Helsinki, March 2023: Card issuing and processing pioneer Enfuce has teamed up with UK neobanking start-up Science Card to launch a ground-breaking payments card, which forms part of a new infrastructure for funding scientific research, designed to create the future earlier rather than later. Science Card’s customers drive real change with their normal payments activity, as a portion of Science Card’s revenues are fed back into scientific R&D. Their customers also have access to Science Card’s funding infrastructure, and through the payments app can explore, and with a single click, independently fund vital scientific research at leading British universities. This unique card proposition is made possible by Enfuce’s award-winning cloud-powered Card as a Service platform.
Enfuce will power the Mastercard-branded card, which will be made available through Science Card’s app with Enfuce’s easily integrated API, allowing customers to top up their account with money and use it as their primary spending account. Backed by Enfuce’s wide range of value-added integrated services, including real-time transaction monitoring, spending controls and customisable modules, Science Card also offers a dynamic way for customers to boost scientific research funding with its ‘one-click’ research crowdfunding model.
Launched in the UK by scientist and deep tech entrepreneur Daniel Baeriswyl, Science Card is committed to using the banking ecosystem to drive sustainability, combat climate change, create better healthcare, improve access to education, and super-charge scientific projects that will improve society. Powered by Enfuce, Science Card enables contributions of any size to be made to scientific research projects in seconds through its app, ensuring a faster flow of much-needed funding to accelerate innovative R&D in the UK, removing layers of philanthropic complexity, and shortening the time from funding to the start of research from approximately 12 months to 5 minutes.
Science Card will also direct 10% of its profits to fund scientific R&D projects at leading UK universities, and is going a step further by giving users the option to round up purchase amounts or make one-off purchases and send them as micro-grants to the project of their choice. Within the Science Card app, users can view and choose which university and which scientific project to send micro-grants to, and also see Science Card’s total funding for all projects.
By making micro-grants through Science Card, users can fund projects and interests close to their hearts, become research patrons, make a direct contribution to future innovation, and as importantly, own a part of each project’s intellectual property.
Led by co-founders and co-CEOs Monika Liikamaa and Denise Johansson, Enfuce offers an agile alternative to existing issuer processing platforms, with the ability to quickly add modules and services as and when needed. The first in the world to fully move card issuing to the cloud, and with its turnkey Card as a Service (CaaS) model, packaged BIN sponsoring, and all regulatory compliance taken care of, Enfuce is a one-stop shop for organisations that want to issue cards to their user bases.
Science Card’s initial launch is in the UK, with an estimated 30,000 customers and the goal of funding at least one scientific R&D project worth at least £300,000 within the first year. There are plans to expand Science Card to the European Union and the US over the next few years through partnerships with leading universities in those markets. Ultimately, Science Card estimates that it will attract more than two million customers by 2028 and generate scientific funding worth upwards of £100 million per year.
The new card issuance partnership with Science Card is the latest milestone in Enfuce’s successful growth journey, following its €45 million in Series C funding that was secured from Vitruvian Partners, a global investment firm which supports ambitious, high-growth companies. With a fast-growing roster of partnerships secured over the past 12 months, alongside several prestigious award wins, Enfuce is swiftly becoming the go-to partner for card issuance and embedded payments services in the B2B and B2C spaces.
Being the first financial service provider in the world to be PCI-DSS certified while running its service in the public cloud, Enfuce’s technology supports debit, credit, prepaid, gift, fleet and fuel card programmes in any form – plastic, digital and/or tokenised – for consumer, commercial and B2B applications, along with digital wallets.
Established in 2016 in Finland, and already the trusted number one issuer processor for more than 35 partners. Key applications for Enfuce’s services include expense management, neobanks and fuel retailers, as well as providing corporate and consumer payment programmes and advanced spending controls. To date, Enfuce has supported 16 million cardholders and processed more than €1 billion in transaction value annually.
Enfuce runs card issuing on the Way4 software platform.
Source: Enfuce