Bank of America speeds up business-to-consumer payments

Bank of America is streamlining payments between businesses and consumers to address a proliferation of use cases that require direct disbursements.

Called Pay to Card, the feature uses the details of noncredit payment cards associated with an account to expedite transactions, allowing direct deposits into payee's consumer or small-business account.

By using debit card numbers, which are standardized, the bank is able to avoid using bank account numbers, which can vary in different countries and slow payments. The debit rail makes funds available within five minutes for domestic payouts and 30 minutes for cross-border payouts, Bank of America said. The service is available in about 170 countries in more than 120 currencies.

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BofA envisions companies will find the product useful when paying contractors and gig economy workers, who have irregular payout requirements. Refunds, rebates, insurance payouts, financial aid and disaster relief payments are also possible use cases.

Speeding up disbursements has become a priority for banks and payment companies in the past year as a way to improve consumer and business cash positions during the economic crisis that accompanied the pandemic.

Citigroup earlier this year integrated with Mastercard Send to funnel payments from commercial bank clients directly to consumer debit or prepaid accounts. And Goldman Sachs recently partnered with Visa to speed processing for supply chain payments and business-to-consumer disbursements with payers and payees in different countries.

"The ubiquity of e-commerce today has fueled a huge demand for companies to make B2C payments domestically and cross-border," Fernando Iraola, co-head of global corporate sales, GTS and head of Latin America GTA at Bank of America, said in a press release.

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