Voice Commerce Appoints Mills & Reeve to Support Cashflows Launch
Voice Commerce Group, a payments processor, has appointed Mills & Reeve, a national law firm, to represent its subsidiary, Cashflows, in achieving its regulatory and operational objectives and status so that it can operate as a business bank. Announced in December 2009, Cashflows reflects the group’s expansion from the provision of payments processing to meeting the broader financial requirements of its growing business customer base.
The Cashflows banking services are designed to offer a range of solutions to businesses, initially in the UK. Following Voice Commerce securing its status as a payments institution under the Payments Services Directive (PSD) in November 2009, Cashflows will provide complete protection on customers’ deposits in accounts providing for greater security. This deposit approach gives Voice Commerce the opportunity for interest to be paid on balances held in other business accounts. This streamlined approach will also give business customers a clearer view of what is being done with their money and where it is at any given moment.
In addition to appointing Mills & Reeve, Voice Commerce have also recruited Liz Heade, a compliance lawyer who has previously worked for BGL Group and The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), to oversee the process and ensure all banking regulations are met. Heade will work alongside Clive Bramley who joined the group as legal counsel from RBS last year.
Nick Ogden, chief executive officer (CEO) of Voice Commerce, said: “Following the melt down of the financial system we believe that there is a growing demand for banks to take a new stance which offers greater transparency and stability, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the business sector where people are demanding a back to basics approach which allows them to plan their business activities with a degree of certainty and continuity. The next step towards the launch of Cashflows will be to complete further regulatory measures with the UK FSA that we now believe are required, and to ensure that our account infrastructures become fully interoperable within the global banking systems.
“The Voice Commerce Group was originally founded to provide business customers with sophisticated technology to secure payment transactions. As a payments institution, we have been exploring in detail with the EU and UK regulators what is required to become a business bank and we are confident that we can extend our services to meet business customers’ wider financial requirements under our Cashflows banner. As an EU regulated payments processor, we already hold customer funds and are required to meet capital adequacy rules, so it is natural to extend this and provide our business customers with the additional banking services that they require,” he added.