Episode Six announces a double first with Galaxy FinX

Episode Six, a leading global payment and banking infrastructure provider, today announced a new relationship with Galaxy FinX, Vietnam’s newest fintech builder that is re-shaping the future of money and banking in the country. The deal represents two firsts for Episode Six: a partnership in Vietnam as well as with a pure-play virtual-bank builder in Southeast Asia region.

Galaxy FinX selected Episode Six to provide modern cloud-based card and payment processing, which includes consumer credit- and debit-card services as well as connections to Vietnam’s domestic financial switch services. Just as Episode Six’s Tritium platform helps traditional banks innovate and offer digital solutions, it is also purpose-built to deliver key capabilities to virtual and digital banks. Tritium offers a multi-asset class digital wallet management system that can open gateways to card scheme processing and transfers across bank networks, including ATMs and Point of Sale (POS) devices.

“Episode Six is proud to be working with Galaxy FinX, which is our first partnership in Vietnam and our first with an entirely virtual-bank builder in Southeast Asia,” said John Mitchell, CEO and Co-Founder of Episode Six. “There is tremendous growth potential for digital-only banking in Vietnam and across Southeast Asia, where millions of consumers and small businesses remain unbanked or underbanked. Our technology is ideally suited to helping pioneers like Galaxy FinX design and deliver products that meet the needs of digitally-native customers in Vietnam and beyond.”

As a virtual-bank builder, Galaxy FinX will offer financial-service products, such as savings, lending, payments and insurance, digitally to Vietnam’s growing consumer base. Episode Six will provide a market-tested backbone for Galaxy FinX’s card services, allowing the new company to process payments and configure products to adapt to changing market conditions. Partnering with Episode Six also gives Galaxy FinX the flexibility to grow its business and focus on customers and evolving market dynamics rather than on underlying tech developments.

“Episode Six has a proven track record of its payments technology globally and in Asia-Pacific. Vietnam is growing to become a digital economy and Episode Six’s modern cloud-based card and payment processing platform will enable us to develop better digital propositions to serve the needs of the local market and our customers,” said Marcin Miller, CEO of Galaxy FinX. “We look forward to exploring opportunities with Episode Six as we continue to expand our products and services in Vietnam and across other markets in Southeast Asia in the future.”

Within this decade, the ongoing and worldwide shift from physical to digital represents hundreds of billions of dollars of value in the banking industry alone. Asia’s emerging economies are at the cutting edge of these trends; Singapore as an advanced economy is already innovating in the space but look for even greater acceleration in neighbouring Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia as well as Vietnam. Digitalization is rapidly transforming the payments landscape for businesses and consumers. Research from IDC predicts that by 2030, 80% of global consumer payments will transact on mobile and connected devices and will not be processed by traditional institutions. Episode Six is a provider of the payment rails that make this transition possible.

Vietnam is especially ripe for change because cloud- and mobile-based banking is quickly becoming a standard in the country, where large sections of the population have lacked access to traditional checking or savings bank accounts historically. According to data from Merchant Machine, Vietnam is the world’s second-most unbanked nation. Together, Episode Six and Galaxy FinX will help change that dynamic.

Episode Six’s Tritium platform provides a comprehensive set of more than 550 APIs that facilitate innovation and customization for its clients. Its natively global solution handles different languages, currencies and country-specific regulatory requirements, and is adaptable for cloud or on-premise hosting options for real-time transfer across multiple asset classes, including fiat currencies, and other value storages, such as loyalty and reward points.