Navigating an increasingly complex and digitalised world

The world is digitising at a dizzying pace. We believe that the fillip to digital payments received during the lockdowns is here to stay with a good chance to accelerate.

Initiatives such as ISO 20022, Request to Pay, Instant Payments, etc, are all progressing now – in some cases with the milestone dates revised from the pre-pandemic milestones. While the impact will be felt definitely in the Western World, these are no longer limited to just this region. As an example, ISO 20022 brings a near universal standard for high value payments and to which more than 80% of such payments are expected to migrate to. At the same time, there are schemes in over 70 countries now where migration to ISO 20022 is at various stages of development. And this does not take into account the Swift migration from MT to MX which is global.

The teams are also being bombarded with a number of European regulations and standards such as GDPR, LEI, Peppol, etc, which are finding increasing application in other parts of the world.

This places a huge challenge to keep abreast of. It becomes even more daunting if you have a small Product or IT delivery team who may not have the SME expertise to provide guidance on this ever-increasing array of developments or if they are spread thinly across projects.

EDGE can help you ...
EDGE is a team of highly experienced professionals in the Payments space. Our people are from banks such as HSBC, Rabobank and Erste Bank and large corporates such as Shell and E.On – backed up, in many instances, by years of consultancy experience in this space too. A profile of select people is available under Our People.

We can help you bridge the gap by providing the necessary SME expertise to supplement your Product and IT delivery teams. The vast experience we bring (over 20 years for all our senior executives) will also help in providing practical guidance to issues on hand.

And we have learned to roll up our sleeves in product management, program and project management and customer migration management. Over the years, we have successfully executed projects in the UK, Netherlands, Italy, Middle East, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil.

Breadth of expertise and areas of focus

The breadth of our SME expertise spans across Payments :

Infrastructure - cross border, local, real time, batch, direct debit, credit transfers
Flexible handling of payment requests through different communication channels, devices and formats
Delivery of payment systems.

Areas of focus that we have presently are:

ISO 20022 migration
Request to Pay
Payments Infrastructure
Digital Payments / Transformation
Payment standards
Regulatory requirements
Billing
E-invoicing
GLEIF

What EDGE can offer

We can offer both brainpower and manpower. Specific parts of the project cycle we have identified where we can add the greatest value are:

Discovery – Helping the board members / senior management understand a particular issue or problem through a workshop or in some cases by a focussed analysis that runs for 1 – 2 weeks culminating in a presentation
Helping you define the solution and way forward : Bringing in persons with SME knowledge and business experience to advise the Product Manager and IT teams on what needs to be done. This is most relevant in small teams or where the expertise on a specific topic is not available presently
Quality Control : Providing a person with SME knowledge independent of the IT vendor to advise stakeholders on the progress against proposed timelines, key challenges, if any, and mitigants
Migration management : EDGE has considerable experience from the SEPA transition to ISO 20022 on the needs of corporates to ensure a successful migration and that the customers are happy with the solution provided by the bank / fintech
Training : both general and specific to a project

We enjoy our work and our proud of our results. We are experienced, international and eager.

See here for more information about our founder and Managing Partner Tom Buschman and of key persons in the team.

EDGE Consulting Group

The EDGE Consulting Group is a team of experienced professionals from large corporates such as Shell & E.On and banks such as JPMorgan, HSBC, Rabobank & Erste Bank. We have always operated from a bank perspective on the pre-sales or client side in business transformation and supply chain innovation.