Standard Bank accelerates its corporate clients’ move to a cashless society

Johannesburg - Standard Bank continues to modernise its payment ecosystems with the launch of a corporate Rapid Payments Platform designed to offer corporate clients the convenience of instant payments.

The platform gives businesses the ability to receive and payout money instantly. Additionally, it enables them to onboard suppliers quickly as its not limited to full banking account details but can accept proxies as well. 

"The new Rapid Payments Platform offers an exciting alternative to the traditional payment mechanisms of cards and physical cash, which either have high costs or risks attached to them", says Stuart McDermid, Executive Head: Product Solutions at Standard Bank. 

Payshap gives businesses the opportunity to relook at their business and leverage these new technologies to reduce risk, minimise cost and increase cashflow by starting the move to real time payments. Businesses can improve efficiencies by reducing the time and resources required for cash handling, managing reconciliation, and risk. 

"New services like this are becoming increasingly important to help South Africa reduce cash, become more efficient and align with the global standards. According to recent media reports, the plans and execution of these new technologies by the banking industry will ensure that the South African Reserve Bank Vision of 2025 is achieved", says Nthabiseng Mohale, Manager Interbank and Regulator Forums at Standard Bank.

Furthermore, Visa's Spend Trend 2023 report states that the Covid-19 pandemic significantly impacted consumer spending behaviour across both the world and South Africa – this was one of the key drivers to help incentivise the move by Standard Banks corporate clients to digital transactions. 

Having taken this rapidly changing environment into consideration and aligned with Standard Bank's commitment to transform client experience, Standard Bank continues to innovate through bringing solutions to clients, enabling them to keep pace with the ever-evolving payments and business landscape.

While the innovative digital Rapid Payments Platform minimises, the potential risks associated with cash handling by businesses, it also allows them to broaden their access and services to the unbanked and underbanked in remote or rural areas, where traditionally cash is the dominant way of transacting.

An additional benefit of the new platform is that it simplifies the onboarding process to allow clients to start transacting without incurring IT or integration costs.

"In developing this solution, we partnered with our clients over the past two years to bring them a solution that they wanted and needed. Following on from this, clients can test and learn before signing up to the facility" says Nthabiseng Mohale.

Payshap really helps businesses of all sizes to fulfil the delivery of goods and services faster because incoming payments are reflected in their accounts immediately, and outgoing payments like wager are available to staff immediately.

The secure, hassle-free facility will also help businesses with the option of paying their beneficiaries via a cell phone number where until now, they predominantly relied on a bank account number to process transactions.