Payments infrastructure isn’t always the most glamorous corner of the fintech world, but Merusha Naidu, global head of partnerships at Paymentology, would argue it’s the most fun.
Having spent nearly five years at the London-based issuer-processor, and as host of The Issuer Academy, the company’s payments podcast, Naidu oversees the ecosystem that sits beneath the fintech products shaping how money moves.
“When we talk about payments being fun, it’s fun because we get to work with these really creative, innovative fintechs, and just learn every single day about the art of the possible around payments,” Naidu tells Tech Funding News.
It’s a growing market that’s hard to ignore, and investors are paying attention. In May, Paymentology raised $175 million, co-led by Apis Partners and pan-European private equity firm Aspirity Partners.
At IFGS at London’s Guildhall, TFN sat down with Naidu to talk about partnerships, trust, and what the UK should be focusing on next.
Building an invisible layer
Launching a fintech product and building the payments infrastructure beneath it are two very different things, and most founders only attempt one. The list of what sits between both is long, from licensing and compliance to scheme connectivity and card manufacturing.
It’s a gap, Naidu argues, that Paymentology exists to fill. The fintechs she works with come from everywhere – crypto platforms, neobanks, gig economy apps – and most arrive with big product ambitions and little payments knowledge at all.
“We don’t need our customers to know anything about payments,” Naidu explains, adding that they’ve already done the grunt work that makes a good, scalable business possible. “Our role is to take their vision and add in all of the payment mechanisms in the background.”
She points to RedotPay, a Hong Kong-based platform bridging crypto and fiat, as one example.
“They already have their crypto wallets, they do the exchanges, they do real-time transfers, but what we’re doing on the Paymentology side is adding a card, so they can go that extra step forward to say to customers, okay, you can now use your crypto anywhere for everyday spend.”
Three pillars of trust
Building the infrastructure layer is only half the battle. For Naidu, trust runs deeper than the product or direct client relationship itself.
“It’s not just trust to our customers – we’re very much B2B – but it’s that trust needs to carry through all the way to our customers’ customers.”
In payments, she says, things go wrong, and there are too many touch points in a transaction for that to be anyone’s fault. What matters is what happens next.
In those moments, Naidu argues, Paymentology stays on the ground with its clients. “How do we pivot? What’s the workaround? How do we work with any third party to try and fix it, even if it’s not within our own ecosystem?”
The bigger picture
Beyond her own client base, Naidu has been watching what the rest of the world is building. Her panel at IFGS looked at what fintech trends the UK could import from Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and her message to the UK fintechs in the room was direct.
“Don’t be held back by what you’re seeing in the market right now,” she says. “Be bold enough to take that stand and say, I want to do something differently.”
Challenging traditional banks, she adds, is the old way of thinking. “I want to challenge how everyday customers do anything. How do they spend? How do they earn? How do they move money?”
The real opportunity, she argues, is in bringing it all together, with crypto, credit, open banking, and embedded finance working in combination rather than in parallel.
“What do customers want? They want digital, they want instant, they want embedded, they want payments when they need them.”
For Naidu, that’s where the real work – and the fun – is.
This content is produced in media partnership with Native Teams and Innovate Finance.
