Streamlining Scheme Compliance: Cornèrcard's Success with Kajo

A sit-down with Francesco di Meo & Christian Tessari on their experience with Kajo

Apr 04, 2024

About Christian and Francesco

Christian Tessari began his career in the payment sector at Cornèr Bank in 1992, starting out as a programmer. Over the years, he gradually transitioned to the business aspects of payments. For the past 12 years, he has been dedicated to his role as head of IT card management and scheme compliance manager at Cornèrcard and stepped into the Vice President position in 2020.

Francesco di Meo has worked at Cornèr Bank for more than 21 years, starting out as a Divisional Financial Controller. He transitioned into the scheme compliance domain in 2017 and has been a scheme compliance manager since then, ensuring the banks' adherence to the payment networks’ standards and regulations.

Christian Tessari (left) and Francesco Di Meo (right)

What challenges have you been facing in managing compliance with payment networks?

The organisation and scheme management processes were becoming increasingly complex, leading to an escalating workload each year. We had a large team dedicated to analysing scheme announcements, holding monthly meetings, manually downloading these announcements, and individually checking them.

This process also involved meticulously tracking the responsible stakeholders, timelines, and deadlines. However, the manual nature of these tasks presented risks, especially when issues arose, making it challenging to trace back to the root of decisions and understand the reasoning for a compliance oversight.

In an effort to streamline our processes, we transitioned from using spreadsheets to adopting other tools. Despite these efforts, managing these tasks remained cumbersome. Our goal was to consolidate all relevant information in one place, ensuring clear accountability for each decision.

Why did you decide to use Kajo?

We recognised the need for improvement but were not aware of any solutions on the market that could help us. When we learnt about Kajo, we realised that Kajo could very well address our needs and help us with the challenges we were facing.

With Kajo, we not only streamlined and centralised our scheme compliance process in one place but can now keep a good audit trail of all compliance-related decisions and activities. This allows us to easily review and understand the rationale behind each compliance decision and action.

How was the onboarding process? Did you face any challenges in the adoption of Kajo across your organisation?

Initially, it was a challenge for our team. However, that sentiment faded when Kajo showed its value to the stakeholders. Kajo's capabilities in streamlining the process and distribution of schemes-related announcements and activities convinced the stakeholders.

In addition, Kajo's simple and user-friendly interface made the onboarding process for new team members very easy and accelerated the adoption of the product across the organisation.

How did the process improve after the adoption of Kajo?

Kajo has transformed our approach to scheme compliance management, making it more efficient and reliable. For example, by integrating Kajo and tailoring it to our company's compliance framework, we no longer have to sift through information irrelevant to us. Kajo filters out irrelevant scheme announcements, making it easier for us to focus on updates and mandates impacting our business. In addition, the reminder system for overdue tasks has been particularly beneficial in preventing missing deadlines.

Could you please share your experience working with Rivero?

We would give Rivero a 10 out of 10.

We have had a very positive experience working with Rivero. The Kajo team is very responsive and knowledgeable. They have always helped us when we had questions or faced issues. The team's openness to feedback and continuous updates based on our needs have made Kajo an indispensable tool for our compliance management.