Integrating Payments and Investments for Societal Impact
Most banks treat payment services as back-end infrastructure. But some innovative providers are using their payment networks to overcome problems that traditional banking has struggled to answer. They're turning payment rails into platforms for financial solutions that can change customers’ lives.
“Payment is not satellite stuff anymore. It's core to driving success beyond the borders of payment,” says Benjamin Dessy, Mastercard’s country manager for Belgium and Luxembourg.
Payment services are evolving beyond transaction processing to include not only loyalty rewards and data insights, but also emerging capabilities such as biometric authentication and agentic commerce, he adds.
Dessy was speaking at an online event hosted by Qorus. Other speakers included representatives from KBC Asset Management, its spinoff everyoneInvested, and Eurobank Greece. Together they examined how financial services providers can integrate payments with investing for social impact.
KBC Asset Management, the wealth management arm of Belgian financial services giant KBC, has attracted more than a million new investors since 2017 by integrating its investment platform with payment services. At least half the newcomers are first-time investors. The KBC initiative is helping retail customers who had no previous experience of investing build wealth while also growing the group’s business.
“We were up against a wall that clients had to jump over to move from savings to investments,”
Johan Lema, CEO at KBC Asset ManagementThe asset management firm was only providing investment services to about 20% of the KBC Group’s customers in 2017. It was unable to serve the bulk of KBC’s banking clients because its conventional wealth management services couldn’t profitably serve mass retail customers. Most of those customers had long-standing current or savings accounts and their deposits were being eroded by inflation.
“Many of our clients had the conviction that to invest you needed a lot of money or be willing to lose a lot of money. Some saw the stock market as a bit of a casino where you had to be lucky to get a return.”
The wall that blocked KBC’s retail customers from earning healthy returns from investing hampered both KBC and its clients. KBC was unable to build closer ties with its retail clients by offering them more value-added services, and it also risked greater competition from neobanks targeting the retail market. KBC clients were losing purchasing power on their deposits while missing an opportunity to grow wealth through compounding investment returns.
“Other solutions take the roundup amount and send it to a savings or current account. That just makes the problem worse because funds tend to just sit in those accounts,”
Jurgen Vandenbroucke, MD at everyoneInvestedKBC’s everyoneInvested consultancy
KBC Asset Management saw a way to overcome the investment wall by using the Mastercard payment service to link retail clients to its investment platform. It integrated an invest-while-you-spend facility into the KBC mobile banking app that automatically rounds up a customer’s payments and steers the added amount into an investment fund.
“Our challenge was to provide a simple, attractive, accessible, and affordable way for customers to take their first steps in investing,” says Jurgen Vandenbroucke, MD at everyoneInvested.
Vandenbroucke oversaw the development of the invest-while-you-spend facility at KBC and now heads the everyoneInvested consultancy spun off by the group to advise other banks on similar initiatives.
“Our solution turns investing into a daily habit. It links investing to something people do naturally every day and that’s spending. The real competition to investment products is not investment offers from competitors. It’s consumption,” says Vandenbroucke.
He adds that correctly presenting the investment offering to customers was critical to its success. An early focus on "investing made easy" didn't work. The pitch reinforced consumer perceptions that investing is complex, risky, and something for the wealthy.
Instead, KBC reframed the offer as "payments made valuable". The message hit the mark. Customers saw investing as easy and attractive and were able to access the offering with one click on the KBC mobile app.
Vandenbroucke adds that a key feature of the KBC solution is that it automatically steers funds directly into an investment account.
Vandenbroucke oversaw the development of the invest-while-you-spend facility at KBC and now heads the everyoneInvested consultancy spun off by the group to advise other banks on similar initiatives.
“Our solution turns investing into a daily habit. It links investing to something people do naturally every day and that’s spending. The real competition to investment products is not investment offers from competitors. It’s consumption,” says Vandenbroucke.
He adds that correctly presenting the investment offering to customers was critical to its success. An early focus on "investing made easy" didn't work. The pitch reinforced consumer perceptions that investing is complex, risky, and something for the wealthy.
Instead, KBC reframed the offer as "payments made valuable". The message hit the mark. Customers saw investing as easy and attractive and were able to access the offering with one click on the KBC mobile app.
Vandenbroucke adds that a key feature of the KBC solution is that it automatically steers funds directly into an investment account.
“Other solutions take the roundup amount and send it to a savings or current account. That just makes the problem worse because funds tend to just sit in those accounts,” says Vandenbroucke.
To launch the investment offering, KBC had to navigate considerable regulatory as well as technical challenges. It needed to get the go-ahead from Belgium’s financial services regulator to simplify the product onboarding process.
“We now have the experience and the expertise to create a simple client-centric process that also ticks all the boxes of investor protection regulations,” says Vandenbroucke.
KBC has built on this experience and expertise to roll out its invest-while-you-spend offering in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. It will launch in Slovakia and Hungary soon.
In Belgium, the product is delivering impressive results.
Around 15% of KBC mobile app users have activated the payments-linked investing feature and the number continues to climb. The product has helped KBC grow its investor base from two to three million while increasing its investor penetration ratio from 20% of the group’s customers to 25%.
“Something we value dearly is that we’re reaching younger investors. The average age of users is around 40 while conventional investors tend to be between 60 and 65,” says Vandenbroucke.
Barriers to adoption Banks looking to use their payment infrastructure to launch offerings with social impact must overcome some major obstacles. Executives at the Qorus event ranked the biggest hurdles. Lack of customer demand - 21% Legacy systems/integration complexity - 63% Unclear ROI/business model - 16% Not a current strategic focus - 0%
Eurobank Greece’s first-mover advantage
KBC’s everyoneInvested consultancy has been working alongside Mastercard to help Eurobank Greece develop a payments-linked investment offering. The bank introduced its invest-while-you-spend product in September and has seen a swift take-up from customers.
“In the one month since the rollout, more than 13,000 clients have onboarded the service and 35% have already made at least one investment. Around 90% of them are first-time investors,” says Filippos Tsourmas, head of Retail Investment Products, Deposits and Investments at Eurobank Greece.
This performance was achieved ahead of the formal launch of the product in October.
“Around 35% of the users are between 20 and 35. This is a good sign that the product will help us rejuvenate our client base,” adds Tsourmas.
Support from everyoneInvested and Mastercard enabled Eurobank Greece to bring the product to market quickly. The Launchpad workshop run by Mastercard helped the bank’s development team prototype the product, identify compliance and risk requirements, and present the business case to its leadership. KBC’s everyoneInvested supported Eurobank Greece while working with the local regulator to secure approval.
“We’re the only bank in the domestic market that offers such a service and we expect to benefit from first-mover advantage,” adds Tsourmas.
While most banks still view payment services as back-end infrastructure, KBC and Eurobank Greece have turned them into platforms that deliver financial solutions with measurable social impact. Their innovative offerings are advancing financial inclusion, helping customers build wealth, and opening new business opportunities.
But speed is critical, says Lema at KBC Asset Management.
“Start now. Don't think you can do this in three years’ time because by then the world will have moved.”
What will separate banks that successfully turn payment services into innovation platforms from competitors that are slower to realize the opportunity will be the decision to move quickly before the advantage is gone.