How RTP Helps Banks Reimagine Corporate Bill Pay

Businesses want more from their financial institutions.

Business leaders expect the services that financial institutions provide to deliver the same level of speed, convenience, and accessibility that they get from the products they use in their consumer lives. But the bill payment services offered by most financial institutions are less than ideal.

Whether a business is paying a supplier or an individual, paper checks and other traditional payment methods cost too much, take too long, and provide inadequate visibility into where things stand.

Some payment solutions make it hard to pay multiple invoices at once or to pay multiple parties.

And few payment solutions integrate seamlessly with legacy ERP or accounting systems, resulting in a big administrative burden, delays closing the books, and inaccurate cash forecasting and planning.

Why Bank Customers Want RTP

A new breed of payment solution promises to change the corporate bill payment experience.

Real-Time Payment (RTP) enables businesses to instantly make payments with related transaction detail exchanged in a single, secure stream. Payers can send, track, and receive confirmation of payments in real-time, 24/7/365. And “one and done” payment finality means there are no returns.

Financial institutions are putting RTP together with payment solutions and pre-built integrations to legacy ERP and accounting systems to create new enhanced services for their business clients.

Accessed from within the bank’s online banking platform, these payment solutions enable business customers to:

• See all in-progress and completed payments from a single screen, regardless of whether they were made using RTP or another method.
  
  
• Staff can pay one or more invoices with a few clicks of the mouse.
  
  
• The business controls precisely when the real-time payment will be made.
  
  
• Funds can be released instantly, on a contractually agreed upon date, or at a date that the buyer chooses.

Payments can be made using RTP – putting funds get in the hands of suppliers or individuals fast – or any other payment method, including Automated Clearing House (ACH), virtual card wire. And finance staff have a clear view into the status of their payables and receivables payments.

Because the payment solution integrates with an ERP or accounting system, payments are reconciled in real-time, eliminating the need for staff to re-key payment details, maintain spreadsheets to keep track of payments, or manually update the status of invoices in the ERP or accounting system.

In addition to receiving and making immediate payments, customers have an integrated view of their payments and accounts on their online banking service. This includes seeing what’s been paid and what’s coming due along with the funds available without having to sign on different systems.

With payment solutions that combine RTP and built-built integrations with legacy systems, financial institutions of all sizes can help their business clients reduce their accounts payable overhead, better manage their cash flow, and enhance the payment experience for billers and payers.

If your financial institution wants to reimagine its corporate bill payment solution, a solution that combines RTP and pre-built integrations to ERP and accounting systems may be the answer.