VibePay launches Open Banking fuelled payments for business

VibePay, has today announced its Open Banking driven offer for businesses. The latest products will allow brands to process frictionless checkout and subscription payments online, increasing transaction success and reducing fees, whilst giving brands a gateway into their engaged Gen Z community.

As part of VibePay’s ambitious growth plans, and following an additional £1.25 million in funding from its current investors, Kieran Bamber has been chosen to lead Commercial Partnerships, tasked with building VibePay’s partner network, and supporting brands in building a more engaged relationship with their Gen Z consumers.

The VibePay Payments API powers payments for brands – both via online checkouts and subscriptions; the latter being hugely popular amongst Gen Z and traditionally expensive to process.

The API is built on open banking and is one piece of the wider Vibe ecosystem. This includes the Vibe Data API, giving brands unique transactional insights into their Gen Z customers, made possible through the Vibe Pay app, which gives Gen Z users an ‘activity feed for their life’. The data API gives businesses insights into the products and services Gen Z care about, and frequently transact with.

The launch, which was planned for Q3 but brought forwards to help SMEs during the current uncertain environment, is intended to give businesses instant access to their funds, and improve cash flow, at a time when this is business-critical.

With that, VibePay is offering SME businesses 3 months free to trial the technology, and maximise its impact throughout the uncertainty of COVID-19.

The move comes as VibePay continues to forge consumer-centric technology, and place the success of its existing app into the hands of SMEs and brands alike. Since launching in Beta in October 2019, the app has processed over £3m in requests and payments from customers – with this projected to reach £10m in the next quarter. This recent funding takes VibePay’s total investment raised to £6.36 million, with plans to boost this later in 2020 with a round of series A funding to support the business’ next stage of growth.

In addition, Vibe recently received approval from several other European countries, including Germany, France, Netherlands and Luxembourg, to start implementing banks into the Vibe Banking Gateway, the aggregation layer powering payments in the entire ecosystem. Vibe currently adheres to two open banking standards, the UK Open Banking standard and now the Berlin Standard.

Luke Massie, CEO & Founder at VibePay

“Our USP is our understanding of our audience. We’re built for Generation Z, by Generation Z, and we know that many brands struggle to target that customer effectively. Plenty of businesses are spending more money than ever on advertising to Gen Z, and it can be a difficult demographic to engage with – add to that high payment fees for purchases, and the process of converting Gen Z into customers can be incredibly expensive. By launching our latest products, we’re not only helping brands sharpen up their payments processes and boost their cash flow, we’re helping them deliver what their target customers want. We’re not just another payments provider, we’re giving brands invaluable insights into who their customers are, where they shop and how they spend to offer tailored discounts, targeted offers, or related products and stay one step ahead.