Bottomline partners with Starling Bank on real time payments
by Graham Buck
Business payments fintech Bottomline Technologies is partnering with UK digital banking platform Starling Bank for the launch of Bottomline’s Real Time Payments Express Service.
The new 24x7 service will allow banks and corporates to send, receive and track payments in real-time to any UK bank account. It is software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based and equipped with full tracking to allow customers to see exactly where their payments have been made and received in the network.
Bottomline comments that for many corporates and banks, becoming a direct member of the UK Faster Payments Scheme (FPS) that launched in 2008 can be challenging. “The implementation costs, payment expertise and restrictive timelines can extend projects into many months and leaves the ongoing compliance burden inside the organisation,” the company notes.
To solve this, Bottomline’s Real Time Payments Express offering, powered by Starling’s Banking Services, will supply an application programming interface (API) driven real-time payment and settlement service, which provides all the core benefits of the historical access methods to FPS.
The new norm
“Real-time payments are becoming the new norm around the world. In the UK, where the FPS has enjoyed over a decade of growth, we have the technology needed to allow more participants to gain the benefit of full access to 24x7 instant payments,” said Julian Sawyer, head of banking services at Starling Bank, which was founded in early 2014. “Our new solution partnered with Bottomline delivers exactly this.”
“There is real transformation coming into the U.K. through the New Payments Architecture, open banking and the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) which gives rise for innovative partnership approaches,” said Nigel Savory, managing drector, Europe, Bottomline Technologies. “We insulate our clients from the ambiguity ahead by plugging them into Bottomline, where we remove the complexity and future-proof the changes ahead for them.”
Bottomline already supports CHAPS, SWIFT, Bacs, Visa B2B Connect, Direct Access Faster Payments, Paym, Client Assets Sourcebook (CASS) and various other payment rails through their Universal Aggregator, which will now offer the new Real Time Payments Express Service.
Starling was the first challenger bank to be a direct member of the FPS and the only banking provider of real-time access to Faster Payments through APIs in the transaction banking world
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