Online Payments

The pandemic has been the primary driver of rising digital banking usage this year in Canada and will continue to drive further spending by banks’ on their digital platforms in the near term and long term as user experience on digital platforms is now more important than ever. Let’s have a closer look at some of the numbers behind the growth:

The Canadian government continues to explore the benefits of open banking (also now known as consumer-directed finance), which would allow banks to substantially improve their digital user experience and tie consumers more closely to their digital banking platforms. Here’s a detailed look at the benefits of open banking.

Did you know VoPay empowers banks to provide a better payment experience for their clients through a single API? Learn more.

This year has been marked with incredible resilience, recovery, and innovation with the payments industry playing a vital role in supporting businesses and citizens through the pandemic.

Here are our most viewed payment infographics of 2020:

E-Commerce Growth & Payment Preferences

Small Business Digital Payments Adoption

Payment Methods by the Numbers

The Accounts Payable Digitization Opportunity

A Cashless World

The Real Cost of Processing Payments

Small BusinessPayment Pain Points & Trends

Account Payable By The Numbers

See our fintech related infograhics here!

The pandemic has helped accelerate the shift in consumer buying habits from in-person to e-commerce channels. This year Black Friday shopping numbers showed in-store traffic down by half from the year before with online spending up 22%.

Even before the holiday spending season, the number of consumers who made half or more of their monthly purchases via e-commerce nearly doubled during the pandemic, according to Capgemini research. Its expected the shift from retail to e-commerce will continue even after the pandemic. Here’s a look at some numbers:

VoPay provides payments as a service through a single API that seamlessly connects businesses to the banking and payment ecosystem enabling anyone to offer efficient and simple payment processing. Here’s how we empower marketplaces.

Cashless Payments Dominate

Earlier this month Payments Canada released its annual report on payment methods and trends. The report looked at more than 22 billion payment transactions made in 2019 – providing insight on both year-over-year and 5-year trends in Canada. Here are some highlights:

• Electronic payments now account for 77% of total payments volume (an increase from last year)
• Contactless payments grew dramatically, increasing 15% in volume and 20% in value
• Cash payments declined 9%, and is expected to decline steadily
• Canadians continue to adopt new payment options; about 18% of Canadians made in-app purchases, and about 15% of Canadians made purchases using gaming consoles or Internet of Things (IoT) devices
• Corporate cheque volumes declined, but the average value of a corporate cheque increased by about 5%
• Electronic funds transfers (EFTs) represented the largest portion of the total transaction value (52%) of total payments value in 2019

The Pandemic Factor

Payments Canada also updated its survey results on Canadian spending and purchase habits during the pandemic. Here are some notable results:

• 44% of Canadians say COVID-19 has changed their payments preferences to digital and contactless long-term
• 47% report tapping their debit and credit cards more often than pre-COVID, compared to 53% at week five of the pandemic
• 42% are uncomfortable handling cash in general

Don’t Be Left Behind

VoPay’s Payment as a Service (PaaS) solution is designed to allow businesses to utilize local, regional and global payments options through a single open API to meet all their payment needs and meet consumer’s paperless expections. The complexity of moving funds between different providers is all handled by VoPay ensuring a seamless experience for all users.

Available payments services include:

Intelligent EFT / ACH (iQ11): Accept instant bank account verification payments, improve payment speed and reduce NSFs. Learn more.

EFT / ACH: Seamlessly facilitate bank payment processing by connecting to North America’s banking system. Learn more.

Interac e-Transfer for Business: Send thousands of near real-time payments with higher funding limits with just an email. Learn more.

VoPay Instant (Visa Direct): Send money directly to almost any Visa card holder in real-time. Learn more.

Fintech adoption has nearly tripled in Canada, increasing from just 18% in 2017 to 50% in 2019. Canadian digital-only banks will experience an increase in account holders between 2020 and 2024 at an annual growth rate of 8.9%. For the same time period the annual US growth rate will be 19.8% and 12.7% in the UK. Canada’s big five banks are still dominating the market along with the fact that there is a very small underbanked population for digital-only banks to target. Here’s a closer look at the current state of fintech adoption:

VoPay can empower business banking clients to offer their own customers a better debit and credit experience by allowing seamlessly integration with business banking services and optimizing payment operations with just one API. You can learn more here about our solutions.

The Payments as a Service (PaaS) model eliminates the need for costly and lengthy implementations. Instead, it shifts to a subscription-based technology designed to reduce upfront IT spend, enhances client flexibility and gives access to the latest technologies. PaaS is designed to allow merchants and others to leverage local, regional and global payments options through a single interface. The complexity of moving funds between providers is handled by the PaaS layer and is hidden from the user. Here’s a look at the layers that make up VoPay’s PaaS solution:

The solution is designed to allow businesses to utilize mulitple payment options through a single open API  to meet their specific payment needs. Because only one API is required, you’re only required to maintain one relationship.

Through VoPay’s API layer you can access the following payment services:

Intelligent EFT / ACH (iQ11): Accept instant bank account verification payments, improve payment speed and reduce NSFs. Learn more here.

EFT / ACH: Seamlessly facilitate bank payment processing by connecting to North America’s banking system. Learn more here.

Interac e-Transfer for Business: Send thousands of near real-time payments with higher funding limits with just an email. Learn more here.

VoPay Instant (Visa Direct): Send money directly to almost any Visa card holder in real-time. Learn more here.

You can access our Visa Direct service (AKA VoPay Istant) through our developer-friendly API or payment portal to send real-time payouts to almost any Visa Debit cardholder in Canada 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Last quarter global Visa Debit spend was up 20% to $1.2 trillion while credit was down 9%, to $1.1 trillion. 

There are several use cases for the payment service including:

Earned Wage Access: Employers can send real-time payouts of earned wages to workers’ eligible debit cards 

Lending: Lenders can offer a real-time loan funding option and exceed customer expectations when they need money quickly

Insurance: Optimize the insurance claim payout process and maximize customer satisfaction 

Gig Economy: Companies can give gig workers the option to receive speedy payouts for their work 24/7/365

Product Features 

Speed: With Visa Direct, funds can be available in a recipient’s account within 30 minutes of transaction approval—all day, every day.

Convenience: Seamless payments to the card your customers already carry in their wallets.

Security: All Visa Direct transactions are processed via VisaNet, protected by Visa’s multi-layered security.

Fully Customizable: Visa Direct can be fully integrated through the VoPay API for a seamless end user experience to fit your brand needs so you stay top of mind.

Cost Effective: Visa Direct is a low cost alternative for cheques, ACH, and EFT, with half the administrative work and paid in real time. You not only save on payment method cost, but also on resource and management time so your team can focus on what really matters.

How It Works?

Businesses only require the recipient’s Visa Debit card number to send money (no financial  information of the recipient is required for payment). Recipients automatically receive funds in their Visa Debit account within 30 minutes with no action is required on their part.

Key Benefits

Easy Signup Process: No recipient banking information required.

Real-Time Funding: Deposit funds within 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Quick Reconciliation: Real-time acknowledgement and daily status reports.

Market Presence: Leverage Visa’s large cardholder network,

Other Payment Tools: Access to end-to-end EFT payment solutions including bulk e-transfer.

Seamless Integration: Access the service through VoPay’s developer friendly API.

Get In Touch

Schedule a chat with one our product specialist to learn more!

This month Payments Canada released survey results from Canadian small business owners show that 1 in 4 Canadian businesses struggles with cashflow and that the top 2021 priority for 2 in 5 small businesses will be to improve overall efficiency to simplify and enhance everyday payment interactions. Some other pain points and trends from the survey include:

VoPay eliminates all these payment pain points through its single API or payment portal:

• Improved cashflow through faster funding times and reduced NSFs

• Reduced fraud through verified users and bank accounts

• Increased efficiencies through paperless payments requiring no banking information and real-time reporting

Learn more here.

In today’s New Normal both advanced technology and legacy businesses are looking to faster-integrated payment methods to enable them to offer a seamless experience to their customers. Payment technologies need to provide a flexible, real-time, and transparent experience that can operate at scale.  In the new economic environment, payments need to transcend physical and manual interactions to become easily embedded into a simple payment technology layer between the bank, the service provider, and the business. With that in mind, we wanted to look at small to mid-size business fintech adoption including payments. The numbers below are from 2019 so you can expect an even high adoption rate in all sectors this year.

Our payments as a service offer multiple payment solutions through our single API including Visa Direct (coming soon) which enables real-time payout experiences with the scale and security of the Visa network. With a direct connection to the end-users bank account, Visa Direct is an ideal solution for paying gig-economy workers exactly on their terms when they do the work, and offers online marketplaces the ability to improve their selling experience with real-time payments. Learn more here about VoPay’s payment service offering.

Welcome to our ONE:ONE blog series where we sit down with thought leaders and pioneers in the fintech, payments and open banking space.

We set down with Jonah Chininga, Co-Founder and Business Development Officer at MICC Financial, Canada’s first digital rotational savings platform that helps groups of people save money, access capital, and build credit. 

Q&A

1. What’s one thing everyone should know about MICC Financial?

MICC is a platform for people and communities to work together to achieve their financial goals.

2. What’s your role at MICC Financial?

I focus on business development and managing the overall operations and resources of the company.

3. What gets you most excited about the VoPay MICC partnership?

Working with VoPay has allowed us to provide frictionless payment options to our users. MICC vision is to expand beyond Canada and VoPay provides us with instant access to a global network of local banking payment infrastructure.

4. What does the future of financial services look like?

In the near future, I envision a sharing economy embedded in every part of the financial system. This will be driven by customer intelligence and peer-to-peer transactions, enabled by partnerships between traditional banking institutions and FinTech companies.

5. Who is your fintech/ tech hero and why?

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square & Cash App. He has built an ecosystem that redefines the world’s relationship with money by making it universally accessible. I’m impressed with how Cash app has become the fastest growing financial brand in the world. 

Learn more here about the VoPay + MICC Financial client announcement.