With banks transitioning from a branch-based customer interaction business model to include a greater emphasis on digital banking variants, including payments in general and EBPP as a specific, value-add capability. This is all part of the primary goal of delivering outstanding customer satisfaction.
Banks get their FinTech Mojo Back
In today’s economic climate, the self-described “FinTechs” are often seen as industry innovators while traditional financial service providers are positioned as staid, conservative, legacy businesses. In reality, there are core banking functions that only banks can provide in a highly regulated industry. No matter what new mobile app comes to market for lending, finance, investing, saving, etc., there is always a bank in the background performing the tedious and mundane, but necessary tasks: BSA, KYC, AML, credit risk, FDIC insurance to name a few. Not all FinTech firms last due to funding, adoption, and revenue model issues. Long after the FinTech is gone, the bank is still responsible for picking up the pieces.
The “FinTech” concept has always been about two major components, Financial Services combined with Technology and Banks. Once considered one of the earliest adopters of technology, many are bow considered laggards. Now, many progressive banks are in a unique position to reestablish their FinTech dominance.
One of the areas that banks can get their “mojo” back is in payments. The “operating system” of the bank — one that enables complex treasury management — can be built upon an existing platform to extend advanced capabilities to commercial clients that may otherwise seek these services from FinTechs. The one thing that FinTechs can’t offer to commercial clients is the safety and security of their money. The reality is that adding an external FinTech service provider that moves money outside of the bank can increase the financial risk for commercial clients.
This puts the bank in a unique position to be able to offer advanced payment capabilities to their key commercial clients. However, with opportunity comes challenges, and the challenge that many banks have is the time and resources to build complex payment capabilities on top of their core banking platforms. power with the innovation and speed of high-tech product companies.
Fin + Tech = FinTech Partnership
To address these challenges, banks are partnering with experienced and stable technology providers to combine the financial strength and market power of banks with the innovation and speed of innovative tech product companies. When it comes to payments, select technology companies excel in developing omnichannel payment experiences while banks excel at making funds available rapidly to their commercial clients. For these commercial clients, payment processes tend to be complex and focused on paper: paper invoice goes out and paper checks come back.
Next-Gen Bill Payment Technology Meets Treasury Management Services
While a typical bank’s treasury management commercial clients may utilize basic ACH, remote deposit capture, and lockbox services, banks cannot typically support the complex payment workflows that these clients need. Consequently, they strive to adopt electronic payments as the primary payment acceptance method. This is where the right technology partnerships are critical.
For banks, partnering with a payments technology provider that is focused on delivering and maintaining an enterprise-class bill payment solution has many key benefits:
- An “evergreen” product roadmap that keeps up with the latest technology
- Customer-centric services that keep your clients engaged
- Dedicated staff to service and support your
When choosing a payments technology provider, banks should consider the following:
- Guaranteed up-time that is even better than their own banks’ SLAs
- Integrated with the bank’s treasury management system
- Provides pricing that matches the bank’s desired go-to-market model
Enterprise Payments for Any Size Business
Every sized business deserves the very best platform for managing their payments. Aliaswire’s DirectBiller™ advanced bill payment and bill presentment (ABPP) solution is designed to give banks a suite of differentiated payment services that integrate with, and complement, traditional bank offerings. They also maintain the banks’ strict requirements for security, privacy, and vendor management. Also, DirectBiller’s advanced processing platform and APIs orchestrate and manage the complexities of bill presentment and payment to deliver a transformed biller and payer experience. A fully customizable, out-the-box solution, DirectBiller gives businesses the freedom, control and cost savings to easily achieve their EBPP/EIPP payment strategy.
DirectBiller enables the bank to offer fully integrated payments to meet the payment requirements of even their most complex and demanding commercial clients. Examples include full PDF presentment, IVR, card processing, surcharging, and real-time integration with accounting and operational systems.
At Aliaswire, we put the Tech in FinTech. When you are ready to partner to deliver the most secure, reliable and scalable advanced bill payment solutions to your most valued commercial clients, contact us.