Open Banking e-commerce payments next up for Nuapay

Source: Nuapay

Open Banking player Nuapay, powered by Sentenial, today announces its partnership with Beam, the innovative fintech payments service provider for small businesses.

The partnership enables Beam to provide Open Banking payments to its clients on WooCommerce – the open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress – bringing online and omnichannel retailers the benefits of faster, more secure and cost-efficient payments. After a successful pilot, the Beam service is available now to almost 100,000 websites using WooCommerce to sell goods and services in the UK.

The news comes just a month after the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) published research showing that 50% of the UK’s small business community are utilising the services offered by open banking providers. The Beam service will bring the benefits of open banking to even more UK businesses, enabling them to receive funds instantly through open banking payments, helping to address cash flow challenges.

Online and omnichannel merchants using WooCommerce to accept payments can register with Beam, and will also be issued a business payment account with Nuapay. Through this account, Beam can enable merchant access to instant payments, instant refunds, recurring payments, and instalment plans. Crucially, as there is no payment card involved, merchants are not subject to ever-rising card scheme fees. Beam aims to save UK businesses £1 million in card processing fees over the next 2 years.

No consumer card details ever being exposed also means that all transactions are fully Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) compliant. This benefits retailers and consumers by dramatically reducing the risk of fraud.

To pay, consumers do not require a Beam account, as the transaction is completed as a direct Account-2-Account transfer.  They simply select the Beam button on the checkout page, and are seamlessly redirected to their banking app to authorise the payment.

Merchants using the Beam service will also be able to collect instant payments at physical Point of Sale (POS) through a QR code on the Beam app, or remotely via Beam’s Pay By Link solution.

Beam has already achieved a 10% organic adoption rate at checkout, even before its website has launched. This, bolstered by OBIE figures released in September 2020 that show there are already over 2 million UK consumers using open banking-enabled products, demonstrates the pace at which demand for open banking payments is increasing.

Nick Raper, Head of UK at Nuapay, comments: “E-commerce has grown at an exponential rate in the last year, and, as more consumers move online due to ongoing lockdowns, this trend shows no sign of slowing down. As such, we need to do all we can to empower small businesses to serve their customers with the best possible experience. We’re delighted to be partnering with Beam, who share our philosophy of bringing UK businesses the benefits of fast, direct and secure open banking payments.”

Martin Burt, Founder at Beam, adds: “Our aim is for the Beam payment solution to become as familiar on checkout pages as Stripe or PayPal, and we are going to continue to innovate to bring UK businesses the leading payment acceptance solutions on the market. Partnering with Nuapay, to gain access to its unparalleled suite of payments capabilities, gives us the best opportunity to demonstrate to merchants and consumers that open banking payments can deliver a proposition stronger than credit and debit cards.”