Danske Bank Debuts Payment Automation For Corporate Cards

Danske Bank, the Copenhagen-based retail bank, has partnered with FinTech firm Zenegy to roll out a new method for automating payments made with corporate cards, a report from Crowdfund Insider says.

The report notes that this service will first be introduced in Denmark and then rolled out to other Nordic region countries, and can be accessed through an app letting users track vouchers and outstanding payments for purchases or outlays made on their Mastercards.

Niels Bang-Hansen, head of business banking for Danske in Denmark, said the new service would help to cut down on time and boost efficiencies.

“Many of the small and medium-sized businesses are today challenged by time-consuming, manual workflows, for example when processing vouchers for business purchases,” he said, according to the report. “This shows on the bottom line. We want to help them with that, and we consider it only natural, and also efficient, to offer this service as part of the customers’ business relations with us.”

The corporate card is going through a change this year, like many other parts of the business world. As people stay home to work more often, companies have adopted digital methods of payment. The corporate card has faced criticisms before over interchange fees which sometimes end up piling on small businesses without much money already.

But over the summer, corporate cards were able to help alleviate some of the financial burden of the pandemic in areas where businesses couldn’t operate at full capacity. The innovations came through traditional FIs’ lowering of fees and innovations from companies like Brex, which introduced new rewards, or FLEETCOR company Comdata debuting a new invoice financing service, PYMNTS reports. Mastercard also rolled out a service to help with working capital and automation.

Danske Bank was recently the center of controversy over accusations of laundering hundreds of billions of dollars for clients in Ukraine, Russia and other countries in February of 2019, the report says. As a result, Danske Bank was ordered out of Estonia and closed its operations in Russia and the Baltics.