Citi Launches Digital Consumer Payments Platform

Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions, a unit of Citi, announced Tuesday (March 26) it is developing a new business unit that will enable consumers to make digital payments to institutions.

In a press release, Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions said it’s part of its aim to enable digital commerce for clients and to expand beyond the wholesale payments market. The service will be made available to institutional merchants, giving them the ability to collect payments from cards, e-wallets and new bank transfers such as Request to Pay and Open Banking. Consumers will have access to a variety of payment methods as a result. To provide this new business Citi said it tapped Mastercard Payment Gateway Services, which is integrated into e-wallets around the world. The company said it will also enable connectivity with its proprietary transaction services and FX businesses, noting that it has established direct connections to new instant payment schemes in more than twenty countries.

“Our mission is to power frictionless payment acceptance with nimble technology. We want to extend our leadership beyond the B2B payment space by developing capabilities to enable institutions to collect from consumers in a globally consistent and seamless fashion,” said Naveed Sultan, global head of Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions, in a press release.

According to Citi, with this service institutions can gain more insight into the transaction lifecycle so they are focused on where the growth is while consumers will benefit from “payment ubiquity.”  Citi said the solution is acquiring-agnostic, providing institutions the opportunity to bring their existing acquiring connections onto the gateway. “The partnerships that we have established will allow us to accelerate the delivery of a progressive and innovative solution. Today, we see our institutional clients using many different providers and having to piece together the solutions they are seeking. Citi’s ability to be a single holistic provider for transaction services is what makes this approach unique,” said Manish Kohli, global head of payments and receivables at Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions, in the same press release.