Bottomline launches open banking payment initiation service

Bottomline, a provider of business payments technology, has announced the launch of Pay Direct. This open banking payment initiation service is designed to provide UK companies a more efficient and cost-effective way to receive online payment from customers.

As an alternative to the raft of payment methods available for making an online purchase, Pay Direct gives merchants and customers a way to pay and get paid. As an open banking payment initiation service, the service enables online businesses to receive funds directly from the payer’s bank account via Faster Payments. Using Pay Direct, the payer initiates the payment from their trusted bank application while remaining in the business’s online journey, ensuring a consistent brand and user experience. This way of processing an online payment offers an alternative for merchants looking to reduce card fees, benefit from quicker settlement and improve reconciliation. 

The Bottomline solution increases the options companies have to efficiently manage their cash collections – adding open banking transfers to direct debits and card processing. To ensure maximum coverage of the payer population, Bottomline has already connected to the majority of banks across the UK.

 

Finexio partners with Billtrust to expand supplier network 

Finexio, a fintech company in the accounts payable space, has announced its partnership with Billtrust, a B2B order-to-cash solution provider, to provide faster digital payments to its suppliers and support the continued growth of its supplier network. Billtrust’s Business Payments Network (BPN) bridges the world of B2B payments by connecting buyers and suppliers on one powerful platform. This partnership expands the coverage of suppliers that can be paid electronically through Finexio’s network.

Paper cheques have traditionally been the preferred method of payment for many accounts payable teams, even up until recently. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many businesses to transition to faster, more accurate and increasingly digital payment options. Finexio provides customers the opportunity to eliminate 100% of manual payments, reducing the workload of finance teams - from contacting vendors and managing preferred payment methods, to cutting down the time it takes to track when payments are sent and received.

By joining BPN, Finexio can now provide faster and more accurate payment and reconciliation services for its customers. The fintech has access to hundreds of suppliers where Billtrust has accounts receivable integration. Suppliers in this network now have the ability to process Finexio’s virtual card payments, aiding in the expansion of card-enabled merchants that Finexio is able to pay. In addition, automated invoice reconciliation will be provided to reduce the friction of B2B payments and increase transparency.

 

Global Payments joins forces with AWS on payments

Global Payments and Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, have announced a multi-year collaboration agreement to provide a cloud-based issuer processing platform to financial institutions around the world. As part of this agreement, Global Payments and AWS will strategically collaborate to transform Global Payments’ core issuing platform to deliver solutions for the payment industry at scale. Global Payments will work with AWS to build on AWS’s customer relationships, making innovative technologies available to institutions of all sizes worldwide and expand the customer base for Global Payments’ issuer processing services.

Global Payments’ cloud-based issuer processing platform built on AWS is designed to allow financial institutions of all sizes to more seamlessly operate the entire lifecycle of card issuance and management. The company is also leveraging the scalability of AWS’s global infrastructure to support the rapid adoption of Global Payments’ issuer processing platform around the world, which currently handles approximately 27 billion transactions annually.

Global Payments says it will rely on AWS as its preferred cloud provider for issuer processing and will use a range of AWS services, including storage, compute, database, security, analytics and machine learning to fulfil compliance requirements, enable new cloud-based services, and enhance customer experiences for its clients and their cardholders. In addition, Amazon and Global Payments will work together to explore additional opportunities for collaboration on innovative payments products and services across all of Global Payments.

 

Arkieva releases machine learning supply chain forecasting tool

Arkieva has announced the launch of a machine learning forecasting and return on investment (ROI) tool, Swifcast. The solution is an app that allows users to load historical supply chain data and get both an actionable demand forecast and an ROI to prove the business case for transforming an organisation's approach to predicting future demand.

Swifcast is designed to help supply chain practitioners better understand the intersection of technology and financial results, alleviating concerns over making changes to business process without a firm feel for the outcome.

It is a cloud-based solution that is free to the public. The hope is that the information provided by Swifcast will help supply chain leaders accelerate their move away from Excel-based forecasting and begin to model demand using ML-based applications. The ROI calculation in Swifcast takes this outcome and helps the user understand the impact of improved forecast accuracy on the overall business.