currencycloud isn’t just two companies getting together. It is about taking technical building blocks into an ecosystem with the end customer at the centre, to make it easier for Visa cardholders to manage their money when travelling and enabling issuers to meet the increasing demand for slick, simple and more convenient cross-border payments.
There are huge benefits to both Visa and Currencycloud in developing this partnership. Our common goal is to drive innovation in payments that positively impact the lives of Visa cardholders, ultimately giving them more control when paying abroad. Whilst Visa brings assets including its brand, network and scale, Currencycloud provides an agile and nimble approach making it the perfect partnership.
Steve Lemon co-founder of Currencycloud and Kevin Akerman, Executive Director, Product from Visa give their take on how to make the most of a strategic partnership.
Steve Lemon says, “It is important when developing a strategic partnership that both parties have clear objectives for what they want to achieve; and that these are 100% aligned. The partnership needs to be mutually beneficial for both parties and their clients, with the whole being worth considerably more than the sum of the parts.”
Kevin Akerman says, “Strategic partnerships are used to accelerate enabling a new capability or deliver a new capability via a partner who has expertise in a specific area. This partnership will give Visa clients the option to use Currencycloud’s dynamic cloud-based FX and payments platform to help offer consumers easier experiences around transacting in foreign currencies. Consumers will be able to better manage their travel abroad through improved visibility and control of their money.”
Strategic partnerships are all about looking at future trends, what your customers want from you as a business, having an eye open to what your competition are doing and looking at wider business initiatives to recognise what solutions need to be put in place.
Without strategic partnerships it is very hard for fintechs to maintain a competitive advantage and ultimately to innovate the way it is needed in the current market. Collaboration and partnerships are the way forward and as Henry Ford said, “Coming together is the beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success.”
If you are interested in partnering with Currencycloud or learning more about how we could work together please click here.