A business of Standard Bank’s capabilities could have easily built a proprietary FX and payments platform from the ground up to respond to the challenges and risks to its market share. But doing so would have meant working with and around a great deal of legacy technology that would slow down development and potentially impact the quality of the solution.
Standard Bank knew that if it were to quickly deliver a solution that would meet their target Millennial demographic’s expectations, they would need to take a greenfield approach. Standard Bank decided to build a new digital banking app called Shyft that would serve as an all-in-one FX solution for South Africans. The project needed to provide rapid FX transactions at low cost, store multiple currencies in a single wallet and allow for transactions to take place anywhere in the world. But the project had to be completed quickly while offering a flawless customer experience at the same time.
Currencyloud’s payment platform and APIs were the perfect solution. For example, Currencycloud’s multi-currency virtual account enables our customers to collect, convert, pay and manage funds in more than 35 different global currencies. For Shyft specifically, Standard Bank leveraged Currencycloud’s technology to enable its customers to buy, exchange and store US and Australian Dollars, Euros, South African Rands and Pounds Sterling. Because Currencycloud’s global cross-border payment system and banking network provides access to local payment schemes, Standard Bank was able to more efficiently process cross-border payments and offer attractive FX rates as a result.
Additionally, Currencycloud’s compliance team has been a true business partner to the Shyft team throughout the course of their engagement. To reduce risk and ensure the platform’s robustness, Currencycloud and Shyft share knowledge and insight, enabling both parties’ compliance systems to work in harmony and in line with best practices.
Standard Bank appreciated Currencycloud’s drive to understand their business issues and find a real solution that was future proof. Plus, Currencycloud’s API-driven technology meant that Standard Bank gained significant speed to market. For the bank’s competitors, speed to market had been one of their main competitive advantages; working with Currencycloud enabled Standard Bank to close the gap.
The entire project was delivered on a high-availability cloud-hosting solution provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). With key features including private encryption, multiple databases for 99.9999% availability and highly secure segregated environments, the solution delivered the reliability and assurance Standard Bank needs. And with system health constantly monitored, the company is able to maintain an optimum cost-to-performance ratio at all times.
As a result, the team built and implemented Shyft in record time. The beta version was up and running in less than three months and in the hands of end-users just weeks later.
Results
Shyft has been a remarkable success. Since Currencycloud first collaborated with Standard Bank to build Shyft, the app has grown fast, developed new capabilities and enabled new growth opportunities for Standard Bank. Shyft was first launched in 2017, and since then, the app and the partnership between Currencycloud and Standard Bank has only grown.
To date, the app has:
- Delivered over USD$750mn in FX purchases,
- Processed over 72,000 payments
- Issued over 72,000 virtual cards
- Built up a user base of 100,000 users
Furthermore, 15% of those users are non-Standard Bank customers — thus, Shyft is exposing Standard Bank to new prospective customers who they may not have had access to otherwise.
But most significantly and with Currencycloud’s support, the Shyft app has reduced Standard Bank’s cross-border payment processing time fourfold.
“Since joining Currencycloud, the average payment settlement time for a cross-border payment from South Africa into Europe, the US and the UK has dropped from four days to less than one day. So, processing time is four times better than it used to be,” said Arno von Helden, Head of the Shyft Platform at Standard Bank. “And our processing costs are significantly lower than they used to be,” he added.
Standard Bank, Shyft and Currencycloud have been hard at work ensuring the app provides access to financial services to all of Africa. The most recent development — Shyft Shares — enables users to purchase from 120 global investment options, including companies like Alibaba, Zoom and Netflix and from exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as well.
On the horizon, Standard Bank and Shyft hope to expand outward from South Africa into more of the African continent, starting with Botswana. Throughout this process, Currencycloud is supporting the bank’s compliance needs, ensuring that future partners meet regulatory standards. Standard Bank and Currencycloud are exploring new opportunities to grow, collaborate and increase the accessibility of the global financial landscape.
