Kalixa CEO Ed Chandler voted most influential person in payments 2014

Over 20,000 payment professionals worldwide voted for 2014 Payments Power 10

London, UK – 12^th June 2014 – Ed Chandler, CEO of Kalixa, has today been voted the most influential person in the European payments sector, building on his third place from last year. The Payments Power 10 is organised by leading industry event PayExpo2014 and recognises the ten most influential figures in the European payment industry. The shortlist is an elite group of payments leaders that includes executives from Google, MasterCard and Vocalink.

“This latest accolade is a huge honour and one I accept on behalf of the entire Kalixa team,” said Ed Chandler, CEO of Kalixa. “I’ve dedicated my career to delivering payment innovation that make people’s lives easier, and helps businesses and economies to grow. Kalixa’s recent acquisition of PXP is a massive step towards realising my vision. It means Kalixa has the scale and breadth of services, as well as the expertise and insight, to significantly disrupt the global payments market. This achievement is a testament to the commitment of our team and underlines our dedication to providing valued payment services to consumers and businesses across the globe.”

Ed is responsible for a number of pioneering payment industry firsts. These include Tesco Instant Insurance, Barclaycard OnePulse and Freedom, Orange QuickTap and MasterCard Mobile Payments.

At Kalixa Group, Ed’s aim is to unshackle consumers, small businesses and merchants from a costly and complex payment value chain. By providing solutions in issuing, acquiring and acceptance, Kalixa can disrupt this scenario by removing excess links in the chain and deliver solutions that are simple, seamless and secure. Late 2013, Ed spearheaded Kalixa’s expansion into the Americas with new offices opening in both New York, United States, and Sao Paolo, Brazil.  Ed recently led the company’s acquisition of PXP Solutions, making it one of the top five payment services providers in the world.

For more information, please visit the website at PayExpo 2014.

Kalixa Group strengthens global leadership team

London - 10 March, 2014 – Kalixa Group, a next generation FinTech company, today announced the appointment of six senior executives, including a new CFO.

The new executives will take up leading roles across Kalixa and their core products:  Kalixa Pay, an e-wallet linked to smart devices with a prepaid MasterCard®; Kalixa Pro, a next generation small business account including a mobile POS; and Kalixa Accept, an in-store and online payment acquiring service.

Following a rebranding in April 2013, Kalixa Group has secured new contracts, expanded into North and Latin America, launched Kalixa Pay in Austria, partnered with Invapay and Sisal, and been selected by MasterCard® to provide test cards for acquirers worldwide.

The new hires are:
·         Julian Leigh – Chief Financial Officer: Julian joins Kalixa from bwin.party where he held various financial roles including Group Financial Controller and Head of Internal Audit and Risk Management. Prior to this Julian held senior roles in internal audit at HSBC.
·         Andre Boesing - Head of LATAM / US: Andre Boesing will lead Kalixa Group’s expansion into the US and Latin America. Andre, who has 13 years of experience within the payments industry, has held senior positions at Royal Bank of Scotland, Arthur Andersen, Bibit Global Payments and Smart2Pay.
·         Joerg Heidenreich – Sales Director, Kalixa Accept: Joerg has 13 years of experience in the payments industry working for companies including Wirecard and ClickandBuy. He was also responsible for helping SOFORT to grow from a start-up to a leading payment system in Europe.  
·         Jonathan Bennett – Sales Director, Kalixa Pay: Jonathan has substantial experience in issuing, most recently leading Access Prepaid’s European prepaid business. At Travelex he delivered $1.5 billion in annual prepaid sales volume across six markets. 
·         Colin Swain – Head of Product, Innovation and Insight: Colin takes a leading role in developing new products and propositions for Kalixa Group. Prior to joining Kalixa, Colin worked at MasterCard, Barclaycard and WhatIf Innovations where he helped businesses build and launch market leading payment propositions such as MasterPass™ and One Pulse™.
·         Danielle Stroud – Head of Marketing and Communications: Danielle is responsible for all Group marketing and communication activity. Previously Danielle was responsible for developing and executing MasterCard’s country marketing strategy for Ireland as well as co-marketing with partners in the UK and Ireland including Metro Bank, Lloyds, and Post Office.

Ed Chandler, CEO of Kalixa Group said, “Recruiting the very best Fintech talent is critical to our long term strategy and success. With these hires we have brought on board people who are experienced and innovative payment experts to keep Kalixa at the forefront of our industry’s evolution.

“These hires compliment a world class team based across London, Vienna, New York and Sao Paulo. We will continue to expand into other regions across the globe and launch our range of disruptive products that help consumers, small businesses and merchants make and accept payments anywhere, anyway and any time.”

These six executives will be joining Edward Chandler (CEO), Kamran Hedjri (COO), Kaveh Sheikh-Hestani  (Director, Service Operations), Deyan Petrov (Technology Director) and Erich Cagler  (Head of Project Management ) to complete Kalixa Group’s leadership team.        

Kalixa Group expands payment services into the Americas

Sao Paulo / New York – 20th February 2014: Kalixa Group, a next generation FinTech company, today announced its expansion into the North and Latin American markets, with new offices in New York, United States, and Sao Paolo, Brazil. The move will allow merchants and consumers to benefit from its unique end–to-end payments proposition that covers virtually every area of the payments chain – from issuing and acquiring to acceptance.

Enabling payments across multiple channels and any device is essential in today’s increasingly digitised yet fragmented e-commerce market. This calls for an integrated approach to the value chain that has all too often been lacking in the North and South American markets. With Kalixa’s offering, merchants can benefit from a single connected ecosystem where they can replace multiple provider interactions with a single point of contact. Ultimately, both merchants and consumers benefit from dramatically reduced complexity and cost, making it easier to accept payments anyway, anywhere, anytime. 

The company will lead its charge into North American with Kalixa Accept, which allows merchants to accept more than 200 payment methods. The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa has already deployed the solution in New Jersey where Kalixa has received its Money Transmitter License to provide payment acceptance services. This is a significant deal, granting Kalixa access to 41% of the local gaming market. 

Future phases will see the company expand into additional states and roll-out Kalixa Pay, its prepaid e-wallet, and Kalixa Pro, an mPOS for small businesses and sole traders. These offerings are underpinned by strategic partnerships with several high profile payment providers in the region.

In Latin America, Kalixa will also lead with its Kalixa Accept offering. This will commence in Brazil before expanding into Mexico, Argentina, Columbia and Chile in 2015. 

Ed Chandler, CEO of Kalixa Group, said: “This is an exciting and important stage of our development, where we can really build on our success in Europe. In North America, the market is having to contend with several challenges, not least around risk and fraud. Recent high profile examples of financial fraud continue to highlight just how important secure, reliable and effective payment solutions are in the global market place. 

“In Latin America, there is a huge untapped opportunity and Brazil alone represents around 60% of the e-commerce market. Increasingly, consumers are shopping online and want to pay electronically. Merchants are starting to see a real demand for solutions that can help them accept a range of payment options to turn these new browsers into buyers. 

“In both markets, we can offer merchants a vast range of low-risk payment services from a single platform that will enable them to accept payments simply and securely, now and in the future.” 

Visit: www.kalixa.com 

Kalixa Pay offers cardholders the chance to win one million euros

Kalixa Group’s award-winning prepaid MasterCard® brand, Kalixa Pay, is offering one lucky cardholder the chance to win a million euros in an unprecedented campaign from a European prepaid issuer.

The campaign encourages cardholders across the UK, Germany and Austria to load £100 / €100 onto their Kalixa Pay cards to be in with the chance of winning the grand prize. One lucky cardholder who has made a valid load will be picked at random to take part in the grand prize event taking place on 29th January 2014 at Sushisamba in The Heron Tower, one of London's tallest buildings.

Kalixa Pay, Kalixa Group’s issuing brand, launches Win a Million campaign. 

At the event – under the supervision of an independent adjudicator – the winner will be presented with forty money bags of varying prize values, and asked to select one at a time until they have five matching values. Twenty of the money bags will contain a value of €5,000; nine will contain €25,000; six will contain €100,000 and five will contain the top prize value of €1,000,000. In this tense game of chance, the winner will walk away with a guaranteed €5,000 – plus a generous BRIT Awards 2014 prize package, courtesy of Kalixa Pay partner, MasterCard Worldwide.

The Grand Prize Event is to take place at Sushisamba, Bishopsgate, London

“The Win a Million campaign was designed to capture and engage the  imaginations of our existing and prospect cardholders and initial response rates show this is already taking effect,” says Danielle Stroud, Kalixa’s Head of Marketing and Communications.

“With a total of 150,000 cardholders across Germany and the UK, Kalixa Pay customers stand incredible odds of walking away with a life-changing prize. Our vision is to make payments easier for everyone and we’re committed to giving back to our customers – they are at the centre of everything we do,” continues Stroud

The Kalixa Pay product has three core benefits for customers:

1. Kalixa Pay provides the best Travel Money solution in the market with 0% commission, 0% FX fees and the best exchange rates. Customers load in their home currency (GBP or EUR) and use it wherever they see the MasterCard acceptance logo, making it the safest and cheapest way to spend at home and abroad. 
2. Kalixa Pay isn’t linked to a primary bank account, there’s no credit line, no overdraft and customers can only spend what they load, making it a great budgeting tool. To help further, Kalixa Pay will also send SMS alerts every time the card is used showing transaction amount and remaining balance, meaning customers are always in control of their cash.
3. For customers who don’t have a bank card or are generally nervous about shopping online, Kalixa Pay provides a great solution. It’s not linked to a bank account and customers’ details and funds are always protected.  

Launched in October, Kalixa Pay’s Win a Million prize draw campaign is being supported by integrated social media engagement, affiliate activity and DR advertising.

Last entries for Kalixa Pay’s Win a Million prize draw will be accepted on 31st December 2013. Find out more at: http://winamillion.kalixa.com/uk or http://winamillion.kalixa.com/de 

The Payments Generation Gap

We wanted to know how shopping and payments preferences differ across generations in Britain, so we asked 2,126 shoppers for their opinions.

Here’s a sample of what they said. For the full research data, download our whitepaper

To help deliver an age-specific check-out experience to turn browsers into buyers, Kalixa commissioned Opinion Matters to survey 2126 UK adults who have a current account in an attempt to understand the different payment methods used by different generations, and their shopping preferences. Some key findings include:

• The most popular place to shop and pay across all generations continues to be in-store and at the till
• Only 0.7% of respondents consider mobile apps to be a secure way of shopping
• Shoppers between 19 and 27 are more likely to embrace mobile payments if rewarded with loyalty points or financial incentives
• 65.6% predict cash will be gone by 2020
• 53.6% predict contactless payments to be the main way to pay by 2020

For more data – and some key recommendations for merchants – download our free whitepaper.

Why are we paying so much for payments?

Most consumers and businesses don’t realise that enabling a single transaction can involve up to ten different players: issuers, acquirers, processors and so on, with each party taking their cut. Each extra link in the value chain increases the cost – as well as the complexity and risk – of payment services, and merchants with shrinking margins cannot afford to waste money on payment services that are burdensome and fragmented.

The problem for merchants is that payment services today don’t meet their needs. Innovation in payment technology has long promised increased convenience and utility, but the reality has not lived up to the hype, and businesses have been exploited by an expensive and complex “value” chain for too long.

Here’s how the traditional payments value chain affects consumers and merchants:

1. Cost: Multiple providers have increased the CAPEX/OPEX cost of payments. In an effort to offset these costs, merchants are passing them on to consumers who are unknowingly footing the bill without seeing the benefits. Making a payment abroad is a clear example of how consumers are stung with excessive and often hidden costs. By removing unnecessary links in the value chain, foreign exchange fees can be reduced by as much as 5%.
   
2. Complexity: A myriad of providers creates a headache for merchants. Payment services take too long to integrate, are inflexible at a time of rapid change, and do not offer the visibility and control merchants require to run their business.
   
3. Risk: Security is fundamental to payments. Any breach could result in serious fiscal and reputation consequences. ‘Gaps’ between technology providers compromises security and increases risk.

So, if we want to start paying less for our payments – and reduce their complexity and risk – we need to unshackle merchants, small businesses and consumers from this complex and inefficient ecosystem. We need to trim the ‘fat’ by removing the excess links in the value chain to make payments simple, seamless and secure.

And that’s where Kalixa comes in. Kalixa is here to disrupt the payments market. With products that cover virtually every area of the value chain – from issuing and acquiring to acceptance – Kalixa owns its own payments ecosystem. This means that Kalixa customers only need Kalixa, rather than a sequence of providers along the value chain.

One integration, one platform and one company: Kalixa is turning what merchants have typically seen as a cost into competitive advantage.

Kalixa Pay prepaid MasterCard® launches in Austria

Today is a special day for the Kalixa Group: we launched our prepaid MasterCard product, Kalixa Pay, in Austria. It’s also a special day for the 90 Kalixa employees in our Vienna offices: they can finally start using the award-winning product they’ve been developing, perfecting and living since 2007.

The Kalixa Pay prepaid MasterCard is now available in Austria

Kalixa Pay already has over 150,000 customers across Germany, Italy and the UK, offering them a cost-effective contactless-enabled prepaid MasterCard with unique travel benefits, and we’re very pleased to now be able to offer those benefits to the Austrian market – and our Vienna employees.

So why is our Vienna team so excited? Apart from the obvious excitement that comes with a successful product launch in a new country? Well, Kalixa Pay is the best travel-money product available in Austria. It offers the best foreign exchange rates, zero commission, worldwide acceptance and no FX fees (until the end of 2013) when used abroad.

The Kalixa Pay Card draws funds directly from an e-wallet. It offers consumers one wallet and one way to pay, making payments simple, seamless and secure – online and on the high street – including contactless Tap & GoTM payments at thousands of retail outlets, such as Austria’s leading supermarket, Billa.

Our prepaid Kalixa Pay Card provides customers with full control over their spending. Unlike using credit or debit cards, customers can only spend what they load, and can keep track of their finances online, or with our free SMS and email balance updates and transaction notifications.

Ed Chandler, CEO of Kalixa Group, said: “The launch of Kalixa Pay in Austria is a significant step in our ambitious growth plan as we continue to disrupt the global payments market with a range of products that help people to make and accept payments simply, seamlessly and securely. We will be rolling-out Kalixa Pay to new markets very soon as part of our on-going effort to push the boundaries of payments in Europe. Exciting times ahead!” concluded Chandler.

As Ed says above, it’s our goal to simplify the way consumers, businesses and merchants make and accept payments, and Kalixa Pay is an integral component of that plan. To date, we’ve invested more than €100 million in designing and building our integrated platform which also includes our two other core payment solutions: Kalixa Accept helps businesses accept online payments, and the soon to be launched Kalixa Pro offers non-cash payment solutions for small businesses.

With Pay, Accept and Pro, Kalixa covers every area of the payments chain – from issuing and acquiring to acceptance. In short, we own our own payments ecosystem, which helps us turn browsers into buyers, risk into reward and cost into competitive advantage.

In addition to our own branded Kalixa products, we also power a range of other cutting-edge payment solutions, including moneto, the first NFC enabled iPhone prepaid wallet in Europe, and Watch2Pay, the first watch in the world that can be used for contactless payments.

We’ve got 130 employees, in London and Vienna, from 25 nations. We’ve got twelve years of industry experience. We own our payments ecosystem. Over the past twelve months we’ve processed transactions worth €2.6 billion for over 300 merchants (including Austria’s WESTbahn). We have massive support from our single shareholder, bwin.party. The Kalixa Group is going places – and today’s launch into Austria is just the beginning.