Connect Financial Holiday Community Update
Welcome to our Holiday Update! This update we’ll cover quite a few areas to give you a true sense of where we are sitting and what is upcoming.
But first, a few words to you our community.
I personally want to say that I recognize this has been a long journey, much longer than we ever initially anticipated and planned for. For all of you that have been with us since the beginning, I truly thank you for your patience and camaraderie. It has not always been a smooth road either, we’ve had some bumps but I feel you will all appreciate the final product.
We’ve been hinting at some essential partner-related news for the last couple of updates, and it’s time to make some announcements. I’ll also cover an update on card manufacturing and some marketing updates.
Let’s get into it.
Connect Financial has Officially Partnered with Visa
The flagship Connect Financial credit card will now launch on the Visa network.
Even though we had initially aligned with Mastercard, and spent A LOT of time developing under their brand and with them, ultimately we had to make a decision to switch to Visa for a number of reasons that I could not quantify ignoring.
Among these factors, in no specific order of importance:
- We were able to negotiate a Cross Border Issuance license with Visa (more on this below)
- Visa has a higher acceptance rate globally and is the number one payment network by far.
- To launch a card program at our level you have to have a BIN sponsor, we have partnered with and entered into an agreement with an International Bank that we now serve as a Program Manager for. The choice to partner with them required the move to Visa, and the opportunity provided by the partnership itself is beneficial.
Connect Financial will still go to market with our five card tiers available across the Visa product suite, including the Platinum, Signature and Infinite programs. Cards will be available for customers in more than 130 countries worldwide, with more jurisdictions to come as we continue to roll out.
This is a massive outcome for Connect Financial, representing many months of legal, compliance and business-related work.
More on the Change
In line with our previous update, where we shared how we’re building a suite of financial products designed to be fully compliant and regulated within the traditional finance space, developing Connect Financial has brought unique challenges quite different to projects operating solely on the blockchain or solely in traditional finance.
For instance, if you were developing a token project, a key decision centers around selecting the right blockchain for launch. Should it be on the ETH chain, Solana, or another network? This choice impacts business models, funding access, technology stacks, and more, but ultimately, it remains an internal decision for each project.
Connect Financial is different, as one of our core unique selling points is serving as a bridge between the digital asset space and traditonal finance. This means our reliance on banking, processing, manufacturing, legal & compliance relationships in the physical world makes it far more complex than simply choosing a provider from a sales deck.
We also have to take a look at what services we need to provide as a whole to accomplish each product. Then make decisions on how we can best reach the ultimate point of offering the products to you, our community.
Banking Relationships
As I’ve previously talked about, to launch a credit card as a financial company, there are several key partnerships that need to be in place (all of which impact on each other):
- Our sponsor bank
- Our payment processor
- Our card manufacturer
- The payment network.
The sponsor bank is arguably the most challenging one to get right, since it has the most significant impact on our go-to-market plan.
During this process, we entered into discussions with several organizations to decide who would be best to partner with. There have been many sessions of detailed due diligence on all aspects of the business to arrive at the natural fit for us and them.
Unfortunately, at times this process was impacted drastically by events outside of our control that caused major delays, such as the collapse of FTX and others such as Celsius. These events caused our potential partners to either exit Digital Asset coverage completely, or put significant pauses on new accepting new programs.
Coupled with the newer nature of our product proposal, being a credit card supported by digital assets, it was a longer path to gain approvals.
Naturally, during the process, we progressed with some partners, descoped other partners and eliminated certain partners from the journey, all to arrive at the best partner to serve the Connect Financial ambitions of the best product suite in the digital asset and traditional finance.
And we truly believe we have.
Our chosen sponsor bank combined with the Cross Border Issuance license allows us to offer cards across the globe in nearly every major jurisdiction, as well as allowing us to offer virtual bank accounts to customers in 180 countries. This is a significant boon for us since the alternative to a global rollout is to seek BIN sponsorship jurisdiction by jurisdiction — a prolonged and expensive endeavor.
Our sponsor bank is deeply integrated with Visa, making our choice to switch to them (relatively) easy. In addition, Visa offers an excellent benefits package for end users and a suite of services that we can use to reduce fraud, provide tailored offers and offer a full range of payment solutions.
Of course, while this update has been in development for some time now, we have been forced to keep quiet until it was the right time, ensuring all necessary terms and conditions and adherence to policy were maintained. Thankfully, we’re now in a position to be able to make this update, and we firmly believe that this transition is in the best interests of our business and most importantly, for our users.
It’s important to reiterate that this journey we’ve embarked upon means we’re close to providing an innovative and rewarding suite of products to our community, however, this is not a trivial endeavor.
Nobody wants to have the product out there more than we do, and we’re working incredibly hard each day to make that happen as soon as possible. However,
We must do this right.
We must launch right.
We get one shot at going to market.
All of the work that has gone on in the background behind closed doors (which we recognize comes at the frustrations of our community at times) is absolutely for the benefit of our community and puts us in a much stronger position to provide a viable suite of products that work for you, but also means that Connect Financial can grow a strong foundation for the future.
Press Releases
One of the highlights for us is the excitement from Visa for a product like ours. You’ll see joint press releases from Visa and Connect Financial in the (near) future.
Re-release of Connect.Financial
Given the extensive changes across various areas of our business, we’ve had to delay the launch of our updated website to ensure it meets our highest standards as well product alignment.
Several test websites have been provided to the community in numerous forms, feedback from which was incorporated and included in our materials.
It’s worth noting that while some of these changes are being propagated through the back-end portal, we’re pleased that the new marketing website is now ready for release. We’ve given the site a complete overhaul and a more modern design aesthetic. I’m sure you’ll agree that much work has been done on finessing messaging with an improved customer journey, which will help support customer onboarding.
Please visit the site and share the link — https://connect.financial
Manufacturing of Cards
One of the more exciting steps is bringing the card to life through manufacturing, which involves multiple sign offs, technical integration and plenty of fun choices around design, materials and finishes.
Since the physical card is a tangible representation of our product — and something that you’ll touch and feel every day, — it’s a key touchpoint for Connect Financial, so we’re focused on making it just right.
I get to finally share photos of our latest pre-production manufactured cards with you! The amount of hours spent handling the cards with different combination of finishes etc has probably crossed over into the ludicrous stage.
I’ve handled them inside different types of wallets to see how they fit, how easy it is to pull them out. I’ve carried them loose in my pockets to see how easily they scratch. Traveled with them in a bag all together to see how they hold up. Dropped them, let the kids play with them, thrown them, taken keys to them, written on them and cleaned it off…
All in all, I am still super excited for our designs. We did make one change after we got the metal versions as I just was not happy with the CF logo being on it. Below you’ll see a couple pictures (actual pictures) of the cards as I got them, multiples sitting there and while you may not be able to see a difference, there are different finishes, slight color variations, different effects for the logos.
Then below those you’ll see our final card version we have put into the production queue.
Team updates
We’ve recently expanded our engineering team to bolster our existing development efforts. They’re currently deeply focused on integrating our partners, hardening the core systems and allowing business clients to access our service suite.
In addition, we’ve also brought on new members to the Compliance team to ensure that our systems comply with stringent AML/CTF regulations and that all of our fraud management and security protocols are in place.
As we’re nearing the home stretch and have begun ticking off the necessary legal, regulatory, and partnership milestones, we’re looking forward to getting the community involved in testing the platform and making the first transactions.
Conclusion
Suffice to say, a lot is going on.
Everyone wants this product suite out — and no one more than me — but as I keep saying, we will ensure this is done correctly for a successful rollout.
Till the next time, be safe and look after each other.
Connect Financial
