Banking Tech reports on Monday (Oct. 8) said business payments FinTech firm Haball is collaborating with electronic trading platform 1Link and Meezan Bank to develop a digital B2B payments solution. The tool would target businesses’ inter-company transactions for streamlined payments, bookkeeping and reconciliation.
Transaction settlements will be handled by Meezan Bank, while 1Link will process the payments, reports said.
“Haball provides businesses a convenient way to pay digitally and instantly, bringing efficiencies in existing business processes by streamlining existing workflows and improving productivity,” said Haball CEO Omer Bin Ahsan in a statement.
According to reports, Fatima Group will be the first company to trial the B2B payments solution. The company’s CIO Sardar Naufil Mahmud will deploy the solution within its order-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes, and integrate the tool into its existing ERP system.
Inter-company financial management is a challenge for many organizations, particularly multinational businesses with many ERP systems and business units. Research from Deloitte published in 2016 found that inter-company accounting can be a particularly high-risk operation and introduce more friction to company processes.
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“While a lot of accounting, tax, treasury and other corporate leaders are focused on money flowing into and out of their organizations, inter-company accounting — or the money flowing across an organization’s legal entities — can become a real challenge to those experiencing global growth, M&A and supply chain integration,” warned Kyle Cheney, advisory partner at Deloitte & Touche, LLP, at the time.
Last year, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) fined Pakistani bank Habib Bank nearly $630 million for non-compliance of state and federal U.S. laws pertaining to the bank’s single U.S. branch. The DFS reportedly discovered “significant breakdowns” in the bank’s anti-money laundering compliance. At the time, the bank said it would “vigorously contest” the fines.
