FI.SPAN, Beanworks Target Mid-Market With B2B Payments Hub

Financial services application program interface (API) platform FI.SPAN is collaborating with B2B payments company Beanworks to create a corporate payments hub, the companies announced Thursday (Dec. 8).

The businesses will target mid-market business customers and create a B2B payments hub through Beanworks’ existing BeanPay platform. FI.SPAN will integrate third-party FinTech services into the hub, the firms explained, and deploy APIs to facilitate payment processing.

“Beanworks believes in our vision of sharing modern business services within the corporate customer’s primary business applications,” said FI.SPAN CEO and founder Lisa Shields, in a statement. “We’re thrilled  to match the quality of Beanworks’ accounts payable automation user experience with a very modern portfolio of payment services.”

“Our mission is to make the life of the treasurer easier,” said Beanworks CEO Catherine Dahl in another statement. “They’ve told us that manual reconciliation and file transfer is no longer acceptable. FI.SPAN’s solution enables us to immediately and profitably extend our AP workflow through to world-class payment capabilities.”

The FI.SPAN collaboration follows June’s announcement that Beanworks secured $4.5 million in Series A funding from Vancouver Founder Fund and TIMIA Capital, which coincided with the appointment of three new executives to the Beanworks team.

In a recent interview with PYMNTS, FI.SPAN’s Shields explored how financial institutions are beginning to interact and adopt API technology.

“There’s a perception that everybody’s talking about APIs and everybody’s intrigued, but there’s still a lot of skepticism,” said Shields. “They’ve already lived through a hype cycle. When we talk to financial institutions, it’s not to preach about the future; it’s to ask, ‘What are your clients’ frustrations and demands?’ If the compelling need is an enriched batch data exchange service for enterprise customers, that’s a great place to start a dialogue, and start a walk toward real-time exchange with SMB clients.”