Stearns Bank Drives X-Border Payments With WireFX Collab

In a move to drive cross-border payments for its retail and business customers, independently-owned financial institution Stearns Bank is collaborating with FinTech startup WireFX.

WireFX integrated its Global Payments-as-a-Service (GPaaS) platform into Stearns Bank’s StearnsConnect, Stern’s online banking portal that uses Q2 Technologies and Fiserv Premier (Stearns Bank banking core), “enabling clients, branches and wire operations to initiate and book wires for Stearns Bank’s FinTech-related activity,” according to a Thursday (Sept. 8) release.

“By partnering with WireFX, together we are leading the way in delivering the ultimate customer experience by streamlining and simplifying wires and global payments, giving our customers a clear advantage for their business and quickly distinguishing Stearns Bank as the go-to digital-first business bank,” said Stearns Bank President and CEO Kelly Skalicky in the release.

Stearns Bank has locations in Minnesota, Florida and Arizona.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, WireFX will also provide Stearns Bank with specialty compliance support for the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), sanction screening and anti-money Laundering (AML) for the FinTech-related activity, per the release.

“WireFX exists to serve financial institutions like Stearns Bank in their efforts to modernize and provide the best customer experience for the end user,” said WireFX CEO and President Jeff Althaus in the release. “Global payments are complex and can be tedious, but through our partnership, we will simplify the process and promote straight-through processing to increase efficiencies.”

WireFX ensures connectivity across the SWIFT and Fedwire networks and will provide Stearns Bank with access to its group of bank and FinTech foreign exchange (FX) and payment liquidity providers, the release stated. That access will help Stearns Bank bring its customers an end-to-end digital FX and payments experience.