Fostering Inclusion, Innovation and Connection: Why Optty joined The Payments Association

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About Optty

Optty is at the forefront of revolutionising the global payments industry, providing seamless, innovative, and secure payment solutions to partners and merchants around the world. Leveraging a cloud-based platform, Optty connects merchants to 9 payment architectures; debit & credit by PSP, Peer to Peer, Open Banking Account to Account, Wallets, Instalments, Gift Card, points and other services. Optty is not in the flow of funds and includes the world’s largest range of alternative payments and Buy Now Pay Later providers through a straightforward API integration, offering unparalleled control, a business user web interface and expanded consumer choices.

 

The Challenge

Natasha Zurnamer, a celebrated retailer strategist and the founder and driving force behind Optty, identified a significant gap in the market while working with a leading payments company. She noticed the insufficient support for unregulated credit products and emerging payment methods, particularly beneficial to retailers. This insight led to the inception of Optty, with the goal of transforming the global payments landscape with merchants and consumers at heart.

In a relatively short period, Optty expanded its operations across 140 countries, dealing with 120 currencies and with capacity to process more than 200 API calls a second. This rapid growth enabled the accumulation of valuable data sets, which could aid central banks and regulators. Champions of the Mastercard Start Path program in 2023, Optty was catapulted into global markets to become an enabler to the schemes, banks, gateways PSP’s and orchestrators. Being a new entity in the market, Optty faced the challenge of re-educating the payment providers to adapt to a new way of meeting the needs of the market rapidly and efficiently and connecting with the regulators to provide much needed insights for policy and protecting consumers in a fragmented payments landscape. In terms of data insights, becoming a go-to-authority takes credibility and trust.

 

The Opportunity

Optty’s introduction to The Payments Association (TPA) came at the Pay360 Awards 2022. Here, Natasha seized the chance to unite her global teams, celebrate industry achievements, and network with key players in the payments sector. Optty’s sponsorship of the Open Banking Award at the event was a testament to Natasha’s commitment to this innovative banking approach and Optty’s commitment to Open Banking as an enabler for markets all around the world.

A conversation with Tony Craddock, TPA’s Director General, revealed a shared vision to support merchants, leading Natasha to recognize the benefits of joining TPA. Membership not only offered a legitimate platform to share Optty’s story but also lent credibility, opening doors to influence policy and regulatory discussions.

 

The Future

As the payment industry increasingly focuses on accessibility and inclusion, Natasha is keen to leverage Optty’s TPA membership to educate regulators on the opportunities within unregulated markets. Optty is also exploring ways to enhance consumer financial visibility through open banking and employing machine learning to create dynamic, personalised consumer-specific checkouts based on payment habits without any requirement for the merchant to order the checkout universally. TPA’s diverse membership provides Optty with a broad network to support these initiatives.

 

Natasha Zurnamer, CEO and Founder of Optty:

“I have been incredibly encouraged by how welcoming The Payments Association has been of Optty – despite being a relative newcomer to the industry – and they have really championed me as a female founder. Being a member offers me an opportunity to make a valuable contribution through mentoring and thought leadership, using my position as one of just a handful of female founder/CEOs in the industry to help encourage and develop other women in the industry.

Through the Association, Optty has gained credibility to contribute to important policy discussions in the UK around the company’s core values of inclusion, transparency, and choice, through the strong, shared voice of the association and its members.”

 

Tony Craddock, Director General of The Payments Association:

“At The Payments Association, we take pride in our commitment to nurture businesses of all sizes by fostering connections through membership of our expansive network.

We are delighted to have a company on board that is all about payment inclusivity and accessibility and look forward to seeing the contribution that Natasha and her team will make to the Association and its members.”

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