PALO ALTO, Calif. - Bling Nation, a payments-network provider for community financial institutions nationwide, has announced its company launch at the 2008 BAI Retail Delivery Conference and Expo in Orlando. Through its Community Payment Network, Bling Nation enables financial institutions to more profitably support payments between their local demand deposit account, or DDA customers and their merchant customers by bypassing the current global debit payment model and replacing it with an efficient, cost-effective and local payment network.
The company's core technology, in development for three years, is an integrated issuing-and-acquiring processing platform designed specifically for local and regional banks. Bling Nation successfully soft-launched in 2007 and since then has dedicated its time to developing technology, securing more than $13 million in funding and assembling an advisory board that includes industry luminaries John Reed, former chairman of Citibank and former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange; and Jeff Stiefler, former chairman of Digital Insight and former president of American Express.
Bling Nation was founded by co-CEOs Wences Casares and Meyer Malka, who together have a proven track record of successful entrepreneurialism through the founding of Banco Lemon, a Brazilian retail bank and Patagon, the largest online brokerage in Latin America and fastest-growing bank in Spain and Germany for three consecutive years under their leadership.
Through the use of proprietary technology, Bling Nation enables local debit payments to be conducted as contactless payments through the simple tap of a customer's mobile phone to a supporting contactless payments reader at the merchant customer's point-of-sale. Within a matter of seconds, the customer's phone receives an SMS text message confirming the transaction and reporting the account holder's remaining account balance. In addition to added convenience and security for customers, the advantage to merchants and local banks is a significant cost savings on the high fees associated with the traditional method of processing a debit transaction.
"As the economy continues to tighten, local bankers are looking for opportunities to increase non-interest income and merchants will attempt to reduce operating expenses without sacrificing levels of customer service," said Wences Casares, co-CEO of Bling Nation. "The existing methodology for processing debit card transactions was designed with the largest of banks' interests in mind, not those of smaller community financial institutions."
"We believe that community banks and credit unions should own any local debit transactions between their own DDA customers and their merchant customers — rather than a large payment provider or card issuer — and our technology has been carefully designed to make that a reality for them," said Meyer Malka, co-CEO of Bling Nation.
