choose your partners

"Partnership has to be one of the misused business terms in the world today.”

Bob Blower, CEO of Clarency, has never been one to shy from voicing his views, but this one comes as some surprise on the heels of the company’s announcement of a new partnership with Eqibank, the Dominican digital bank that also champions financial freedom in a more connected banking world.

“It annoys me that people claim partnership when what they’re really talking about is a supplier/customer relationship. It devalues genuine partnerships, which are the fundamental base of our entire business.”

Clarency, whose AML/KYCC and payments platform biz.Clarency launched in December, has already developed close ties with market leaders and technology innovators to bring to market a single-login enabler for compliance, multi-currency payments and information sharing.

“None of this would have been possible without hands-on involvement of partners who have already established leadership. These are people who’ve rolled up their sleeves to play an active role in the development cycle. That includes big names like China Systems and technology innovators like InterlockLedger. But we should also recognise the small, visionary companies like The Little Coding Company, who’ve enabled specialist functions like direct interfacing with customers’ accounting systems and bank accounts.”

The newly announced partnership with Eqibank illustrates another element of Blower’s creed, that technology alone can’t provide a solution.

“For any technology platform to deliver real benefit it has to be integral to actual business. Our first contact with Eqibank suggested that we had a lot in common. They strongly advocate openness and free competition as enablers to financial inclusion for emerging economies. Those views chime perfectly with our own, and both companies are active in bringing opportunity to those markets to foster world trade and local prosperity.

“At the base of the partnership is a mutual customer relationship. Our payment exchange activities give surplus liquidity in some currencies and a requirement for additional liquidity in others, while Eqibank sees the same, but opposite requirement.

“But that’s just how the engines work; the interesting part happens in the cockpit. By combining resources, technologies and vision, Eqibank and Clarency free up access to world trade for those countries that have been financially marginalised by bank derisking. We’re applying better-than-bank diligence to every party and every transaction, facilitating rapid, hard-currency payments at sensible rates, and creating system-wide transparency that aids the good guys and freezes out the bad. It’s not an aim, it’s what we’re doing – right now.

Councils, consortia and committees conceive rules, set targets and define aims. Meanwhile, genuine partnerships between people and companies with a common aim are getting things done.”