Metro Bank has become a direct participant of Bacs, the Pay.UK-operated payment system, helping enable Direct Debit origination for business customers through a new partnership with Bottomline Technologies.
Bottomline is a leading provider technologies which help businesses pay and get paid. Through this partnership, Metro Bank has deployed new technology to take greater control of its payments capabilities and bring a best-in-class solution to market.
This is a milestone move for the bank as it continues to shake up the SME market and gets set to launch the new Direct Debit service for SMEs in the coming months.
Metro Bank business customers will be able to create, automatically collect and manage payments via Direct Debit – a service that is sometimes not accessible to many smaller SMEs. Trusted by consumers up and down the country, Direct Debit is the safest and most cost effective method of getting paid or for regular or occasional payment commitments.
76% of regular payments are made by Direct Debit1 and more than 15% of small and 30% of medium-sized businesses accept Direct Debit as a payment method2. Many of these are the types of businesses that are the mainstay of the modern economy such as gyms and online suppliers.
In 2019, Metro Bank also announced partnerships with Personetics, RMS Group Services, Funding Options, Conance, and DueDil and as part of the Bank’s commitment to collaborating with UK SMEs and fintechs by embedding them into the products and services it provides.
Paul Riseborough, Chief Commercial Officer at Metro Bank, says: “We’re seeing real transformation in the payments industry and this needs to benefit smaller SMEs too. By becoming a direct participant of Bacs and partnering with Bottomline Technologies, we will offer a best-in-class solution for our SME customers to collect payments via Direct Debit. By removing the complexity of regular payments we can save customers vital time, that can better be spent running and growing their businesses.”
Matthew Hunt, COO of Pay.UK, says: “Enabling a vibrant UK economy is central to everything we do at Pay.UK, and increasing participation and involvement in payments, while maintaining robustness and resilience, is a key driver in achieving this. As such, we are pleased to welcome another familiar name on the high street as the latest direct Bacs participant, and look forward to working with the team at Metro Bank.”
Nigel Savory, Managing Director, Europe at Bottomline Technologies, says: “We are excited to be working in partnership with Metro Bank to enable wider access to payment systems and bring Direct Debit capabilities to SMEs through our technology platform. SMEs have traditionally found it challenging to get access to Direct Debit with all the benefits it brings – but Metro Bank business customers will soon have access in a simple and secure way.”
ENDS
Notes to Editors
1 UK Finance Payments in the UK report, July 2019
2 UK Finance Business Payments Survey, March 2019