Alekseys Kruglovs, Senior Business Development Manager at DECTA on Payment Gateway & A Cashless Future

DECTA is a global processing company that provides end-to-end solutions of payment processing, acquiring and card issuing for banks, PSPs, fintechs and online merchants.

Alekseys Kruglovs, the Senior Business Development Manager at DECTA, joins Fazzaco and shares his ideas on payment gateway solutions and a cashless future.

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Fazzaco: Could you please give us a brief introduction to yourself and your company?

Alekseys: My name is Alekseys Kruglovs, and I’m a Senior Business Development Manager at DECTA which is a UK licensed Electronic Money Institution, principal member of Visa and Mastercard for payment acquiring and card issuing as well as certified 3rd party payment card processor. All in all DECTA serves more than 2000 customers in 32 countries including online merchants, iPSPs, Payment Gateway providers, Banks & Fin-Techs, offline merchants. We offer the following services:

-online payment acquiring (Visa, Mastercard, Open Banking, PayPal, Apple Pay) for e-commerce merchants, PSPs and Payment Facilitators;

-in-store POS payment acquiring for merchants;

-issuing BIN sponsorship services for different Fin-Techs;

-White-Label Payment Gateway solutions for Banks, PSPs, ISOs

-Third Party technical payment card Processing for members of Visa and Mastercard networks.

Fazzaco: DECTA is a FCA-regulated company. You seem to focus mainly on the UK and the EU? Do you have any plan to expand your audience?

Alekseys: Currently, our targeted geography of online merchants is UK and European Economic Area. DECTA has a wide network of regulated partners across Europe, however, we are also on a final stage for acquiring several licenses in EU countries and outside to be more flexible from a legal point of view.

Fazzaco: How does your white label payment gateway and card service work? How does it help fintech companies?

Alekseys: White Label Gateway:

Let's say you are a referral agent/ISO who is planning to expand itself to a new level an become a Gateway Provider. Every person who has ever investigated this opportunity would know that it's an extremely complex, time consuming and costly process to build your own Payment Gateway. Even if you've succeeded to build one, you have also to care about hiring an impressive  IT department who would maintain it on a 24/7 basis to provide the best up-time to your customers, continuously develop and update its functionality , constantly do integrations to new payment providers and Acquiring Banks. And here is when Decta White Label Gateway helps you to avoid this headache. With our solution every person can become a Gateway Provider under its own brand in just 2-4 weeks. No need to be an IT expert or Fintech professional. Full support is provided by DECTA team including user guide, educational DEMO, 24/7 tech support.

Issuing BIN sponsorship:

Today we are living in the era of Digital-Banks when you can open a bank account and get your payment card with just few clicks on your smartphone. There are hundreds of online digital banks available today on the market but not everyone knows that comparing to classical high street banks, digital banks sometimes cannot issue payment cards directly themselves due to lack of principle membership status at Visa or Mastercard. Becoming their member for card issuing is a legally complex, expensive and time-consuming process. Without getting much into the details will just tell you that only few very big and well-known digital banks obtained such license and issue payment cards under their direct membership in Schemes (for example Revolut or N26). Same as with White Label Gateway such efforts are not really justified considering that there are much important things you must focus on and invest in when building your digital bank, especially when there are such solutions as DECTA Issuing BIN sponsorship or White Label Issuing service. Decta will register you as a co-brand with program manager status at Mastercard and will take care about full cycle of card issuing starting from design development, manufacturing, personalization, safe storage and ending up with fast delivery directly to the cardholder. You will be provided with an open API which you can use to order and manage the cards.

Fazzaco: How does COVID-19 affect PSP industry?

Alekseys: While overall economies and physical shops have seriously suffered from Covid consequences the E-commerce sector was actually the one who profited and grew dramatically. When most of the physical stores were forced to close their doors to clients an obvious solution apparently came up – transform your offline business to online. Apart from newcomers the existing e-commerce players skyrocketed their sales, especially such sectors as marketplaces, food delivery providers, online education, video games, adult and others. As a result, PSPs increased their profits from growing turnovers of existing merchants as well as received thousands of new potential clients.

Fazzaco: Do you think we are entering a cashless society?

Alekseys: Definitely yes. This is an unalterable process and in the very nearest future most of developed economies will displace cash money. I consider this process as a part of natural tech and law evolution where society is striving to financial transparency and digitalization.  

Fazzaco: What factors should be considered for a forex broker when choosing a PSP partner?

Alekseys: First of all, Forex Broker should identify whether they are talking to a PSP or a direct Acquirer. Only Acquirer with membership status in Schemes has direct connection to Visa and Mastercard networks and may position themselves as an independent card processor, while PSPs must have cooperation agreements with acquirer(s) in order to be able to process card payments. So PSPs will always be dependent on Acquirers internal policies and their decisions.

If we are talking about choosing a right PSP then the most important factors for FX broker to consider would be:

-does PSP have any license and if yes then in which jurisdiction(s)

-the list of acquirers to whom PSP is integrated

- which gateway PSP is using and what functionalities this gateway offers. List of integrations to another gateways

-geographical coverage for payment acceptance

-availability of alternative payment methods

-available currencies for processing and settlements

-and of course - pricing