Form3, a cloud-native payment technology provider for banks and regulated fintechs, recently announced that it is working with the UK’s fastest-growing all-in-one payments and accounting solution – Countingup and its long-term banking technology, issuing and processing partner, PPS to tackle the ongoing challenges of running a business for SMEs.
Countingup founder and CEO, Tim Fouracre outlines the mission: “Countingup simplifies running a business. Banking and accounting for UK SMEs remains a highly concentrated industry, with the majority of business current accounts (BCA’s) still provided by a small group of the largest banks. While accounting software can be expensive and complex especially for small business owners. SMEs that need accounting, tax and payments services find themselves over-paying and juggling multiple providers, which is time-consuming and costly.”
The model created by Form3, Countingup and PPS represents a new dynamic. Each brings a unique offering to the benefit of UK SMEs. PPS is regulated by the FCA and licensed by Mastercard and has an award-winning payments platform enhanced by connection to the UK Faster Payments and BACs schemes via Form3’s real-time payment technology service.
Countingup’s next-generation BCA exploits this capability converting transactional data into categorised business accounts, in real-time. The SME therefore benefits from a significantly simplified workflow to manage their finances and accounting, benefitting from time and cost-savings.
This cloud-based, mobile first model is expected to save SMEs 8-20 hours and £15-50 per month on running their business finances and accounting tasks.
Michael Mueller, Chief Executive Officer at Form3said, “There is still work to be done to level the playing field and open up domestic and international business banking services for UK SMEs and Microbusinesses. Challengers like Countingup are truly innovating and disrupting this market and supported by our next-generation cloud-native technology, they can expand their all-in-one BCA to include cross border capability which is really exciting.”
Countingup is an award-winning, cloud-native, mobile-first, Business Current Account (BCA) – with built-in accounting software. It has been used to categorise over 3.4m transactions, representing over £1bn of spend by UK SMEs.
Tim Fouracre, Chief Executive Officer at Countingup commented, “From the outset we wanted to make it easier for SMEs and Microbusinesses to run their business. Using our SME’s transactional data to automate and eliminate their accounting tasks we simplify running a business. Our collaboration with PPS and Form3 means we can offer the best in connectivity and transaction processing, allowing Countingup to focus on simplifying the SME workflow. For example, auto-matching invoices to payments, providing a real-time tax estimate and soon facilitating MTD VAT submissions.”
PPS is a Mastercard and Visa Principal Member and an FCA regulated Electronic Money Institution, offering a range of services including processing, UK and SEPA banking solutions, BIN sponsorship, eWallet provision, compliance and fraud services, supply chain management, customer services and end-to-end program design and management.
Ray Brash, Chief Executive Officer, PPS said; “The partnership with Countingup and Form3 enables a strong offering in the B2B fintech space. It is a testament to both our fantastic relationship with the Countingup and Form3 teams that we have created a product that helps SMEs manage their accounting and finances, particularly in the current environment. There is still more to do and we look forward to working with our partners to further enhance the offering and respond to the needs of the small businesses while offering more competition in the market.”
Along with self-funding, this initiative has submitted a proposal for the latest BCR grant submissions, which will be announced later this month. Form3 is known for disrupting the traditional payments infrastructure model, building from scratch an award-winning, cloud-native, Payments-as-a-Service platform. Today, it is trusted by some of UK and Europe’s biggest Tier1 banks and fast-growing Fintechs to handle their critical payments architecture.
