Bottomline Technologies, a provider of collaborative payment, invoice and document automation products, has revealed that the company’s new Faster Payments system has been used to make the live, direct submission of a corporate Faster Payment into the Direct Corporate Access service.
The company claimed that the new offering provides corporations with direct access to the new near real-time payments system in the UK. Through the use of this product, businesses can reportedly streamline their payments and reduce bank fees on same-day payments for up to £10,000, representing a fraction of the cost of sending payments by CHAPS, the UK’s RTGS payment system.
Faster Payments is said to be a new payment instrument in the UK, launched in May 2008, and available initially via e-banking and phone banking to consumers and corporations.
Direct Corporate Access to Faster Payments was recently launched as an enhancement of the Faster Payments system, allowing high volumes of Faster Payments to be managed in a similar way to Bacs, the UK’s ACH, which enables businesses to submit payment files directly to the ACH, instead of via banks, the company said.
The launch of Bottomline’s Faster Payments coincides with the central Direct Corporate Access hub managed by Vocalink now being fully operational. Initially rolled out by Barclays, Direct Corporate Access allows corporations to send single or bulk payments of less than £10,000 per item directly into the Faster Payments Direct Corporate Access service for payment within 2 hours.
The Direct Corporate Access version is a sister service to the UK Bacs corporate payment channel, reportedly used by 30,000 corporations to send payment data for clearing.
Nigel Savory, managing director of Bottomline Technologies Europe, said: “By integrating Faster Payments onto a single platform with our market-leading Bacs and check solutions, we are able to offer our customers maximum flexibility and efficiency in their payments solutions.
“Being the first solution provider to enable a corporate customer to make a payment into the new Direct Corporate Access service of the Faster Payments system is highly fitting for Bottomline, reflecting our leading position in the UK payments market.”
