Historically, B2B payments arrive in the beneficiary’s account in the name of the bank or payment business the underlying customer used to send the transaction, rather than in that customer’s name. This causes a multitude of issues with both reconciliation and compliance, and inevitably has the knock-on effect of slowing cash flow.
This is of course just one of the many issues businesses face when sending and receiving payments. However, technology available today is coming to the aid of these businesses. Payments are getting faster, cheaper, easier to arrange and more transparent. A big step on this journey is a move to Payments on Behalf of (POBO), and Collection on Behalf of (COBO), whereby the financial institution is able to send a payment in the name of the payer, so that the recipient sees immediately where the payment originated and can quickly and easily reconcile that payment.
Unfortunately, existing POBO and COBO solutions do not go far enough to eradicate the pain points – they do not provide institutions with true unique IBANs, which often leads to payments still arriving in the name of the payment business or bank. This lack of payments ownership defeats the purpose of POBO and COBO and leads to the same reconciliation issues experienced with traditional transfers.
Banking Circle is committed to identifying pain points such as this and working to build solutions that truly address the issue and remove that barrier. This often requires solutions to be built from the ground up, as an adaptation of existing solutions would not solve the problem businesses face.
The new Banking Circle POBO and COBO solutions allow Banks and Payments businesses to give their customers access to transparent, local payments and collections across borders, without the need for a physical presence or a relationship with a correspondent bank in that region. The Banking Circle team have built a solution that enables financial institutions to offer immediate visibility of the sender’s details when processing B2B payments, and to collect funds locally into accounts in the underlying customer’s name. As such, payments now behave much more like consumer bank transfers: fast, streamlined, transparent and fully compliant.
Banking Circle POBO and COBO mean Payments businesses and Banks can deliver this service without relying on the slow, costly and outdated correspondent banking network or investing in building their own solution.
It was important to Banking Circle’s team that the new solution allowed providers to comply with complex payments regulation without Banking Circle taking ownership of the relationship. As a result, the financial institution remains in control of the relationship and customer experience, while Banking Circle provides the infrastructure for payments and collections to be made quickly and at low cost, regardless of international borders.
Utilising Banking Circle’s unique financial infrastructure, POBO and COBO provides Banks and Payments businesses with an optimised end-to-end payment solution and visible payment chain which is WTR compliant.
Smoother, faster reconciliation is achieved through dedicated multi-currency Virtual IBANs in multiple jurisdictions, delivering improvements across reconciliation, consolidation, risk management, operational efficiency, transaction processing and liquidity management.
Available via API, UI and SWIFT, the solutions can be accessed by new and existing Banking Circle clients, with just a connected or unconnected BIC required by the Payments business.
Find out more about POBO and COBO here, or get in touch:
If you are an existing client, please contact your Relationship Manager who will be pleased to assist you.
If you are not yet a Banking Circle client, please email us at info@bankingcircle.com or click here.
