Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) said today it will soon offer proprietary single-use accounts to its commercial card customers for business-to-business (B2B) purchases.
Both Visa and MasterCard commercial card customers will be able to use the pre-approved accounts that reduce fraud and control spending.
Importantly, customers who use Wells Fargo's Payment Manager service, the company's automated payments and remittance channel, can leverage Payment Manager to access this function and benefit from a single pipeline into the bank for all of their payables needs - ACH, check, wire, and card. In addition, single-use accounts are delivered and managed via a proprietary Wells Fargo system, the Commercial Card Expense Reporting (CCER) platform.
"Wells Fargo is exploring a variety of approaches to this emerging market based on individual customer need," said Mary Mazzochi, senior vice president and manager of Wells Fargo's Commercial Card product suite. "The new single-use accounts bring a high degree of control and protection to larger B2B transactions without giving up traditional efficiencies of commercial cards."
This new feature is offered in addition to the accounts payable solution announced in October 2007, when Wells Fargo became the first bank to join the MasterCard Payment Gateway. This straight-through payment processing platform routes commercial card payments from buyers to their suppliers and supports automated settlement without requiring suppliers to enter account numbers at the point of sale. Commercial customers also use Wells Fargo's Payment Manager service to leverage this straight-thru card processing offering as part of Wells Fargo's total payables solution.
Suppliers benefit from the single-use accounts and the straight-through processing solutions alike. Both improve supplier cash flow with card-based payments. Detailed electronic remittance data accompanies transactions and simplifies reconciliation.