Standard Chartered accelerates global expansion of digital collections gateway

Standard Chartered and the merchant acquirer Worldpay from FIS have announced a strategic partnership to expand the market coverage of and enable new capabilities on Straight2Bank Pay, the bank’s one-stop digital collections gateway for merchants. 

The collaboration promises to deliver a suite of digital collections solutions that cater to the evolving needs of businesses, enabling them to collect funds from a broader range of payment methods, including cards and alternative payment methods (such as e-wallets and bank transfers). It also allows Straight2Bank Pay to grow its footprint across Asia further, enter into new markets across Europe, the Middle East, the UK and the US, and support more merchants in facilitating seamless payments experiences for their consumers.

Standard Chartered is targeting the growing need for efficient digital collections among corporates through direct connectivity to instant payment schemes across its main markets, along with partnerships with payment service providers and fintech players. The bank says that, since its inception, Straight2Bank Pay has seen steady growth in its client base across various industries, with transaction value more than doubling from 2021 to 2022 and transaction volume growing more than three-fold over the same period.

“With the global e-commerce market expected to reach US$8.53 trillion by 2026, businesses need to adapt at speed to both the evolving digital payments landscape as well as their consumers’ preferred payment options,” said Philip Panaino, Global Head of Cash, Transaction Banking at Standard Chartered. “Straight2Bank Pay was designed to tackle this challenge by allowing our clients to offer their customers more digital payment options without the need for multiple integrations and managing different collection accounts, and we’re delighted that our strategic partnership with Worldpay can further our reach to even more markets across the bank’s footprint, as well as provide an expanded range of payment capabilities.”

 

SAP and Icertis integrate contract data with S/4HANA 

SAP and contract intelligence firm Icertis are delivering an integration that connects AI-driven contract intelligence with SAP S/4HANA intending to enable more profitable and compliant procurement operations.

Contract intelligence enables procurement teams using SAP S/4HANA to streamline sourcing, negotiate better commercial terms, and improve regulatory and corporate policy adherence. The Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform automatically recommends clauses based on historical business relationships and tracking obligations to ensure the intent of all agreements is fully realised. AI embedded in the ICI platform also minimises risk by pinpointing deviations from standard terms, while predefined rules and templates further reduce liability through contract self-generation capabilities that enable procurement teams to play a more strategic role in driving business performance.

In addition to ICI for SAP S/4HANA (buy side), Icertis also has integrations with SAP solutions across both buy- and sell-side contracts, including ICI for SAP Ariba, ICI for SAP Fieldglass, and ICI for SAP CPQ.

“Applying AI to contract data presents a prime opportunity to impact nearly every procurement process that is tied to revenue, savings, and risk,” commented Eric van Rossum, chief marketing and solutions officer for SAP S/4HANA at SAP. “Integrating Icertis Contract Intelligence with SAP solutions enables more efficiency, automation, and insights for our mutual customers, enriching their enterprise data lakes with critical information around commercial relationships to better support scalability and growth long term.”

 

MonetaGo taps Lloyd’s List Intelligence to authenticate trade finance documents

Financial technology solutions provider MonetaGo has selected Lloyd’s List Intelligence as a data partner to strengthen its real-time interruption of fraudulent trade financing attempts through the authentication of crucial trade documents.

MonetaGo’s Secure Financing system enables banks, non-bank financial institutions, fintechs and trade finance funds to verify documents, such as invoices, bills of lading, warehouse receipts and purchase orders, before deciding to finance them. The solution hashes relevant information from documents to create a unique fingerprint, which is compared in MonetaGo’s global registry to identify if the same document has been used in prior financing. 

The system also provides financiers with an additional layer of security against potential fraud attempts by verifying documents against trusted data sources to identify falsification or tampering.

Under the partnership, MonetaGo will incorporate Lloyd’s List Intelligence’s trade and maritime data in the Secure Financing system to provide bill of lading verification, container location and loading, vessel tracking and container movements for the entire voyage, including actual ports of load and discharge, vessels involved and transhipment points on route to the destination. 

Financiers can now leverage Lloyd’s List Intelligence vessel information to authenticate and verify the underlying information when reviewing trade documents within the Secure Financing system, thereby mitigating the risk of forged documents being presented for financing. 

“Integrating our analytics into MonetaGo’s Secure Financing system furthers our mission to drive commercial advantage, evaluate risk, and support the efficient and lawful movement of seaborne trade,” commented Chas McNee, Strategic Partnership Manager at Lloyd’s List Intelligence.

 

FedNow testing and certification heats up ahead of July launch

Two firms have released details of their role in the soon-to-be-launched US real-time payments service, FedNow. 

Jack Henry has announced that it is operationally ready to support the launch of FedNow, having actively participated in the development of the network. More than 20 Jack Henry clients will participate in the supporting pilot and early adopter programme.

Alabama-based Bryant Bank and HawaiiUSA Federal Credit Union will be among the first financial institutions to implement the FedNow Service using Jack Henry’s JHA PayCenter.

“Today's convenience-driven consumers and businesses expect to move money in the moment of need so real-time payments have evolved into competitive necessities,” said Tede Forman, president of Jack Henry Payment Solutions. “Based on the high and growing demand for instant payments, and the fact that more than half of all US DDA accounts are now connected to a faster payments network, banks and credit unions simply can’t compete without offering real-time payments and meaningful use cases.”

ACI Worldwide has also announced that it has completed testing and certification for the FedNow Service. Working with the Federal Reserve and stakeholders across the payments industry, ACI identified Corporate One Federal Credit Union as its initial partner to integrate instant payment services on FedNow via ACI’s Real-Time Payments Cloud to reach credit unions nationwide.

To achieve FedNow certification, ACI Worldwide completed a comprehensive testing curriculum, including fulfilling a checklist of requirements to confirm the ability to send, receive and process ISO 20022 messages and meet the requirements to operate in a 24x7x365 instant payments environment successfully.

“Our early certification is a testament to the years of investment we’ve made in our platform and real-time payment solutions globally,” said Craig Ramsey, ACI Worldwide’s global head of real-time payments. “We look forward to working closely with Corporate One and future partners to process real-time payments through FedNow and the ACI Real-Time Payments Cloud solution.”

In partnership with Microsoft, ACI Worldwide will operate the FedNow Service on the ACI Real-Time Payments Cloud, a multi-tenant SaaS platform in Microsoft Azure, supporting connectivity to both The Clearing House Real-Time Payments (RTP) network and FedNow.