How PingPong is delivering robust, scalable UK payments for global merchants with ClearBank
Benefits
- Delivering the advantages of the UK’s payments infrastructure, without incurring the costs of being a direct scheme member.
- Supporting different payment needs across a range of customer segments, with Bacs, CHAPS and Faster Payment System (FPS).
- Reducing operational complexity for a growing customer base by issuing individual named virtual customer accounts and dedicated virtual IBANS (vIBANS) through its own sort code.
- Enhancing certainty and predictability for customers’ decision-making with real-time payments and reconciliation.
PingPong is a leading global fintech founded in New York in 2015 and headquartered in Hangzhou, China, with a singular vision: to provide seamless cross-border payment services to e-commerce and enterprise clients. Today, it has 40 offices globally and processes a cumulative total of $350 billion in payment value.
With its origins in marketplace infrastructure, PingPong is focused on solving the weeks-long settlement times and fees international sellers face when collecting revenue across borders. This meant systematically obtaining licences in key markets while building partnerships with banks.
“Our strategy allowed us to create an infrastructure designed to accurately reflect what is needed for cross-border payments, end-to-end, not just part of the journey. So, collect, hold, convert, and pay,” explains Alex Young, Head of FI Partnerships, Europe and Americas at PingPong. “As our business evolved, we found ourselves increasingly servicing marketplaces, B2B firms, and more recently, the travel and logistics sectors. As we grew, so did our ambition – and possibilities – for what market access could look like.”
The UK was an important market for PingPong, and it received its Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence from the FCA in 2023, giving it the foundations to build its UK business, serving existing ecommerce customers transacting in the UK, and win new business from UK-based firms.
Finding the ideal partner for a rapidly scaling business
With ambitious plans to deliver modern payment services to an expanding and diverse customer base, PingPong examined the market for a technology-focused banking partner. It recognised the need for a robust solution to address complexities around payment processing, scheme connectivity, and customer account management.
“We needed to create a platform not only to support the e-commerce clients that we have, which is obviously high-volume business here in the UK, but we also need to support those enterprise customers that are looking to do business with us through our UK entity,” Young explains.
That necessitated finding a partner that could handle high transaction volumes, integrate quickly, and offer flexibility to meet future demands. ClearBank emerged as the first choice, Young explains.
“We selected ClearBank because of its market reputation for reliability, innovative technology and API-led philosophy and its commitment to the highest standards for regulatory compliance,” he comments. “The ClearBank engagement was highly consultative, and they really understood the industry. We didn't have all the answers, but it was clear they had a lot of experience working with firms like us that are EMIs wanting to deliver a bank-level experience to our end customers.”
Virtual accounts supporting operational flexibility and efficiency
UK EMIs have many potential partners for accounts and payment services. ClearBank offered the benefits of being a market leader, alongside a track record of supporting fintechs at every stage of their journey.
PingPong also needed an efficient model for account setup and management, which ClearBank delivers through its Virtual GBP accounts. This allows PingPong to open millions of accounts under its brand and sort code, providing each customer with its own addressable vIBAN (virtual International Bank Account Number), with no limit on the number of logic layers it can create within its ledger.
“What agency banking gives us is a unique sort code for our UK entity, IBANs for our customers, each with a named account and, as a result, they really feel as though they're dealing with an institution. The flexibility of the agency bank infrastructure that ClearBank brings allows us to manage our customer expectations and deliver the solutions they need,” Young explains.
The ClearBank API means PingPong can open virtual accounts for its customers in real time, 365 days a year, each with its own vIBAN. This structure enables the company to support many customers with one or just a small number of real accounts. It provides PingPong with a model for seeing where funds are held for each of its customers, while reducing the cost and complexity of managing individual real accounts for all of them.
Ensuring payment performance, visibility and certainty
These accounts are complemented with access to the UK’s payment schemes, including Faster Payment System (FPS), CHAPS and Bacs. PingPong’s model is based on delivering real-time payments and fund reconciliation, which provide certainty and enable its customers to make informed business decisions.
“We have a diverse customer base, but they all need one thing – and CFOs in larger enterprise customers in particular – which is secure, predictable payments,” Young explains. “The API-based services that ClearBank delivers to PingPong allow our customers to make instant decisions. The speed of reconciliation and having that information as real-time as possible is key to our business model and ensuring we deliver UK payments to our customers around the globe.”
By accessing the UK payment schemes through ClearBank, PingPong offers its customers a range of payment options without the operational cost and complexity of becoming a direct participant. It also avoids the ongoing capital investment to maintain those connections to ensure the uptime its customers demand, as well as the testing and preparation for scheme updates.
With FPS, customers’ funds are credited to their accounts in real-time, and as ClearBank’s platform is available 24/7, customers can move money whenever they want.
“A lot of the initial build has been around Bacs, which is the way most of the marketplaces pay their customer base in the UK. But Faster Payments is increasingly becoming an accepted payment mechanism, particularly since the limit was increased to £1million per transaction,” Young says. “As a result, more enterprise clients have been drawn to FPS, and it’s really powerful for us to offer that option to our customer base, through a single banking partner.”
In addition, ClearBank is providing PingPong with a Confirmation of Payee (CoP) service for FPS, which checks payees’ details in real time before a payment is made. CoP is an overlay service that runs separately from the UK payment schemes and aims to bring peace of mind when sending funds, while reducing the risk of fraud and misdirected payments.
“Risk and compliance are at the heart of everything we do. So having that visibility and connectivity with Confirmation of Payee really adds an important layer of security, which is important to us. And it means we’re providing an end-to-end payment solution in the UK,” Young adds.
Future-facing collaboration
When PingPong examined the market for its agency bank, it was looking for a collaborative partner to support its immediate needs and aligned to its vision for future development. For Young, the ClearBank relationship is proving to be highly collaborative.
