EXCLUSIVE: “Time to make hard Kasssh work better” – Ron Delnevo, Payment Choice Alliance in ‘The Fintech Magazine’

Chair of the Payment Choice Alliance, Ron Delnevo, wonders why so few UK fintechs are interested in finding ways to include cash in e-com

At the very first public meeting arranged by the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator, nearly 10 years ago, a partner at the payment technology company Accenture made a presentation during which he noted, in a shocked voice, that he had just discovered there was even innovation in the cash industry.His ignorance was understandable because, whilst cash innovation is definitely available, it is constantly being suppressed in markets where the banking industry is pushing society towards its nirvana of ‘cashless’.

The UK is, of course, a prime example of this suppression. ATMs, which deliver more than 90 per cent of the cash used by the British public, do little else. Around the planet, a myriad of different services are offered at ATMs – but not in the UK.Why? That’s simple to answer.

The high street banks don’t want ATMs to do much more than they did when first launched 50 years ago, because the more they do, the more useful they would become and the more resistance there would be to the machines being removed – which the banks have wanted to do for a mere 20 years or so.

The culmination of this push to shuffle ATMs – and cash – through a door marked ’exit’ can be found in the shape of the recent HM Treasury Policy Statement on Cash Access. This statement, heralded as the saviour of cash, turned out to be quite the opposite: nowhere in this quite lengthy document is there to be found even a single mention of the acronym ’ATM.’Why? Again, that’s easy to answer.

The current Treasury team is working hard to ensure there are no barriers to high street banks removing their ATMs. They hope not mentioning them means that no one can criticise the Treasury when they are gone. When the last high street bank-owned ATM is removed, the Treasury can simply say ‘we never told you that there would be ATMs.’

Some observers believe the only way the UK ATM network will be saved is if the current Treasury team are relegated at the next UK general election. We shall see. Of course, it’s not just in relation to ATMs that cash innovation is being suppressed. Look at the Community Cash Access pilots. Supposedly launched to pilot innovative solutions for the provision of access to cash, none of the genuine innovations trialled have so far made it beyond the pilot stage.Why? Another easy answer.

The high street banks don’t really want to support cash innovation – a bit of window dressing is fine, so long as that exit door for cash looms larger every year. And yet innovative solutions keep coming, undaunted by the resolute resistance from the UK banks and their collaborators, the international card schemes.Take internet shopping. In the UK, the public has been told that cards are basically the only way to shop online, despite the fact that in many other countries, Cash On Delivery was the norm when internet retailing moved beyond pornography.

Now, at last, the British public is being offered a genuine alternative to card and digital online payments.

Step forward Kasssh.

KEEPING CASH ON THE TABLE

Kasssh is a B2B2C company, which means it works with e-commerce retailers and their customers. Kasssh knows that a very large number of people around the world prefer to use and/or can only use cash.

It is, of course, impossible to use physical cash to pay online, so Kasssh decided to give cash customers an innovative online solution.A customer simply goes online, orders the merchandise they want and then checks out. At that point, instead of having to use a card or a digital payment method, the customer receives a unique barcode for the transaction. They then visit one of the Kasssh partner stores, which in the UK means one of the 28,000 locations offering Pay Point. Here they pay the money they owe against the barcode and that’s it.

“Kasssh allows more people to be included in the digital economy, through offering payment choice”

Transaction complete and the e-commerce retailer can commence delivery of the ordered product.The magic of the Kasssh solution is that they use some really smart tech to fully automate the settlement of the payment into the e-commerce sites’ existing payment provider within seconds – so business as usual for them, without any back office process changes.

Everyone assumes Kasssh is in the cash business, which one could certainly argue. However, Kasssh sees itself as being in the digital commerce business. Kasssh allows more people to be included in the digital economy, through offering payment choice – and that includes those who prefer to use cash for many different reasons. Kasssh is definitely not just for the unbanked.

There are many people who choose to use cash, even though they have cards and accounts at their disposal.

SERVING AN ENDURING NEED

The founder and CEO of Kasssh is Piero Macari, who used to work at Mastercard and was responsible for one of its major product sets across Europe: prepaid and fintech. He used to see a number of really great card-based products in the market that were trying to fulfil this digital need. However, for cash users, these digital products were expensive. They would pay monthly fees, cash loading fees, and also, whenever they used their cards, some money would normally be left over – not great if you live your life using cash as a budgeting tool and need to be careful with your money.

As Macari puts it: “There was a premium for using cash for the consumer, which in my eyes felt wrong – hence the birth of Kasssh.”

Started in the UK, Macari wants to take Kasssh around the planet. According to the World Bank, more than 80 per cent of world payments are still made using cash, so there is certainly a market for it. Macari merits huge praise for his creativity and initiative – and for his courage in leaving the safe haven of a company like Mastercard to set up his own business at the age of 43.

The fact that his business offers a service so obviously supporting the public interest warrants even higher praise.Kasssh deserves to succeed, supporting as it does the success of cash itself, a success story that has lasted 2,500 years and shows no signs of being anywhere close to a final chapter – despite what some would have us believe.

This article was published in The Fintech Magazine Issue 30, Page 22-23