Payments solutions provider RS2 Software, which has a strong presence in Malta, expects 2023 to be filled with innovation and change within the constantly evolving payments industry.
In an Interim Directors’ Statement released on Friday, its Board of Directors provided an update on the group’s performance during 2022 and also its expectations for the following financial year.
The Directors remarked that while it has been operating in a “challenging” economic environment due to customers being “cautious to execute signed projects while also holding back new ones”, 2022 proved to be a year of “continued execution of strategy and resilience” as RS2 Software remained on track to achieve its long-term targets. They added that this was possible thanks to its team, management, and Board of Directors, “who reacted very quickly to the new challenges and adapted to the lessons learnt during the pandemic turmoil”, which only continued to solidify the group’s organisation for any “turbulence” ahead.
Over the course of 2022, RS2 Software extended its offering in Latin America through market entry in Mexico, Colombia and Peru, where transaction processing services to Payment Service Providers (PSPs), banks, and financial institutions will be serviced. It also expanded its Asia Pacific services to Singapore and Malaysia. The group is also in the process of introducing its real-time online local scheme InstaPay to the Philippines.
The Directors added that its US subsidiary, RS2 Software Inc, has enhanced its strategy while continuing to “ramp up its client base with respect to the Independent Sales Organisations (ISO) processing business”. The subsidiary will thus be focusing on enterprise business, acquire processing, and issuing processing, with the latter being a completely new business line.
RS2 Smart Processing has continued to increase its transaction processing volumes through new and existing customers, while also working on standardising its product and service offering to improve time-to-market and profitability. This allows the group to also offer services to smaller clients through a fully digitalised service which is currently being developed.
RS2 Financial Services GmbH was granted an E-Money institution (EMI) licence by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority in May 2021, allowing the subsidiary to become a principle member of Visa and MasterCard. As a result, the group can now provide “direct acquiring and issuing services to merchants, which were set in motion in 2022”.
The Directors remarked that RS2 Financial Services is “very well positioned in the European market”, particularly in Germany, where together with RS2 Smart Processing, it will be able to provide both acquiring and processing services.
They added that financial results in 2022 indicate a “stable top line” compared to the previous year, despite current market conditions.
“Together with the repercussions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has magnified the slowdown in the global economy which entered a period of feeble growth and elevated inflation. This affected the group’s forecast for the year by way of customers delaying projects or stretching investments to bare minimum,” it explained.
The Directors stated that a “significant stagnation in investment” was noted in mid-2022, so RS2 Software opted to apply counter measures which allowed for a “positive ramp up in top line and bottom line” over the final few months of the year.
They revealed that more than 1.2 billion technical transactions were processed by RS2 Software in 2022, on its RS2 Smart Processing platform. This increase is “expected to continue to progress with a gradual increase” from its current clients as well as the onboarding of new ones.
The group expects 2023 to be a year of “significant innovation and change” within the payments industry, with a focus on making payments more “convenient, secure and personalised for consumers”.
The Directors added that it will “continue to concentrate on implementing and delivering its strategy around its main business pillars of growing and expanding the managed service business, ramping up the US expansion and building its own direct acquiring business”.
Further investment is planned by RS2 Software with regards to its infrastructure to “strengthen the technology and complete the product to play a more active role in the digitalisation of the whole customer journey”, while also offering omni-channel solutions and “go beyond” traditional payment solutions.
Additionally, it was revealed that it is also considering some merger and acquisition activities in order to increase its merchant portfolio.
“The outlook for 2023 indicates that business will ramp up with a stronger pipeline gearing up for the coming year, which, together with the launch of several new exciting products for the group, including Merchant reconciliations modules, Merchant and Partner Portals and Tokenisation for Issuing Services amongst others, will lead the group to a successful 2023 and beyond,” the Directors concluded.
RS2 Software is a company that provides a cloud services platform for payments, with the goal to remove any technical barriers that make the integration or management of payment services complex.
