The Payji payment platform is facilitating real, direct, peer-to-peer connectivity through payments. It eradicates the need for third party transactions in a local economy, and the costs and conditionality of these.
Using a credit or debit card to buy a loaf of bread and a pint of milk at your local store can involve multiple third parties between buyer and seller. The issuer of the card, the card schemes (Visa/MasterCard etc), an acquiring bank or institution, a PSP (Payment Service Provider), a Payment Gateway; a combination, or all, of these third parties are involved in your local shopping trip, and of course they all charge a fee, one way or another borne by the merchant and/or the consumer.
Adding insult to injury the buyer and seller, besides being charged, are also subject to the acceptance criteria of these institutions. More worrying from a security perspective, their own payment details to some extent are exposed to these parties and the internet.
A transaction, a simple sale and purchase between local parties, need not attract fees levied by invisible third parties based in London, California or Switzerland etc, and who are not contributors to the local economy. The technology to support and settle this transaction securely as a direct peer-to-peer frictIonless electronic transaction is long established and secure within the existing e-money regulatory framework.
Payji Ltd have created now created Bristol Pay which we intend to use as our test-bed. Using innovative payments technology within an e-Money regulatory framework, Bristol Pay will provide a payment platform that is local, supporting secure, frictionless, direct, peer-to-peer payment functionality. Getting rid of third party transaction acquiring and processing will allow a fairer and more transparent approach to processing fees, creating a real financial saving, and payment methods and utility that support the needs of the local economy, and provide a scalable, inclusive, cashless solution in a post-Covid world.
With an annual GVA (gross value added) of over £12 billion in Bristol, and inclusive payment processing costs running at around 1%, it’s a reasonable assumption, based on just half that GVA, that as much as £60 million is leaving the City annually to external third parties in fees and costs to process local payments. Bristol Pay will recapture these fees and reinvest them in the city, creating a payments platform that is truly working for the local community.
