One thing that readers who follow the payments industry will know is that during the past several years there has been a spate of activity around creating better experiences for users of corporate banking-related technology, and one of the key areas of continuous innovation is in the cross-border payments space.
In this announcement at businesswire we see that two of the movers and shakers in banking and payments innovation will be partnering to expand access to easier cross-border transactions across several uses cases. Following its success with Marcus, Goldman Sachs has been setting its’ sights on the corporate transaction banking space in non-traditional ways.
Visa has been pursuing a broader global payments strategy beyond cards rails by creating a ‘network-of-networks’ approach to funds movement, capitalizing on a vast existing global network asset and adding new capabilities to expand into the massive opportunity in B2B use cases.
‘Through its implementation of Visa B2B Connect and Visa Direct Payouts solutions, Goldman Sachs will help its commercial and corporate banking clients simplify complexities and costs associated with existing systems and inefficient processes. These solutions will enhance Goldman’s cross-border business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) payments program for high and low value payments. Goldman Sachs’s corporate clients can move funds quickly and securely, have near real-time visibility into their payment status, obtain necessary reconciliation and compliance data, ultimately helping improve organizations’ cash flow.’
We have been closely following the cross-border payments innovation space including direct member research explaining the various efforts to improve the speed, visibility and cost of these transactions.
We spoke with Alan Koenigsberg, global head of new payment flows, Visa Business Solutions, who advised: “our vision is to democratize the way money moves around the world and bring to life consumer-like experiences for our clients’ corporate customers. Visa B2B Connect was launched in 2019, and has been rapidly expanding, now available in 97 markets around the world. Visa Direct Payouts launched in March 2020, integrating Visa’s acquisition of Earthport to transform how Visa’s clients deploy and optimize global money movement programs. Our global strategic partnership with Goldman Sachs Transaction Banking will leverage both solutions to meet the need of clients of all sizes to seamlessly execute cross-border account-to-account payments in a new, secure, simple and transparent way.”
Built from the ground up, Visa B2B Connect is designed to shorten time spent on cross-border corporate payments by facilitating transactions from the bank of origin directly to the beneficiary bank, helping significantly streamline settlement. The platform helps increase visibility and predictability into the transaction flow, giving Goldman Sachs clients an opportunity to track the status of payments from the originator bank to the destination bank in near real time, while improving transaction accuracy and simplifying the reconciliation process.With Visa Direct Payouts capabilities, Goldman Sachs will bring push-to-account functionality for lower value, high volume cross-border Business-to-Small-Business (B2SB) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) payouts, eliminating complexities often associated with businesses having to manage multiple networks and intermediaries worldwide. Through a single connection to billions of endpoints in over 90 markets, Visa Direct Payouts expands the payment options Goldman Sachs can offer to its corporate clients.
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
