Summary: Currencycloud, a cloud-based B2B payment platform, needed a compliance monitoring tool to efficiently monitor their clients’ websites and make sure their product was being marketed according to strict regulatory requirements.

Currencycloud’s regulatory team uses Visualping to automatically track hundreds of client websites for prohibited language in communicating their product to end users. Visualping enables Currencycloud to stay on top of potentially noncompliant marketing language, saving time for the regulatory team and reducing the risk of noncompliance.

Visualping ultimately makes it easier for Currencycloud to help work towards a safer marketing environment.

Industry: Financial services

Currencycloud’s Story

Currencycloud is a cloud-based B2B payment platform that collects, pays, manages, and transfers various currencies, giving businesses the ability to efficiently move money across borders and transact on a global scale.

Currencycloud sells its platform to organizations that leverage Currencycloud’s API building blocks to construct their own custom payment solutions – whether they are embedding Currencycloud’s infrastructure into their own products or services, or building on top of it. Currencycloud also handles the regulatory requirements associated with cross-border payments, as well as on-boarding the end users – providing them with regulated services, and making it easier for organizations to do business globally.

Having processed more than $100bn USD across 180 countries since 2012, Currencycloud’s customers consist of banks, financial institutions and Fintechs across the globe. Acquired by Visa in 2021, the financial services company has offices in New York, Amsterdam, Cardiff, and Singapore.

Situation

In some of the jurisdictions where it operates, Currencycloud sells its cross-border payment infrastructure solutions to other businesses. These businesses can then, through Currencycloud, provide services, such as payments, to end users – which they wouldn’t have been able to do with their own regulatory license.

As such, the language Currencycloud’s clients use in their marketing messages must reflect this. They’re also subject to various other strict regulatory requirements. In the event a clients’ marketing messages are noncompliant, Currencycloud is held responsible – even if its own marketing language is compliant.

“There are very tight rules in the financial services industry. In the UK, you generally shouldn’t describe something as “the best” or “the cheapest” because, if someone else offers a cheaper product, that’s then a misleading statement. That’s not allowed.”

Other language concerns revolve around the fact Currencycloud is not a bank. If the marketing language isn’t careful, Electronic Money Institutions, like Currencycloud, may be mistaken as providing the same services as that of a bank – they can, after all, hold balances for you, as well as perform payments services.

To prevent misleading consumers, regulators make it very clear Electronic Money Institutions cannot present themselves as banks. It is Currencycloud’s responsibility to ensure that not only their own marketing, but also that of their third-party clients, is not falling foul of this.

If one of Currencycloud’s clients do misrepresent the nature of the product, this would be considered a serious breach of trust (and of our regulators’ requirements). Currencycloud would be held liable.

If you’re a financial services company, how you market your products, and, by extension, how the entities you work with market the products – it’s high stakes if you get it wrong.