Everyone in fintech says they’re fast and flexible, but what does that actually mean in practice? With more providers offering everything from card issuing to acquiring to banking-as-a-service, access to infrastructure is no longer the issue. The real question is how easily clients can make those services work for their business model.
That’s where Tribe Payments is aiming to make its mark. Founded in 2018, the company has grown from issuer and acquirer processing into what it calls a full-service payments and infrastructure orchestrator. Its platform spans everything from banking services and open banking to white-label front ends, all delivered via an API-driven, cloud-based stack.
More than a stack of services
For Alex Kelly, vice president of product at Tribe, it’s not about offering a one-size-fits-all solution.
“A lot of companies come into the space with a very specific problem to solve,” he told The Fintech Times. “We are built for flexibility, so if someone wants to go down one route or another, or if something new comes along, they’re not limited.”
That kind of modularity, he says, allows the platform to serve a wide range of clients: from early-stage fintechs launching for the first time, to more established institutions looking to add a new product or fill a gap in their stack.
“We’ve worked with startups who just want to get to market fast without building everything themselves,” Kelly says. “But we’ve also supported enterprise clients. One example is a bank in Belize that needed help with AMEX acquiring; we built a conversion layer that integrated with their existing setup.”
Time to rethink the terminal
Tribe is also active in the point-of-sale space, especially as merchants take a fresh look at their setups in response to changing customer habits. A recent survey from the company found that nearly a third of merchants still rely on legacy POS systems that can’t support digital wallets or QR codes: a shortfall that’s not just inconvenient, but increasingly costly.
According to Kelly, the need for more agile, cost-effective options is clear. Tribe’s answer is SoftPOS: mobile software that turns a phone or tablet into a payment terminal without specialist hardware. Certified last year, Tribe’s solution supports secure PIN entry and removes previous transaction limits.
“It means you can roll it out more effectively and cheaply, and at ease to your merchant base,” he explained.
The research backs that up. According to Tribe’s report, Queue-Busters: Why SoftPOS Will Supercharge Merchant Payment Acceptance, 28 per cent of merchants say their legacy POS systems can’t support modern payment methods, while 80 per cent believe accepting a wide range of options, from QR codes to digital wallets, is essential to closing a sale.
Other top complaints include a lack of analytics, high maintenance costs and POS systems that don’t integrate with inventory or CRM tools. As a result, nearly 80 per cent of merchants said they would use analytics to enhance customer experience, if their tech stack allowed it.
Competing in a crowded market
With so many providers in the space, the real difference often lies in how well they support what clients are actually trying to build. Kelly believes the companies succeeding today are those that allow clients to evolve without replatforming every time they try something new.
“There’s so much competition now,” he says. “Everyone’s trying to find a unique angle.” What they don’t want, he adds, is to be “held back by the processing market” if they move into a new vertical or add a feature.
That’s shaped how Tribe has built out its services, not by bundling everything into one fixed model, but by offering components that clients can pick and use as needed.
Same philosophy, bigger map
The same pressure to move fast and stay adaptable isn’t just playing out in Europe. As more fintechs launch with international ambitions from day one, the need for flexible infrastructure is growing across markets. That’s one reason Tribe is expanding its global footprint.
The company recently opened an office in Singapore and secured certification to offer issuing and acquiring across the APAC region: a market Kelly says is full of fintechs looking to grow quickly without being weighed down by infrastructure.
“We’ve got clients in Latin America and the APAC region,” Kelly said. “We opened our Singapore office at the end of last year and got full certification with Visa and Mastercard for issuing and acquiring. There’s a real focus to expand.”
For fintechs and merchants, the ability to scale without overhauling everything is becoming a minimum expectation.
