Truist Debuts Electronic Bill Pay for Wholesale Payments Clients

Truist debuted a billing payment solution for its wholesale payments clients.

The bank’s Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment platform is designed to modernize payment management for these customers, according to a Friday (Oct. 18) press release.

“As payers increasingly expect digital payment channels, businesses need payment solutions that are secure, efficient and seamlessly integrated into their operations,” Truist Head of Enterprise Payments Chris Ward said in a news release. “Our new Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment solution helps clients achieve their electronic collection objectives by offering a safe, simple and quick way to accept payments through multiple channels.”

The new platform allows businesses to accelerate cash flow with faster payment processing, simplify operations with automated workflows and enhance security with fraud prevention tools, the release said. By automating tasks like invoicing and payment reconciliation, Truist clients can free up time and resources to focus on serving their clients and growing their business.

The new solution — available Nov. 1 to all commercial and corporate clients and their customers — is designed for organizations, including utilities, financial services providers, healthcare organizations and municipalities, per the release.

“For payers, it provides numerous flexible payment options — from online and mobile to text, digital assistant and Intelligent Voice Response (IVR),” the release said, adding that billers can streamline operations and lower their billing costs.

Digital bill payment has become routine for most consumers, although that hasn’t made the process less frustrating. Optimizing bill payments to address consumer demands presents challenges, with security concerns and unnecessary complexity among some of the top issues for billers and payers.

“Incidents like data breaches have shaken consumers’ confidence in digital bill pay,” PYMNTS reported in March. “One PYMNTS Intelligence study found that roughly 35% of consumers opposed to using digital wallets for bill pay cited security concerns as their primary reason. Another 33% expressed concerns about the security of their personal information, with 20% specifically worried about secure authentication.”

Meanwhile, additional PYMNTS Intelligence research found that 70% of consumers said the availability of their preferred payment method is very or extremely influential when deciding whether to patronize an online store.

“This preference appears to be a driver of cart abandonment rates across online platforms,” PYMNTS wrote this month.