2023: Top five partnerships of the year
Capping off 2023, FinTech Futures takes a look back at some of the year’s top partnerships.
Working together, individual organisations and firms can achieve more. This year has seen the formation of a number of partnerships as company’s look to tackle problems, innovate and provide value for consumers across the world.
As we approach the end of another year, here’s a look back at five of the top partnership stories across 2023.
US Treasury Department enlists JP Morgan for account validation services
US Treasury partnered with JP Morgan
In September, JP Morgan signed a five-year deal with the US Treasury Department to provide account validation services for federal government agencies.
As part of the agreement, JP Morgan’s corporate and investment bank will corroborate payment information for the department’s fiscal service prior to its payments being issued. It will seek to authenticate payment details by leveraging its own customer information alongside industry data it claims to regularly utilise within its own payment processing agenda.
The Treasury estimated that it dispersed close to $5.27 trillion to federal agencies during the fiscal year for 2022, typically to fund initiatives including social security, medicare, tax refunds and unemployment insurance.
However, according to the figures of the US Government Accountability Office, $247 billion of this figure fell under the scope of what it describes as “improper payments”, where payees were either overpaid, underpaid or received a payment that should not have been made at all.
Mastercard taps Japan’s NEC to roll out biometric checkouts across APAC
In November, Japanese technology company NEC Corporation spearheaded the expansion of the Mastercard Biometric Checkout Programme in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region.
The two companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to incorporate NEC’s face recognition and liveness verification technology into the programme, in an effort to encourage adoption among regional merchants.
Launched in May last year with Brazil’s Payface and St Marche as early adopters, the programme offers a technology framework that authenticates in-store transactions with the payer’s smile or hand, while addressing security, biometric performance, data protection and privacy requirements.
NatWest engages IBM to revamp chatbot service with generative AI
NatWest taps IBM for generative AI
Also in November, NatWest selected IBM’s Watsonx platform to integrate generative AI into its virtual assistant service Cora.
Branded as ‘Cora+’, the bank says that its expanded chatbot has “been designed to provide a more accessible and human interaction for customers”.
Developed in collaboration with IBM, NatWest claims that the service is able to provide “conversational responses to complex customer queries”, ranging from product comparisons to general information about the bank and career opportunities.
This scope has been achieved by leveraging generative AI to draw on multiple different sources of information, which the bank says were previously inaccessible to legacy versions of the chatbot.
HSBC joins forces with Tradeshift to launch embedded finance business
In August, it was announced that HSBC has come together with San Francisco, California-headquartered B2B fintech Tradeshift to launch a jointly-owned business focused on the development of embedded finance solutions and financial services apps.
Expected to launch in “early 2024” and backed by a two-stage $35 million investment from HSBC, the partnership will see the embedding of a variety of digital solutions, including payment and fintech services, into the trade, e-commerce and marketplace experiences provided by Tradeshift and other platforms.
The investment from HSBC also forms part of a wider funding round for Tradeshift, with the fintech expected to raise a minimum of $70 million from the bank and other investors.
The venture is poised to scale Tradeshift’s business commerce proposition and power its global expansion. This ambition is to be further supported by the addition of HSBC to its board.
Dutch heavyweight ING taps Salt Edge for SME open banking solutions
Salt Edge partners ING
Back in April, Dutch banking heavyweight ING partnered with open banking fintech Salt Edge to develop a range of open banking solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The partnership will see use cases developed for SME segments from various industries, corporates and individual end users.
ING says it chose Salt Edge for its “client-oriented approach” and coverage which will allow the bank to serve all types of clients in its key markets, extending the range of services ING can offer.
