‘What’s Top Of Mind?’ Penny Hughes’ column

Dear Customer,

In my column today I would like to talk about two themes discussed at the recent Form3 Strategic Advisory Board (SAB) meeting. Firstly, how Form3 is presenting itself as a leading brand in payments, and how this helps our customers protect consumers throughout the payment process. Secondly, how we deal with the emerging regulatory landscape, with an industry focus on operational resilience.

Let’s start with the Form3 brand. Simeon Lando, Form3’s Chief Marketing Officer, joined the last SAB meeting to talk through the progress his team have made in driving brand awareness in our new and existing markets - in addition to building a strong pipeline to support the continued growth of the company.

Simeon talked about how he and the team are building the Form3 brand by telling the unique company story through a video available on the homepage of the Form3 website, alongside a series of customer success videos, including Nationwide Building Society and SumUp.

The Marketing team have also been working closely with Visa as part of work to launch the new commercial partnership. This activity includes creating a thought leadership campaign incorporating video interviews and a white paper on the topic of ‘Navigating the Digital Shift.’

The team have also leveraged PR to gain significant coverage in the media. This comprised announcing key customer wins including Klarna, completing the FedNow certification in the US, and Visa’s investment and commercial partnership. Overall, this work resulted in a 77% increase in media coverage compared to 2022.

Generating relevant and timely customer-focused content has seen the company’s LinkedIn followers continue to grow to over 20,000. This was achieved by leveraging the platform to maximise its audience reach.

The Marketing team continue to expand their event participation - speaking, sponsoring and exhibiting at several key industry events across the UK, Europe and the US. These include Sibos, Money20/20, EBAday, Nacha and the TCH Annual Conference.

Industry recognition has come in the form of 9 tier one industry award wins - up from 4 in 2022. This includes successes at the UK Fintech Awards, Europe Fintech Awards and the PayTech Awards.

In summary, In 2024, marketing continues to promote the benefits of the Form3 account-to-account platform, to support the company in setting it up for its next stage of growth in the UK, Europe and the US.

Alongside the discussion about brand awareness to support our customers at the SAB meeting, we were delighted to be joined by Deloitte for an informative and engaged discussion on the topic of operational resilience in payments.

At a global level, regulators are introducing new operational resilience requirements to protect consumers and businesses from disruptions. Whilst particular regulations such as NPA and DORA differ in detail by geography, the core three principles are the same: resilient by design, resilient through change, and resilient in adversity.

To have a shared understanding of Form3’s position in this environment, with the insight of tier one participants as shareholders and customers, is indeed valuable. This represented good strategic dialogue, as Form3 builds up its operational scale. 

Until next time, I wish you all the very best with your business activity.