Santander Teams With Global Payments on Commercial Cards

Santander Bank said it’s working with Global Payments on a card offering for corporate clients.

In a LinkedIn post on Wednesday (Jan. 4), Santander said that starting in early 2023, its Commercial Banking and Corporate and Investment Banking clients in the U.S. will be able to utilize the corporate payment card issued by Santander through TSYS, a Global Payments company and issuer processor.

“We are expanding our digital products and services and know this offering with TSYS, an industry leader in issuer technology solutions, will help our clients manage and grow their businesses,” said Joe Abruzzo, head of Commercial Banking for Santander Bank in the post.

Without giving many clues as to what the new card offering will look like, Santander hinted that it will be part of a broader partnership with TSYS to develop “innovative B2B products and services that drive digital growth.”

It added that “this new relationship is part of Santander’s transformation journey to better serve its clients by delivering digital capabilities that simplify their banking experiences.”

Another commercial banking solution Santander recently launched is Treasury Fusion, a digital platform that integrates Santander’s banking information directly into companies’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) software systems.

This eliminates the multi-step process of logging into an online banking portal and manually transferring account data into ERP systems, allowing for automatic balance and transaction updates for treasury departments.

In April, Santander debuted its “eLockBox,” an electronic lockbox designed to consolidate businesses’ incoming digital payments and simplify electronic receivables management.

Santander’s eLockBox is one of a number of corporate banking solutions banks have developed to bring business-to-business transactions into the digital age.

As Ole Matthiessen, global head of cash management at Germany’s Deutsche Bank told PYMNTS in a recent interview, a big part of the digitization of payments is a growing recognition of the importance of real-time payments within treasury departments.

He cautioned that not all industries have taken up real-time digital solutions to the same extent.

“When we talk about real-time treasury, 24/7 models, it’s clear that at the moment, some industries, specifically the B2C industries, are much more advanced,” he noted, adding that many of the corporate clients he works with still rely on batch-driven treasury processes despite the existence of faster, real-time alternatives.

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