Krungthai Bank Deploys Visa B2B Connect in Thailand

Krungthai Bank (KTB) and Visa have partnered to streamline cross-border corporate payments for Thai businesses.

By implementing the Visa B2B Connect solution in Thailand, KTB will be able to improve the visibility, predictability and cost of the transaction flow, the bank said in a Tuesday (March 7) press release.

“The partnership with Visa is one of our strategies to create a sustainable ecosystem of financial management services for corporate customers, including payment, liquidity management and real-time digital cross-border money transfer services to allow customers to manage their cashflow efficiently,” KTB Senior Executive Vice President and Head of Global Transaction Banking Group Tawatchai Cheevanon said in the release.

PYMNTS research has found that 38% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) reported an increase in cross-border payments sent or received between 2020 and 2021.

At the same time, just 23% of SMBs find their current cross-border payment solutions to be very or extremely satisfactory, according to “International B2B Payments: A Guide for Entrepreneurs and Digital Businesses,” a PYMNTS and Payoneer collaboration.

With the Visa B2B Connect solution, money is transferred directly from the originating bank to the beneficiary bank — without an intermediary bank — so KTB’s money transfer services will be faster, more cost-effective and more secure, according to the press release.

Customers will be able to track the status of payments in near real-time, the release said.

“As Thai businesses continue to expand globally, innovative solutions are emerging that reimagine how B2B cross-border payments are made,” Visa Group Country Manager for Regional Southeast Asia Serene Gay said in the release. “These evolving solutions are offering important advantages to banks and their customers by providing improved transparency, increased predictability and ultimately profitability.”

This deployment of Visa B2B Connect in Thailand comes about three weeks after Visa partnered with Freedom Finance Bank Kazakhstan JSC to facilitate cross-border payments in Kazakhstan.

“Connecting to the Visa B2B Connect platform will strengthen Kazakhstani business and build an ecosystem of financial services for legal entities,” Aidos Zhumagulov, adviser to the chairman of the board of directors of Freedom Bank, told UZ Daily in a report posted Feb. 21.

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