Can you tell us a little bit about Golf Gear Giveaways and how the business came about?

I started to play golf during the first lockdown, as many did. I come from a tennis background and when looking at the equipment side of the game I couldn’t believe how expensive golf equipment was. I knew there would be a load of golfers desperate to play with the latest drivers for example but just not able or willing to spend £500+ on a single club.

Giving people the chance to win the latest gear for less than £1 seemed to be a good idea. There are a few other companies in this space doing a similar thing, but we have by far the most realistic odds and offer more custom fit options than any other company.

Were you facing any challenges with payments before working with Acquired.com?

Yes – we were facing several challenges! As a competitions site I suddenly discovered I was no longer allowed to use Stripe and with no warning they closed my account. I needed to find an alternative provider quickly and ended up signing with a different payment processor who put us on terrible terms, had a very poor level of customer service, crashed my site with their sub-par (excuse the golf pun) plugin.

What were the key drivers when choosing a new payment provider?

Better rates were important but above anything else I wanted to have a point of contact (POC) at my payment provider to be someone who I could get hold of should things go wrong or if any questions came up. My POC at Acquired.com, George, has been absolute brilliant and couldn’t have been more helpful. He’s worked with my developer and dug me out of a hole on more than one occasion.

How important is having a streamlined and secure payment solution to you and your customers?

This is of critical importance to the smooth running of our business! As a competition site, building trust is important and have a reliable service that people feel is secure is a must. With Acquired.com we have had zero drops in service compared with at least one a fortnight with our previous provider. We have also been able to add Apple Pay to the site, giving our customers a greater choice of payment methods, and we are now paying less fees per transaction.

At a crucial point in the 2023 season Lincoln City Football Club were informed by their incumbent card Acquirer – a multinational organisation and one of the world’s largest card processors – that they would no longer be able to work with the club ‘due to the risks involved’. The club was given a 6-week notice period until their ticketing sales merchant accounts would be terminated.

This meant that there was a significant risk that the club could be left unable to facilitate ticket sales by card, just before their season ticket renewals launch date. In an industry that often requires owner funding to remain competitive, this was a substantial setback for this well-run club.

Finding a solution

Acquired.com reached out to the club to offer a rapid solution which would mitigate card acquiring risk for the club. We set the club up with a new unsecured merchant account from a market leading card acquirer, that could be integrated with the existing ticketing platform used on the point-of-sale devices in the club’s ticket office.

In addition to this, Acquired.com also set the club up with a second unsecured merchant account from an additional card acquirer, for the club to use on our bespoke virtual terminal and payment link platform. The benefits of a multi-acquirer strategy include mitigating the risk of downtime if one acquirer has an outage for any reason or changes their risk policy, as well as providing more options for transaction approval and cost control.

The Acquired.com difference

Lincoln City are now utilising payment link technology to send embedded payment links to fans for renewals and ad hoc purchases, complimenting their existing payment facilities. This streamlined and customer-centric payment method will help to simplify the season ticket renewal process for fans. Acquired.com provided comprehensive training for the ticket office staff so they could quickly get to grips with this new payment method and ensure the club is able to maximise efficiency in the renewals process.

Peter Mellows, Director of Finance at Lincoln City said “Acquired.com have hit the ground running and solved several of our payment challenges in a very time sensitive situation. Without their efficiency and knowledge, we would not have been able to make such a smooth transition to new acquiring partners and payment methods. I have been really impressed by the Acquired.com team and look forward to working with them in the future as we look to further optimise our payment systems and deliver streamlined purchasing processes for our fans”.

Grant Evans, Head of Partnerships, Acquired.com said “We are delighted to have helped Lincoln City through this challenging situation with their previous supplier. Unfortunately, these situations are becoming far more common place in the ticketing industry, as suppliers continue to worry about the lasting effect of the global pandemic and the ongoing cost of living crisis.

Utilising an acquirer agnostic payments and open banking platform such as Acquired.com allows live event businesses to have multiple providers in place, ensuring failover contingency in the event that a specific payments supplier no longer has the risk appetite to support payments for live events. I expect to see numerous live events businesses following the example of Lincoln City Football Club and adopting a multi-acquirer strategy moving forwards. We look forward to working with the club over the coming years to continue helping them to redefine their payments strategy.”

Can you tell us a little bit about Velocity Marketplaces? 

We are the world’s first enterprise level white labelled marketplace for businesses and organisations to launch their own managed marketplace with customised branding URLs with millions of products. Our aim is to monetise our vendors organic web traffic immediately and increase new customer acquisition by cross-fertilising the marketplace with our vendor’s primary products, such as subscriptions.

What were the key elements that appealed to you when choosing a payments solution?

We were keen to unify our card processing and settle all funds into one account. As we work with several different businesses simultaneously, we needed to have a panoramic view of all our transaction data. It was very important that our payment provider could offer this. We were particularly keen to see all processing and transaction activity easily accessible on a single screen, through a single integration.

We also wanted a payment partner who offered a consultative service rather than just transactional, the ability to directly contact our payments partner whenever we needed to was very important to us.

What were the main payment challenges you faced before working with Acquired.com?

The key challenges that we faced were maintaining a high level of customer service, efficiently managing our costs when it came to our payments, building more transparency with our reporting capability and having a clear overview of our transaction activity. We also wanted to work with a payments partner that had a clear understanding of our business model.

How important is it for your business to offer a variety of payment methods?

As we work with several different vendors on our marketplace, appealing to a varied customer base is very important. The ability to offer a number of different payment methods means that we can now satisfy a broad demographic of end-users and encourage conversion by letting customers pay in the way they want.

Which elements of Acquired.com’s solution have you noticed the most benefit from?

We have particularly benefited from Acquired.com’s consultative approach to understanding our business, which meant we could build a payment strategy that best suited our business’ unique needs.

The integration to Acquired.com was the fastest integration we have ever completed with a card processor. A member of the Acquired.com team would reply to any queries within 20 minutes via instant messaging, which was extremely useful. Our ongoing account management with Acquired.com since the integration was completed has also been excellent, we have a direct line of communication with them for any queries or questions we might have.

The Acquired.com Hub has also been a game changer for us, providing a complete view of our transactions has been extremely valuable in order to offer a high level of customer service for our vendors and maximise revenue opportunities.

Perch Capital acquires large consumer loan books using advanced bespoke data science analytics to price the expected recovery and returns from the loan books. The Group has completed over 120 individual transactions over the last 4 years.

Perch Capital is a part of the Perch Group, which also includes an FCA authorised debt resolution agency – ACI, an SRA authorised firm of solicitors – TM Legal Services, and a doorstep reconnection business. All which service Perch Capital customers as well as several other non-group related clients.

Acquired.com spoke with Perch’s, Head of Finance to discuss taking steps to make it as simple as possible for customers to transact with them, and how Acquired.com’s multi-acquirer payment solution has benefitted the business.

What have been your key priorities over the past few years?

A key priority for the business has been improving our digital collection operation and the customer experience. To achieve this we have upgraded our websites, customer communications, payment portal, and payment options. It is important to us that customers can use our website to serve their needs easily.

What were the key elements that appealed to you when choosing a payments solution?

We wanted to ensure that when a customer wants to make a payment, they can do this easily and benefit from a simple customer journey. To achieve this simplified experience for our customers, we wanted to use a payments solution which is highly efficient, rich with information and MI, and extremely reliable.

What are the main payment challenges you faced before working with Acquired.com?

We were very limited in the transaction information available to use prior to working with Acquired.com. We couldn’t easily identify the customer by the transaction or understand the trends in result messages. We were also restricted to one acquirer which meant that if we experienced any downtime, we were not able to take any card payments.

As the bulk of our customer payments come from card payments, we wanted a payment solution which was linked to multiple acquirers and meant we could provide an enhanced customer experience and greater confidence in the reliability.

What elements of Acquired.com’s solution have you noticed the most benefit from?

Load balancing is a key win for our business and for our customers. Spreading transactions across multiple accounts not only helps with our business contingency planning, but it also means our business can remain operational while one of our suppliers has an issue.

We have really benefitted from Acquired.com multi- acquirer gateway. Providing the flexibility to switch between acquirers reduces the risk of being unable to authorise transactions and ensures we maximise customer payments.

Also, the Acquired.com Hub provided us with a clear overview of each transaction and detailed reporting relating to payment activity which has enabled us to design tailored payment strategies and make the customer experience better.

How useful has our Account Updater Service been in maintaining up-to-date customer card information?

We have some customers on long-term payment plans so having the Account Updater service automatically update their information is great as it removes the need to re-engage the customer to update their card details. This allows us to concentrate on our non-engaging customers and make efficient use of our team’s time and it saves our customers time.

How have you found working with the Acquired.com team?

 Our Account Manager, Kim, has been a great business partner. She is consistently providing advice on how to increase transaction success rate, recommending technological improvements, and advising us of new features which are available. Kim is always available for any technical issues which may crop up and understands the importance to our business of taking payments and providing a simple and reliable service to our customers.

A word from Acquired.com on Perch Group

Perch Group have been partnered with Acquired.com since 2019. We have supported their growth journey over the years and will continue to work closely with them as they acquire new books of loans. Acquired.com maintain an open communication and consultative approach with Perch to ensure we can provide resilience, efficient support, and suggestions about products and solutions to best suit their needs.

During this partnership Acquired.com have undertaken four token migrations from incumbent providers – supporting consumer loans books acquired by Perch Capital. Tailored account plans introduced in this year have further enabled us to understand their business in detail, in order to support them in the best possible way.

To improve the efficiency of their season ticket card payment process, Rangers were keen to work with a payment processor who could provide a sophisticated solution that was data-driven and scalable to meet their evolving needs. They also wanted to improve the connectivity between the different moving parts in the transaction process to create a more customer-centric experience for their supporters. 

The challenge

Before working with Acquired.com, Rangers faced challenges around the overall efficiency of their season ticket sales via card payment, including significant delays between the customer making their payment and receiving a confirmation email. They wanted to remove time-consuming manual processes for their ticket office staff, while improving the purchasing experience for supporters.

Building an efficient payment experience 

Acquired.com were selected to partner with Rangers due to our best-in-class payment technology designed to improve efficiency, as well as our consultative approach, which meant we could build a payment strategy that best suited Rangers unique needs. 

By undertaking a rigorous integration into Rangers’ ticketing platform, Acquired.com were able to provide a vastly more efficient end-to-end payment journey. This integration means that when a card payment is made through the payment link, the ticketing platform management portal is notified and automatically generates a confirmation email which is sent to the supporter making their purchase. 

Susan Hannah, Head of Ticket Operations at Rangers explains there were significant challenges to overcome in the card payment process. 

“As our staff had to manually check each card payment to ensure the funds were received before sending confirmation emails via the ticketing platform, this meant supporters could face delays of 4 to 5 days between the making of the payment and receiving a confirmation email. 

The work Acquired.com has undertaken has been transformative for this process, I was so impressed by the support from their customer success team, providing training to all members of the ticket office team for the generation of the payment links we utilise for renewals and hospitality sales. By automating the renewal link process through the ticketing platform, we have been able to free up our staff time for better use elsewhere.”

Improving cashflow through acquirers 

Acquired.com also undertook a review of Rangers’ incumbent card acquirer relationships for merchant account services, incorporating the associated processing charges and settlement terms. For many years the club has had a rolling reserve security in place on season ticket sales, meaning the card acquirer processing their payment held back a portion of the money after ticket sales were processed, paying out funds gradually as games were fulfilled. This process diminishes the acquirers deemed risk of chargeback exposure over the course of a season.

In order to support Rangers’ liquidity, during the midst of the ongoing global pandemic and its impact on professional sports and events, we undertook a review of their card acquiring services, terms and processing rates and were able to deliver the club an unsecured facility for the first time in years.

Kenny Barclay, Financial Director at Rangers explains how important obtaining the unsecured facility is for the club.

“Acquired.com’s work now means we can benefit from the full amount collected through season tickets sales at the point of sale. I cannot stress enough what a critical improvement this is for the smooth running of the club to be able to have this financial benefit at the start of the season.

“Acquired.com’s expertise and knowledge of the payment sector has been so useful as we look to further refine our payment strategy and offer new payment methods to our supporters. Building a more automated and connected payment landscape for Rangers will allow us to stay at the forefront of great supporter experiences as we continue to compete at the highest levels of the game.”

A consultative approach

A key benefit for Rangers of working with Acquired.com is our industry expertise and insights. We are in constant communication with the club about regulatory changes that are happening in the payment industry and how alternative payment methods such as Open Banking could be beneficial and save them money versus conventional card payment going forward. 

Grant Evans, Head of Partnerships at Acquired.com commented “Our partnership with Rangers Football Club is constantly evolving to deliver a payment infrastructure which is highly attuned to the club’s goals and their supporters needs. We are currently working with the club to implement a variety of alternative payment methods, such as Open Banking and Digital Wallets, to provide their supporters with a wider choice of payment options and further their customer-centricity. We look forward to continuing our work with the club in the years ahead as they lead the way in supporter payment experience.”.

Want to find out more? Read about how Acquired.com is helping businesses manage payments for their ticket sales here.

We spoke to Dan Cockle, Managing Director at Cockle Finance about meeting customers’ evolving expectations and improving collection success rates with the help of automation and data-insights.

Optimising the collections process for doorstep lending

Cockle Finance’s most frequent offering is doorstep loans; a popular and more personal alternative to traditional loans. They provide their customers with the opportunity to make repayments in person or by card. Offering a variety of repayment options for their customers helps Cockle to maintain a competitive and customer-centric service.

When looking to increase their success rates for card payment collections, Cockle wanted a solution which could provide them with detailed data and granular reporting about their transaction activity for disbursement and collections. This data-led approach would enable the business to look at payment patterns and improve their ability to collect funds on the first attempt.

Reducing complexity with an all-in-one solution

Cockle selected Acquired.com due to our unified payments platform. On this platform, all processing and transaction activity is easily accessible on a single screen, through a single integration.

“Acquired.com’s platform allows us to view our gateway transactions in real-time and easily export and analyse this data through payments reports. This is hugely valuable for our business liquidity as it means we can to look at customer repayment trends and continually refine our collections strategy to improve success rates” – Dan Cockle, Managing Director at Cockle Finance

A consultative approach to payments

“Cockle Finance and Acquired.com both put the customer first and we have really noticed this personal touch when working with their team. They took the time to understand our key goals and suggested a tailored payments strategy that suited our business perfectly. The Acquired.com team are always on hand with any queries we have, and we can easily get in touch with them via direct messaging. With some other payment providers, you just don’t get that level of customer service.” – Dan Cockle, Managing Director at Cockle Finance

Reducing manual processes with automation

With a high volume of transactions each month, Cockle wanted to gain a more transparent view of their finances relating to disbursement and collections. Acquired.com’s solution offers them real-time notifications whenever key events occur, removing the need to log into multiple systems to search for critical information. Other useful features such as the perfect reconciliation feature provide them with a highly accurate view of their payments in and payments out.

The result

Since working with Acquired.com, Cockle Finance have been able to increase their first-time collection success rates by 3%. Lowering default rates means that the business is able to dedicate more time and resources to reaching strategic goals and generating new revenue opportunities.

Acquired were selected by Fintern due to their ability to deliver on complex payment and banking requirements along with their consultative and expert approach. Fintern have complete visibility over the whole customer lifecycle delivered by Acquired’s data rich platform that maximises efficiency and customer experience.

Monevo are a Fintech who enable its B2B partners to provide to their consumers personalised  credit comparison of the best products available to them through one single integration. Monevo’s decisioning and technology benefits lenders by finding appropriate consumers for their products from across the market through one relationship.

The Approach

 Acquired.com and Monevo are both part of the Quint Group, a leading innovative fintech business focused on improving access to credit. On the back of the strong relationship they had built with Fintern, Acquired brokered an introduction between Fintern and Monevo to explore how Monevo’s award winning technology could provide Fintern with a cost effective way of accessing pre-qualified consumers.

Results

Thanks to constant iteration on both sides, Fintern and Monevo have been able to consistently increase the volume of loans disbursed through their partnership each month.

From a compliance perspective, Fintern are paving the way for more responsible lending, and Monevo are helping to facilitate this progress. Fintern are aiming to have a £1billion lending book within the next few years with 70% machine lead decisions and 30% machine assisted decisions when it comes to lending approval. The ability to leverage Monevo’s platform to pre-segment their prospective clients is highly valuable for the business.

Since August, Fintern have also taken advantage of Acquired’s Account Updater Solution. This useful addition helps the business to maintain up-to-date card information for their customers, creating an uninterrupted payment cycle and reduced operational costs associated with manually updating customer information.

Partnership Benefits

This multi-directional partnership brings together three businesses whose are dedicated to providing the best outcome for consumers along with deep data expertise and technology which enables more informed decision making. The combination of Acquired and Monevo’s solutions has provided Fintern with a seamless and optimised experience both during the sales process and throughout their payments ecosystem, delivering significant value to Fintern’s customers.

When assessing affordability risk both the lender and the customer are aiming to reduce friction in the customer journey so prefer to minimise data capture and the level of intrusion into an individual’s financial circumstances. Traditionally, lenders have turned to affordability assessment methods such as manual bank statement review, Open Banking, CRA models, ONS Data and trigger figures. However, each of these methods come with their own challenges and issues and can lead to unrealistic modelling. Infinian provide unique data insights that enhance businesses decisioning process, they have shared their insights on the limitations of traditional affordability assessments and how the process can be reimagined to provide a more targeted view of income and expenditure.

Manual bank statement review

Manual bank statement review is fraught with issues around human error, the aggregation of meaningful information and is also highly labour intensive. Open banking is equally fraught with issues around identification of key transactions such as salary and rent as well as general aggregation issues, for example how would a £300 supermarket spend be allocated. This can reduce the resource requirement in assessments but does not always remove it altogether and may lead to false positive and false negative results where automation is employed.

CRA models

CRA models are often based on fixed amount values or broad averages that have limited value where a customer is on low income or on niche subsets of the population. The credit data is useful but the wider affordability products less so. Even income verification is not wholly reliable where either a positive or negative result is found. The CRA trigger products can be employed as part of an account management strategy around repayment risk but are based on bureau data that is only refreshed monthly.

ONS data

The issue with ONS data that is that it is a year or so out of date when it is published and is built on a small sample (statistically speaking) could be labelled too ‘one size fits all’. As with other affordability assessments, the modelling does not look realistic for people in the lower income deciles.

Trigger figures

Trigger figures use flat £ amount values based on household structure and therefore are not targeted at different income or demographic groups. Using multiple data sets is the most accurate way of assessing affordability risk around financial difficulty and establishing disposable income.

Buy Now Pay Later

TransUnion became the UK’s first credit reference agency to announce that it’ll be including Buy Now Pay Later data on credit reports. There has undoubtedly been an issue in creating accurate assessments when BNPL plays a role in an individual’s financial vulnerability. A few lenders are now specifically asking about BNPL and adding this debt to the information derived from the credit bureau, but they are few and far between and there are still multiple providers who do not contribute data to a Credit Reference Agency (CRA).

Affordability Cost Matrix

Infinian’s approach to assessing affordability uses a cost matrix which utilises multiple data sets and looks at reliable customer specific Income & Expenditure (I&E) data as well as the Financial Vulnerability Index’s (FVI). Where there is no match to a specific customer the Infinian AR cost matrix creates a more targeted view of disposable income. Other data providers rarely have access to behavioural data such as loan purpose. In all cases the values are expressed as a percentage of income rather than a flat fee and it can be configurable to a much greater extent than other products in the market.

Implications of inaccurate assessments

Lenders who rely on outdated affordability assessments which fail to look at multiple data sets risk higher rates of debt and write-offs at a later stage in the customer journey. From a payments perspective, failing to recognise vulnerability and pre-delinquency can result in higher decline rates for payment collections. By using real-time data and working with a payment processor who can offer a panoramic view of the business’ payments landscape, lenders can better understand the affordability and circumstances of individuals and accurately assess whether a product is affordable not only at on-boarding stage but also throughout the lending cycle.

Insights from Ben Allott, Commercial Director, Infinian. Infinian & Acquired are part of Quint, a leading highly innovative group of fintech businesses. Infinian provides highly insightful data to the financial services sector and fintech companies. They help businesses identify high risk individuals and set up early warning alerts to mitigate risk and comply with regulation.

We caught up with Tom Eyre, Co-CEO and Co-founder to discuss their payments strategy and work with Acquired.

Tell me a little bit about LOQBOX and your growth over the past few years

Financial exclusion is a major problem globally, with billions of people unable to access basic financial services. For many, this is a catch-22 because if they’ve never had credit they can’t build a credit history. The consequence is that many turn to expensive sub-prime lenders and can succumb to a spiral of debt. While as many as 75% of applications for these cards are rejected, those who are successful still need to avoid the many pitfalls associated with high-cost credit products. This is where LOQBOX comes in, giving consumers the best chance to build a credit score and eventually be able to access credit.

Were you facing any challenges related to payments before working with Acquired? 

Yes.  Prior to working with Acquired we processed all our payments through Direct Debit. Direct Debit has significant challenges for a technology company like ours because it relies on the BACS system, which is not instantaneous. As with any payments, what we needed as a business was quick processing and immediate reporting on payment successes and failures. Direct Debit does not provide this. When we had looked at card payments they were also quite expensive for new businesses and new business models. Acquired provided the full package of great service, data quality, speed and cost.

What were the key elements that appealed to you when choosing a payments solution?

The key components we looked for in a payment solution were accurate and timely data and reporting, a consultative approach, proactive account management, affordability, security, reliability, and instant notifications. Acquired delivers on all these requirements.

How important is a streamlined and secure payment process in providing an excellent experience for your customers? 

Extremely important. Our members expect instant payment options, and our business model requires the same.

What tangible benefits have you noticed since working with Acquired?

Having integrated with multiple 3rd party payment providers in the past I can say with confidence that Acquired has been the most supportive through onboarding and integration as well as with ongoing updates and changes. The Acquired team is knowledgeable in card payments and have been quick to support us should we have any questions about our existing payment solution or future products. It has been a pleasure to work with the Acquired team.

Acquired strive to provide a consultative approach and ongoing account management, is this something you have felt the value of and if so, how has it benefited LOQBOX?

Yes we have benefited a lot from this approach.  It has allowed us to change the way we develop new products from the idea stage by including open and collaborative conversations about payments early on.

Tell us about your business growth plans and what’s next for LOQBOX? 

Most people miss out on living the life they could. That’s wrong. And we’re here to do something about it. LOQBOX gives everyone access to a richer life. Our money app gives people the tools and support to have a better shot at being more fulfilled – personally and financially. Better off or happier? With LOQBOX, you can choose both. LOQBOX is a multi award-winning business that has already helped almost a million people to achieve a richer life by mastering their money, boosting their savings and improving their credit score with the three main credit reference agencies. LOQBOX gives everyone a shot at a richer life.

LOQBOX has developed from offering a single product (LOQBOX Save) to providing two quite different products; LOQBOX, a full membership and LOQBOX Lite, a free membership. Both products contain features that members have been asking for.

Our three most popular credit-building features, LOQBOX Save, Spend and Rent are available to LOQBOX members in the UK with LOQBOX Save live in the US.

Western Circle had identified that new customers were failing to convert during the sign-up process. As a technology & data oriented lending company they sought to understand this with an objective to improve their conversion rate by analysing the data. At an early stage of the project, Western Circle became frustrated at the lack of transaction decline data available to them through their incumbent payment gateway partner and the level of support provided to them.

Download this case study to find out how Acquired supported Western Circle to help improve collections and build reporting capabilities which drive efficiency and growth.

Pete Kimpton (COO Western Circle) said:

“Acquired have added measurable financial and operational value to our business.Through their solution we are accepting more new customers and have improved our collection rates almost 10% – something that is critical to our business. Their service ethic and payments expertise is second to none and we see them as a strategic partner in our continued growth.”

Download the full case study below and to see how this partnership drove double digit gains for Western Circle by dramatically improving their collection process.

Western Circle Case Study Download