Who are Monoova and what do we do? A chat with Christian Westerlind Wigstrom

"At the heart of what makes Monoova different is the versatility of our payment platform. We believe that the future is real-time, however, we also recognise that we need to build a bridge to that future by offering traditional rails as well. Offering ALL rails in the Australian market makes us rather unique. But the aspect of our product that we are most proud of is our virtual-account and automated, real-time reconciliation features. Combined with our flexible payment options, this is where majority of our clients derive most of their value – value that they can’t get anywhere else in market."

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We interviewed our own CEO and Co-Founder of Monoova, Christian Westerlind Wigstrom, on what Monoova does, how we help clients and what's in store for us in the future.

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Q: Who are Monoova and how do you make money move?

A: Monoova is a leading payment service provider (PSP) in Australia. We specialise in real-time payments and payments automation for businesses. Through our APIs, companies can tailor how they receive, manage and pay funds.

We provide a range of payment types from real-time NPP (New Payments Platform) payments using PayID and PayTo, to traditional payment rails such as BPAY, online card payments and direct entry. We also provide FX services.

PayTo and PayID make payments easier, safer and more personalised is gaining traction in Australia. PayIDs remove the need for sharing BSB and bank numbers and allow people to use unique aliases instead, identifiers that people already have committed to memory such as an email or their phone number. And since transactions to PayIDs take place on the real-time rails, these payments are not only fast but also less likely to fall victims to errors and fraud.

PayTo is another emerging payment method. From the outside, PayTo works like an instant pull payment. Once the customer has agreed to a digital agreement, sent to their mobile or online banking, the merchant can automatically request payment and funds are transferred instantly. In this sense, PayTo is like a modern, real-time, direct debit. Interestingly though, it is not just for recurring billing; it is also an effective and more secure option for checkout and oneoff payments. And behind the scenes, there is considerably more sophistication to PayTo than ‘just’ speed. At Monoova, we believe that people in a few years will struggle to remember last time they DIDN’T use PayTo when paying for something online.

Our all-in-one platform doesn’t just offer the largest variety of domestic and FX payment options. We also have a proprietary solution that automatically reconciles payments, which can reduce time spent on reconciliation up to 99%, from hours to seconds. Overall, Monoova takes the friction out of payments, solving issues for a broad array of use cases, from one-off purchases to ongoing account top-ups and recurrent billing.

Whilst we are based in Australia, our clients are global. We enable businesses internationally to access the Australian payment rails so they can offer local payment options for their Australian customers. For instance, you might be a Singapore-based remittance platform with a requirement for collections in Australia. We can help you. Importantly, while we have a strong standing in the FinTech space, we are not limited to this sector. We service a wide range of verticals including travel, healthcare and wealth management. We can save any business that is processing high volumes of complex payments hours, even days, of manual processing and administration.

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Q: What are Monoova’s core mission, values, and ethos? How are these integrated into the everyday running of the business?

A: Payments happen everywhere all the time. We believe they should be simple and unintrusive. A great payment experience should be remarkable only by virtue of how unremarkable it is, Automate payments with Monoova so fast and smooth that you really don’t notice it. Monoova is pioneering payment journeys in Australia bringing seamless, speedy transactions and processing for our clients and their customers.

It has been five years since we launched the Monoova brand. Since our very first day, we have consistently been early to market with new payments products and solutions such as:

• one of the first live NPP Identified Institutions

• the first and only initiator of PayTo with production-level volume

• launching the first automated reconciliation platform utilising PayIDs

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Our business model has always been to work alongside industry stakeholders and play to our respective strengths. Monoova enjoys long-standing partnerships with banks and industry groups beyond a typical vendor-client relationship. In fact, Monoova is often invited to exchange ideas and experiences drawing on each party’s perspective. Among others, these include the AP+’s PSP Advisory Forum and Cuscal’s Strategic Client Committee.

Additionally, Monoova is working with policy makers and regulators such as the Commonwealth Treasury and the RBA to ensure a voice for FinTechs as new regulation is contemplated across payments, scams, digital-currency exchanges, privacy and more. Our General Counsel sends regular and detailed submissions to FinTech Australia, proactively engages with Treasury on a wide range of reforms including authoring comprehensive submissions, routinely engages with industry bodies, and frequently heads law firm roundtables.

Being an active voice at every level, is not just about Monoova’s success but ensuring a future where innovation can thrive for the industry as whole, achieving better outcomes for every touch in the payment journey.

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Q: How does Monoova stand out from the competition, in terms of its offering, compared to traditional payment platforms?

A: Monoova is a fast, first mover in the market bringing the best solutions backed by NPP innovations. PayTo is an example of taking existing and prospective clients through education and implementation to success. Today, Monoova is responsible for a majority of all PayTo activity, 18% of all PayIDs and 1% of ALL realtime transactions in Australia.

However, it’s not just about being fast and first. At the heart of what makes Monoova different to our competitors is the versatility of our payment platform. We believe that the future is real-time, so, naturally, we have a focus on real-time payments. However, we also recognise that we need to build a bridge to that future by offering traditional rails as well (BPAY, bank transfers, direct debits, RTGS, FX and online card payments). Offering ALL rails in the Australian market makes us rather unique. But the aspect of our product that we are most proud of is our virtual-account and automated, real-time reconciliation features. Combined with our flexible payment options, this is where majority of our clients derive most of their value – value that they can’t get anywhere else in market.

And then there’s our people. By fostering an empathetic company culture and empowering our staff to make right by our clients, we provide outstanding service and support from integration through to live accounts and beyond. It is increasingly common these days for B2B customers to expect a personal level of service. We are exceptionally proud of the consistent feedback we receive from our clients who praise our teams for their support and expertise.

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Q: Could you briefly outline how the Monoova payment platform provides security, cost reduction, scalability, stability, and control for its users?

A: It goes without saying that security is paramount and Monoova puts security at the forefront of everything we do. For instance, even though it wasn’t standard at the time, our payment solution had 2FA built in from the start.

We are SOC 2 Type 1 compliant. SOC 2 is a security framework that specifies how organisations should protect customer data from unauthorised access, security incidents, and other vulnerabilities. Investing in the SOC 2 security framework has been an important step in continuing our commitment to provide our clients with the best security standards available platform for processing payments for example, choosing partners such as Fastly to enhance transaction security.

We are also building on the network effect we have achieved in our target verticals to combat scams by enabling our clients to share information as appropriate about patterns and typologies before they spread.

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Q: What are your key priorities, targets, and goals for the year ahead?

A: 2024 is going to be a big year for us. We expect that we will see a considerable growth of PayTo volumes as more clients and more use cases come to market to benefit from this fast and secure payment type. PayTo will move from being excitedly talked about by insiders to reaching the mainstream.

In parallel, having launched both PayTo and, recently, our online card-acquiring product, we will be returning to our roots to release some exciting new features to our core account-to-account offering.

All of this, of course, is about growing for and with our clients. When you service leading tech companies, you need to run to keep up. And if you want to stay ahead so that you are ready when they are, you need to run faster still. We have a few big names coming online with Monoova in the next few months. It should be exciting!

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‍_{Monoova Payments Pty Ltd (ABN 38 126 015 227) trading as Monoova (“Monoova”) is the authorised representative of Monoova Global Payments Pty Ltd (ABN 77 106 249 852; AFSL No. 421414 ), the issuer of the Combined Financial Services Guide & Product Disclosure Statement Non-Cash Payment Products and Services dated 20 September 2023. (FSG/PDS). This information is given in summary form and does not purport to be complete. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Monoova does not assume responsibility for, the content, accuracy or completeness of the information presented. Before acting on any information you should consider the appropriateness of the information having regard to these matters and seek independent legal, financial and tax advice. To the extent that the information contained above is sourced from third parties or provides link to third party websites, Monoova takes no responsibility for the accuracy, currency, reliability and correctness of any information included in the material provided by third parties nor for the accuracy, currency, reliability and correctness of links or references to information sources (including internet sites) operated by third parties. To the extent that the information contained above is sourced from third parties or provides link to third party websites, Monoova takes no responsibility for the accuracy, currency, reliability and correctness of any information included in the material provided by third parties nor for the accuracy, currency, reliability and correctness of links or references to information sources (including internet sites) operated by third parties}