Corporate Cards, Commercial Lending Seek A Bank-FinTech Collaboration Boost

Financial institutions are looking to build out their offerings for corporate customers with a range of FinTech integrations. This week’s examination of the latest FinServ partnerships finds a focus on corporate card, liquidity management, and commercial lending products as banks seek efficiencies in third-party integrations.

Virgin Money Builds Out Business Banking With Trade Ledger

Virgin Money continues to ready its infrastructure to take on the business banking competitive landscape and has just enlisted the help of Trade Ledger to bolster its offering. The companies recently announced their partnership, which will see Trade Ledger integrating its Lending-as-a-Service platform to accelerate and improve business lending workflows for the end-user. Their collaboration will initially focus on Virgin Money’s Working Capital Health offering to connect firms to term loans, invoice finance and asset finance products. “Our FinTech partners are allowing us to create something completely new for businesses, and lending is an important part of the conversation,” said the financial institution’s Group Business Director Gavin Opperman in a statement.

Pacific Western Bank Pairs For Virtual Card Offering

Pacific Western Bank (PWB)has tapped Extend to roll out its virtual commercial credit card. The bank is debuting its Virtual Mastercard commercial card product, the PWB Virtual Card, though its announcement did not reveal exactly how Extend’s technology is being used to make the solution a reality. In a statement, Extend Co-Founder and CEO Andrew Jamison said, “Demand for virtual cards has been accelerating as business clients are seeking modern solutions for B2B vendor payments, client pass-through payments, and card-less or remote employees.”

Silicon Valley Bank Enlists Teampay For Business Card Tech

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is choosing FinTech Teampay to bolster its business card offering, using Teampay technology to integrate spend management controls into the SVB Business Card solution. Teampay and SVB already had an existing partnership but will be expanding their work together with a focus on SVB’s Innovators Card product to expand its functionality to include spend management. Teampay’s platform automatically supports company spend policy, employee spend requests, routing approvals and virtual card issuance, with reconciliation integrated into corporate enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms.

Societe Generale Enhances Liquidity Management With iGTB

Intellect Global Transaction Banking (iGTB) is working with Societe Generale to integrate its Liquidity Management Solution into the bank’s offerings. Together, the firms will connect corporate customers of the bank to more sophisticated treasury and liquidity management technology, which can mitigate risk and unlock trapped capital. In its announcement, iGTB said, “New capabilities are required to meet the combined challenges presented by negative interest rates, restrictions on cross-currency and cross-border cash pooling, increasing expectations for self-service and delivering cross-functional efficiencies to corporate treasurers.”

Agora Services Eyes Banking-as-a-Service For Smaller FIs

Agora Services is looking to bring the power of Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS)to community banks and credit unions that search for a way to digitize and compete in today’s market. The company said in a recent press release that it has launched two new products designed for these smaller financial institutions, including the debut of its Agora small to medium-sized business (SMB) solution. Both are built on its BaaS platform for seamless adoption by financial institutions (FIs). “The nation’s smallest community banks need the ability to offer the same digital banking services as challenger banks and national banks, but the obstacle has always been the expense, technology infrastructure and time needed to roll out new products,” said Arcady Lapiro, founder and CEO of Agora Services.

GoCardless Embraces Open Banking

Bank-to-bank payments FinTech GoCardless is rolling out Instant Bank Pay, a solution that uses open banking to allow merchants to accept one-off bank-to-bank payments from customers instantly. In a statement, GoCardless CEO and co-founder Hiroki Takeuchi said the time it takes for bank debit payments to be authorized has been a drawback of the payment method for merchants. “Open banking will provide instant confirmation of payment authorization, enabling them to have immediate visibility of their one-off payments,” he said, adding that merchants can continue to benefit from bank debits that support their cash flow.

Experian Mitigates Risk For Commercial Lenders

Experian is a tried-and-true collaborator for traditional lenders, and the technology firm is now looking to expand its bank partnerships with a focus on corporate lending and insurance. The company recently announced its Ascend Commercial Suite, a range of solutions for financial institutions and insurance carriers targeting corporate borrowers and policyholders. The suite includes access to small and medium-sized business data to underwrite loans and policies using artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics.