Lloyds Bank Teams With Visa To Offer Straight-Through Processing For Commercial Clients

Lloyds Bank said Tuesday it would team with Visa to equip clients in Europe using its corporate charge cards with straight-through processing (STP) technology.

The technology makes paying invoices more efficient while giving buyers and suppliers the traditional advantages of commercial card payments.

“With STP, buyers can request to time their payments to maximize the number of days before their statement, giving them more flexibility with their cashflow than would be the case with a bank transfer,” the bank said in an emailed news release Tuesday (Aug. 3). “Suppliers benefit by receiving funds directly into their accounts without the need to manually input card details or use card terminals.”

In addition, STP offers “rich remittance data” that gives suppliers info on the source of inbound payments.

“STP turns the traditional supplier-initiated payments model on its head. It makes conversations around card payments easier, provides more control and insight over the transaction and can help buyers and sellers improve their working capital,” said James Sykes, head of commercial cards at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking.

The bank says the launch of STP is part of a series of recent payment innovations to support corporate clients.

In 2020, Lloyd’s debuted Swift gpi Instant, which connects the high-speed Swift gpi cross-border payments rail to real-time domestic infrastructure, in this instance, the UK’s Faster Payments system. The year before, Lloyds unveiled its payables application programming interface (API), which lets businesses send faster payments more directly with no human intervention, and processes over £350 million ($487M) of payments each month.

Tuesday’s announcement comes less than a week after Lloyds acquired Embark Group for  £390 million ($542 million) in an effort to raise its profile in the investment and retirement sector. The deal will involve Lloyds acquiring around £35 billion ($48.6 billion) in managed assets held by more than 400,000 Embark customers and will likely become final in the fourth quarter of 2021, pending regulatory approval.

Read more: Lloyds Plans To Buy Embark Group for $542M