Connect Financial Community Update
Welcome to the latest update for Connect Financial!
The Connect Financial team have been busy at work toward getting this revolutionary platform off the ground, and hopefully this update provides some insight into how things are going.
Let’s get into it.
We’ll kick off with some background information about BIN sponsorship, and why it is so important, before looking at the changing landscape over the last few years (particularly driven by the FTX scandal). Then, we’ll focus on where we are today, with a view to giving you a deeper appreciation of the key challenges that we have been navigating, and the major wins in this space.
What is a BIN sponsorship?
When dealing with innovative products such as digital asset backed credit cards, obtaining a BIN (Bank Identification Number) sponsorship is a crucial step. It’s the gateway to bridge the digital asset ecosystem with the legacy Trad-fi banking system and ties the company issuing a card to a particular banking institution, who underwrites the transactions made on the card program.
For a new fintech business like Connect, obtaining a BIN through sponsorship means affiliating with a bank or financial institution that’s already a principal member of a global payment network, such as Visa or MasterCard. This partnership is an essential step as it lends us legitimacy, facilitates our broader payment network integrations, and allows us to issue cards to consumers on a trusted payments network. It accelerates our go-to-market strategy by leveraging the sponsor’s established infrastructure and compliance frameworks, which make the journey through the regulatory framework far smoother.
However, securing a BIN sponsorship comes with its own set of unique challenges, particularly in the relatively new and unregulated world of digital assets. It must be stressed that the level of stringent due diligence imposed by potential BIN sponsors can — and has — been tricky to say the least. As we all know, banks and financial institutions have had a very risk-averse stance to digital assets; one, due to the lack of formal regulation, and; two, exacerbated by the volatile nature of digital assets and asking a bank to underwrite large sums of money off of a relatively new asset class. Don’t be under any false pretenses about the difficulty involved launching a collateralized credit card program. Had we been simply issuing prepaid debit cards, this process would have been considerably quicker and less involved, but the resultant product wouldn’t be nearly as innovative as what Connect Financial is offering.
BIN sponsors particularly look for evidence of operational resilience, financial stability, and compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) regulations (among other requirements). The negotiation of terms such as fees, responsibilities, and the extent of operational support (such as GTM strategy) can also be complex, and has required us to demonstrate substantial capability. These challenges have meant we’ve not only had to adapt to the requirements imposed by our banking partners, but also convincingly address our sponsors’ concerns and establish a solid business case for their sponsorship. This has been our primary focus over the last few periods.
FTX Market Confidence
The FTX collapse, once considered a titan in the cryptocurrency exchange space, marked a significant moment for markets globally. At the time, FTX were lauded for their innovative financial products and deep liquidity, and they rapidly ascended to become one of the industry’s most trusted platforms.
Its subsequent implosion on the back of allegations of misusing customer funds, risky financial maneuvering, and insufficient oversight shattered the finance community’s trust in cryptocurrency, and to digital assets as a whole. It highlighted critical vulnerabilities within the sector which led larger institutions to shy away and refocus on their core activities. The fallout from FTX’s downfall extended far beyond its immediate users and investors, affecting countless retail users and shook the confidence of institutional participants.
Financial institutions, which had been increasingly exploring or expanding into digital assets, faced a stark reminder of the sector’s volatility and regulatory uncertainties. The event sparked a broader market turmoil, leading to plummeting cryptocurrency values and the whole saga cast a long shadow on the viability and safety of digital asset investments.
The situation FTX fundamentally recalibrated the bank’s risk appetite towards newer digital asset markets with the allure of high returns tempered by a heightened awareness of operational risks, importance of transparent and robust governance structures, and the need for comprehensive regulatory frameworks to safeguard interests.
Do right from day one, or suffer the consequences.
Of course, the introduction of the ETF’s has meant that the tide has begun to turn again, and with more regulatory clarity, the institutions are cautiously increasing risk appetite as institutional money flows into the sector.
Throughout this period, Connect Financial have been working incredibly hard to show a ‘clean set of heels’ in dealing with the due diligence, through a commitment to managing user funds, obtaining a number of certifications to prove our processes, and building an end-to-end technical solution from the ground up.
Connect Financial’s BIN Sponsorship
The big news we are incredibly excited to share with our community is that Connect Financial has been successful in securing the necessary licensing and BIN sponsorship needed to proceed with launching one of the most innovative suites of digital asset products available on the market.
This sponsorship allows us to launch two separate products, which I’ll briefly outline here:
Credit Cards
Our flagship collateralized credit card program is enabled through this partnership. It will allow us to issue credit cards directly to our customers in various major markets. At full potential, we’ll also be able to offer other programs including debit cards, gift cards, etc.
Additionally, we will also have the capability to provide white label programs, along with B2B2C services, which are currently taking shape.
Banking-as-a-service (BAaS)
Leveraging our sponsor’s licenses and technology will allow us to issue named USD bank accounts for our users. This allows us to offer direct bank accounts to users, furthering our cause of providing a suite of banking services for those who are currently underserved by conventional banking providers.
Note, we won’t launch MVP with named accounts, as we want to focus primarily on embedding the credit card program. Customers will be able to deposit cash into their Connect Financial fiat accounts from day one, however.
Availability
We will be able to offer these products in dozens of individual countries. A high level regional summary is provided below, but there are exceptions within the regions. If there is a particular country that you are interested in, reach out to one of the team members in the Telegram/Discord channels and we’ll be able to let you know the expected availability.
Also note, that just because we can launch the product in a particular country, it does not necessarily mean that we will, subject to legal advice and our go live strategy. Additionally, we are still able to offer non-card and account products (e.g. Loans, OTC trades, etc) to customers living in countries where we are not able to offer credit cards / accounts.
Other Business Items
While the core of this update has been regulatory and BIN focused, and providing an update regards to our progress on the regulatory and licensing front, we wanted to briefly touch on other aspects related to Connect Financial.
Card Holders
We released some images of our newly produced card holders, which are going to be distributed to one of the 15 worldwide centers for the purpose of releasing cards.
Interestingly, and one of the considerations that go missed by the community are details like the cost of shipping cards and which center makes most sense to send them from — for instance, sending a card to Mexico is significantly cheaper to send from the EU than it is sending from the mainland US! This is just one of the many details that goes into bringing a worldwide scale product like ours to market.
CNFD & Staking Rewards
Due to the current backdrop of banking participants wanting space from direct crypto / digital assets, we’re currently undergoing a review of both the staking rewards programs, alongside the CNFD proposition, in order to ensure we’re compliant as well as competitive. Watch this space for more info while we conduct that review, however this won’t materially impact the launch of our core services.
Liquidity Management
I’ve spent some time previously explaining how the stepped mechanism of liquidity works on the DEX side, so I won’t go into it again, however we’re currently reviewing and adjusting our liquidity protocols to ensure we’re providing markets with sufficient depth for our users to obtain the CNFI required for their desired tier status.
To that end, we’ve provided an additional 35m of CNFI as liquidity to the main Uniswap pool.
The CNFI token remains a key part of our value proposition, and allows us to offer the exclusive program benefits that we’ve talked about before, especially on the premium tiers. Once the product has gone live we will allow users to purchase CNFI for their membership, fee free, from the platform. This solution will continue to use DEXs to execute the swap, so we will continue to keep a close eye on liquidity.
Website
We’re currently finalizing touches to our newly redesigned website which we believe brings it up to date in terms of modernity, and fits our brand ethos of being one of the most luxurious digital assets products available in the market, and fitting with our product offerings.
Once this work has concluded we’ll be doing a short round of testing to ensure all aspects of the site work before rolling this out to our community.
Platform
From a technical side, we’re nearing completion of testing of our platform in anticipation of launch. We had one hurdle to overcome when considering some of the slight nuances of our BIN sponsorship, which we’re well underway toward incorporating, but we’re making great strides on this front.
We hope you’re as excited as we are to see the entire suite of truly innovative financial products come to market in the near future, and want to thank you for being a valued member of the community. We’re grateful to have you with us!
