Bank of America is adding a new payment solution to its suite of business-to-consumer (B2C) payment capabilities. Named Pay to Card, the solution supports corporates’ growing need to pay consumers quickly and digitally by depositing funds directly into an individual’s or small business’ bank account.
Pay to Card leverages the details of a bank card (excluding credit cards) associated with an account to process the transaction.
A major benefit of Pay to Card is speed. For domestic payouts, funds are typically available in near real time, within 5 minutes, while applicable cross-border payouts are often available within 30 minutes. Exemplifying the bank’s leadership in emerging payments and foreign exchange, Pay to Card is expected to process payments to around 170 countries in more than 120 currencies.
“As the payments industry continues to evolve, we are constantly investing and bringing to market new solutions and services that can help clients become more efficient and relevant to a broadening set of stakeholders.” said David Kretz, head of Global Payments in Global Transaction Services at Bank of America. “As the latest addition to our suite of digital B2C payment options, Pay to Card offers enhanced speed, flexibility and convenience.”
The launch of Pay to Card comes at a time when companies are getting closer to their customer base and having to manage an increasing number of payment interactions. Use cases of Pay to Card transactions include:
• Payments to contractors and gig economy workers
• Refunds and rebates to customers
• Disaster relief payments
• Financial aid payments for higher education
• Insurance claim payments
“The ubiquity of e-commerce today has fueled a huge demand for companies to make B2C payments domestically and cross-border,” said Fernando Iraola, co-head of Global Corporate Sales, GTS, and head of Latin America GTS at Bank of America. “Pay to Card could bring substantial efficiencies to our clients while improving their own customers’ experience.”
The key benefits of Pay to Card payments include:
• Enhanced digitization. Clients want more digital B2C payment methods to reduce check volumes and the associated manual processes.
• Speed. Domestic payouts settle within 5 minutes and applicable cross-border payouts often settle within 30 minutes.
• Greater certainty for cross-border payments. Bank of America can determine whether a beneficiary is eligible for a payment on the same day of payment instruction receipt by the Bank, avoiding uncertainty and reducing delays. Further, an unsuccessful payment is quickly identifiable and can be resolved faster than other cross-border payment methods.
• Security. Pay to Card payments are processed through tokenization. Further, corporates can send digital payments without needing to store a beneficiary’s bank account and routing details.
• Consistent global requirements. Debit cards have a standard number of digits, whereas bank account characteristics vary greatly from one country to another.
Pay to Card joins the bank’s award-winning suite of payments capabilities including Global Digital Disbursements and Cross-Currency ACH. More payment innovations are expected later this year.