RBS Citizens Financial Group has been looking to consolidate its suite of cash management services, including its wholesale lockbox offering, for the last three years.
The bank, which is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, has begun working with TransCentra on this consolidation effort. Before this agreement, RBS had two wholesale lockbox offerings: a proprietary site in Boston and a national network from Bank of New York Mellon. TransCentra has now taken over RBS' Boston lockbox operation.
A lockbox is an intermediary that collects checks and electronic payments into a single data stream, reducing clients' billing costs and streamlining the payment process. The Norcross, Ga.-based payment software provider will use its transaction management system platform to control RBS Citizens' lockbox network. This platform serves as a single hub for wholesale, retail, and remote lockbox processing.
"We're looking to not necessarily sell the value of lockbox; we're looking to sell the value of our solution versus other solutions they may be looking at," says Matt Richardson, senior vice president and head of treasury solutions at RBS Citizens, in a phone interview. "We can do that with some of the capabilities that TransCentra brings to the table, such as the ability to decision items before they get into the file and being able to get imaging on the front-end of the system."
RBS chose TransCentra because its technology supports future growth, Richardson says. For example, if RBS decides to get into more specialized verticals like property management and health care, TransCentra's platform can build that out. Additionally, even though RBS has an existing lockbox provider for retail payments, TransCentra can support this type of processing too.
"We like the flexibility TransCentra gave us down the road as well as their capabilities and expertise on the wholesale side of the business and retail," Richardson says.
TransCentra also controls both the processing and software on its sites. Therefore, RBS customers will always have the latest processing and technology options, the vendor says.
"We have nine centers across the county and collect over 50 million check payments a month and process them for banks and their customers," says Paul Diegelman, senior vice president at TransCentra, in an interview. "By owning our platform, we can modify, manipulate or change it at our customer's request without having to get the permission of any third party. We completely control that underlying platform."
TransCentra's services will also be incorporated into RBS Citizens' accessLockbox product, a fully integrated lockbox network across five sites, for faster access to payment data, online decisioning and remote lockbox services.
"Given that there has been some level of industry consolidation and many banks are looking to outsource this, we felt like TransCentra was going to be one of the providers that was going to be around for a while," Richardson says.
