Payment rivals dangle offers to lure clients from sinking Wirecard ship

Singapore

WITH the collapse of scandal-hit payments firm Wirecard, alternative payment gateway firms are now dangling special offers to grab a larger slice of the pie as clients explore options to migrate from the beleaguered German fintech.

UK-headquartered Rapyd, for instance, has tailor-made a package especially for Wirecard customers, which touts zero onboarding fees onto the Rapyd platform. Transaction fees for the first 30 days are also waived.

According to Rapyd, its global payments network supports some 900 methods in over 100 countries, including cards, bank transfers, e-wallets, as well as cash.

Joel Yarbrough, vice-president for Rapyd's Asia Pacific unit, told The Business Times: "While it's difficult to provide an exact count of Wirecard clients that have moved over to Rapyd, we have seen new clients in Asia, the Americas, and Europe come onto our platform. And, we are continuing to get inquiries from current Wirecard clients looking to switch providers."

Wirecard, which processes payments for merchants, and issues prepaid company cards, filed for insolvency in June after admitting that 1.9 billion euros (S$2.98 billion) in cash on its balance sheet is likely non-existent. This happened amid ongoing investigations into wide-scale accounting fraud at the company.

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Wirecard had said in 2017 that its portfolio of clients in Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Australia and New Zealand translated to more than 20,000 merchants in the region.

i2c, a payments platform headquartered in the Silicon Valley, is also offering a special package for Wirecard clients that offers fee-free migration and expedited implementation. "While we can't share the number of organisations that have responded or their names, we can share there has been significant interest," said Nikki Waters, i2c's senior vice-president for marketing.

Contis, another UK payments firm, said it came up with an "immediate solution" to support Wirecard clients confronted with service suspensions when the country's Financial Conduct Authority told Wirecard to halt operations in June.

Its expedited solution allows Wirecard clients on Visa rails to transfer their BIN (bank identification number) codes and migrate existing accounts across to Contis, which is a principal member of Visa.

"Once Visa signs off, onboarding would be expedited to take weeks rather than the usual months," said the firm's spokesperson Uche Graves.

Contis, which has offices in the UK, Lithuania and India, assesses the possibility of discounts for specific cases, but does not offer blanket discounts or promotions.

Indonesian payments fintech Xendit has also put up a webpage targeting Wirecard migrators, promising to "reduce further risks and disruptions to your business, and assist you with fast and seamless migration".

While it does not offer discounts specifically for Wirecard migrators, these prospective clients can tap Xendit's Business for Good initiative, launched amid the Covid-19 pandemic to support small and medium businesses, authorised charities and non-profit organisations. Those on this programme get their transaction fees waived for a month and financial support at low interest rates.

While the fintechs were unable to disclose the number of new clients who have hopped over from Wirecard, all reported growth in business in recent months.

Rapyd's Mr Yarbrough said his company saw about a 20 per cent increase in month-over-month activations on its platform over the last two to three months.

"We attribute the growth to the acceleration in the use of digital payments due to Covid-19 as businesses continue to move online or are expanding current online operations and need to support a wider variety of payment methods," he said.

Contis said it has seen a three-fold increase in inbound leads during this time, but stressed that it cannot disclose specific details of migrated clients.

Over at Xendit, there has been a 70 per cent increase in clients across various verticals over the past quarter.