FinTech Startup Nanopay Is For Banks, Not Against Them

Whether bank customers are consumers or businesses, chances are good that they do at least some of their banking online. This month, startup nanopay is announcing a partnership with Canadian nonprofit interbank network Interac to help businesses manage the complexity of working across borders.

The partnership creates access for any bank account holder in the country to send funds to or receive funds from any other bank account served by nanopay. So far, that’s a short list including just India. But, according to nanopay CEO Laurence Cooke, coverage will be supported in the U.S. and China as well in Q1 of 2018.

nanopay streamlines this process through an application program interface (API). The API makes it possible for banks to integrate with nanopay and gain access to the many banks and banking relationships they need — or wish to have — to serve their B2B customers, Cooke explained.

That saves time and money since it could take a financial institution (FI) multiple years to do due diligence on 200 others, he said. Partnering with Interac opens the channels between every bank in Canada in a matter of weeks, meaning instead of having all those banks conducting due diligence on each other, a single player — Interac — does due diligence on all of them. This is the approach nanopay has taken in India, China and the U.S.

On top of the Interac partnership, nanopay has gone live with B2B processing and cross-border remittances on its B2B platform, all with a focus on the same four countries: Canada, India, China and the U.S. According to Cooke, those four countries represent the biggest flows of value to and from Canada.

Today, nanopay can handle 5,000 payments per second. The U.K.’s Faster Payments network, by comparison, supports 2,000. By Q1, though, nanopay will support up to 50,000 payments per second, Cooke added.

“We’re a good example of how FinTechs can collaborate within the industry and accelerate innovation by working with incumbent providers — the FIs — and give them the benefit of the innovation rather than running around trying to take their customers,” said Cooke. “They already have the customers; we’re just making the experience better.”