Driving the Future of the Financial Industry: How Banking Circle Has Become a Key Accelerator

Banking Circle has positioned itself as a financial utility dedicated to giving banking institutions faster and more efficient ways to conduct business on a truly global scale. A couple of months ago, Banking Circle was named as ‘Most Outstanding Payment Services Experts of 2019’ in CEO Monthly’s annual Business Elite feature. We spoke with the firm’s CEO, Anders la Cour, to find out more about Banking Circle’s services and expertise. 

To put it simply, Banking Circle is part accelerator, part facilitator, offering expert services that help its clients capitalise on growth opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach or rely on significant resource investment. Specifically, when it comes to cross border B2B payments, which have often been mired in complexity and regulation, acting to underpin a core service of today’s financial establishments, as Anders explains briefly. “Banking Circle is empowering financial institutions to support their customers’ international trading ambitions, without the need for multiple banking relationships, whilst reducing risk and the operational cost of transactions.”

“Today, a significant membership has been built, and Banking Circle processes more than 1.5 million transactions each month.”

Ultimately, Banking Circle underpins the service propositions of a wide spectrum of financial institutions, allowing them to focus their resources on the all-essential customer relationship. “Businesses of all sizes, but specifically the smaller, younger firms, can be held back from meeting their full potential by difficulties with payments and cashflow. This area of business is hugely influential but is often left out of business planning. Transfers can be too slow and expensive, and without access to additional funds many SMEs struggle and potentially fail. Similarly, traditional banks are unable to provide flexible, fast and low-cost solutions, which leaves many SMEs financially excluded.”

Serving a broad spectrum of financial institutions, including Card Acquirers, PSPs, APMs, banks and FX Payment Providers, Banking Circle members can provide their merchants with top-tier banking services such as IBAN accounts, cross border payments and business loans. “This can all be done through a secure web-interface branded in the name of the financial institution. For banks, Banking Circle offers an add-on to the correspondent banking model, reducing operational costs and risk while increasing global reach. For Financial Tech businesses, Banking Circle offers an alternative for managing multiple banking relationships in different regions, allowing them to provide their customers with banking services from payments to lending.”

“Banking Circle is made up of a close-knit team dedicated to working together to solve the payment problems faced by businesses working around the world today. Banking Circle’s numerous award wins and nominations, as well as unprecedented success since launch just five years ago is testament to the hard work and innovative thinking of the entire team.”

One of the core challenges on the banking landscape remains the issue of diversity. True to form, Banking Circle is seeking to address this issue, and many others, by being the drivers of change. “A challenge we are noticing in the current market is that of diversity. The industry is traditionally male-dominated, with little diversity in terms of ethnicity
and background, for example. Banking Circle strongly believes that building a more diverse banking and payments industry is vital for success today and in future generations. The company is looking into this challenge, and how to encourage the next generation into banking and financial roles.”

This idea of change very much defines the future of Banking Circle as they reinforce their commitment to revolutionising the financial sphere looking forward. Anders, in his final comments, explains how the firm continually reviews their services to offer meaningful and effective solutions for their clients. “Launched to tackle the existing problems with cross border
payments, with the aim of helping businesses to transact more efficiently and cost-effectively regardless of geography, Banking Circle is committed to continually reviewing the market for opportunities to solve the finance and payment problems business face. Banking Circle regularly carries out detailed market research to identify pain points experienced by different sectors, allowing us to build solutions with the current business needs at the heart. New solutions are always in the pipeline.”