Entersekt, an innovator in mobile-first fintech solutions, this week launched Connekt, a digital commerce enablement product. The company, known for its mobile app security and authentication technology, is offering Connekt to financial services providers to help them adapt to changing market conditions.
Tech giants and a host of start-ups have come to dominate digital payments, inserting their brands directly in front of consumers at the point of purchase. Regulations like Europe's PSD2 are meanwhile forcing banks to provide third-party access to their customers' accounts and data. Competitors of all kinds are lining up to leverage these assets, which they themselves do not own, to provide consumers with low-cost value-added services.
To reclaim their previously uncontested position in payments, financial services providers must look to their banking apps and combine in them the best of digital banking with the latest in mobile payments. Doing so will not only strengthen their posture against disintermediation and improve customer retention with a wider service offering, it also promises to draw significantly more traffic to their apps daily, increasing transaction rates and revenue.
The trust that banks' brands inspire, their large customer bases, and the relative ease with which they can onboard and provision users of new payments services count in their favor as they set out on this journey. Challenges however remain. Integrating disparate payments technologies in as seamless a way as possible takes time and money and, as costs climb, the risk of non-adoption becomes harder to bear.
Connekt helps financial institutions resolve this quandary. It puts at their disposal a secure service platform and ever-expanding menu of on-the-go digital payments functionality and third-party products, including tokenisation and HCE wallets for tap to pay, QR-based scan to pay, and 3-D Secure 1.0 and 2.0. These new payments services can be switched on within their existing banking apps quickly and easily, no matter the underlying technology, payment endpoint, or merchant network involved.
With Connekt, Entersekt adds a powerful new suite of services to its digital enablement platform. "We are applying what we have learned in digital banking security over the last decade to a broader set of problems affecting providers of digital services," said Schalk Nolte, Entersekt's CEO.
"Entersekt has always seen itself as a fintech partner to banks, and our institutional customers remain our biggest source of inspiration. By listening to them closely and responding with creativity, we continue to make good on our commitment to enable the best in mobile-first innovation."
