If you’re a payment service provider looking to offer bulk payment services, it’s because your end customers, especially small to medium-sized businesses, are looking for ways to streamline their operations.

Many of these businesses face high overheads and operational inefficiencies due to the manual entry of large volumes of banking data, making it difficult to scale.

However, you may be struggling to provide payments in bulk to your end customers because:

• You’re currently using legacy systems, which make adding new services to your tech stack cumbersome and costly.
• You can’t find a solution that provides the coverage your end customers need.
• You’re unsure which solution is best for your business and worry you won’t have enough in-house resources to support new integrations.

At Yapily, we simplify bulk payments through open banking solutions. Yapily enables businesses to make multiple payments simultaneously through a single transaction.

Open banking APIs can also integrate directly with accounting systems, enabling automatic bulk payment file generation. This minimises human error, ensures consistency in payments and accelerates payment processing. Unlike traditional payment methods, open banking also enables faster, more cost-effective, and secure payments through direct bank connections, without relying on costly intermediaries.

As experts in open banking, we understand how these modern payment methods can transform the operations of SMEs by eliminating inefficiencies created by outdated legacy systems.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• What are the top use cases for bulk payment services?
• What are the main bulk payment options, and who are they good for?
• How Yapily’s bulk payments solution works
• Why partner with Yapily for your bulk payment services?
• How Yapily helps Crezco optimise bulk invoice payments through open banking

Looking to help your SME clients make bulk payments more efficiently? Discover Yapily’s single API solution for bulk payment services. Contact us today.

What are the top use cases for bulk payment services?

Payment service providers (PSPs) can offer bulk payments to clients in a variety of industries with different use cases. This service often helps B2B clients do away with the tedious task of manual payment processing.

Here are some of the most common scenarios to help you uncover what can make sense for your business and potential end-customers:

• Payroll. Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) usually calculate salaries using payroll software. They then extrapolate this information in a format accepted by their financial institution and upload this file to their banking system, making the entire process clunky. Instead, with open banking bulk payments, they can make payments within the same software with a click of a button while ensuring staff and contractors receive their salaries on time.
• Invoice payments. Accounting, bookkeeping and invoicing software can help SMEs know who, what and when to pay. But not how to pay. So, SMEs will leave their invoice software to make payments via legacy banking systems. Providing bulk payment services within an accounting or invoicing software environment means customers can settle bills quicker because they never have to leave the provider’s software, boosting loyalty and retention.
• Insurance claims. Most insurance claims payments go out on a set frequency. Depending on the insurance provider, this could be weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Being able to make simultaneous payments from a single source can help insurance firms save time.
• Commission payments. Bulk payment services can also help SMEs, like real estate companies or wealth investment firms, pay commissions to their agents, brokers, and salespeople. Having a service that enables these firms to pay their workers and contractors on time and more efficiently can boost employee retention and satisfaction.
• Dividend payments. Wealth management and investment firms, financial institutions and even utility companies schedule quarterly, biannually or yearly dividend payments to account holders and shareholders. Bulk payments can help them achieve greater payment accuracy and timeliness.
• Refunds. Online retailers, wholesalers and marketplaces usually process card payment refunds on a fixed schedule, typically setting up the payout for the same time each month (or more frequently). Bulk payment services can help improve the speed of these regular payments while improving customer service and satisfaction.

What are the main bulk payment options, and who are they good for?

There are a few ways you can provide bulk payments to your end customers. Here are the three most common:

Virtual accounts: great for firms with multiple legal entities that need separate accounts

These are digital accounts with unique account numbers and IBANs that can enable firms to provide bulk payments and more. For example, virtual accounts can help companies receive confirmation of payments and settlement. This additional information can provide greater efficiency and oversight (e.g. when issuing refunds).

Virtual accounts can make sense for firms with more than one legal entity that need separate accounts. Marketplaces may also prefer virtual accounts depending on their business model and size.

For example, a B2B marketplace may want to issue different virtual accounts to different end-customers and suppliers, enabling greater oversight on payments and settlements so the exchange of goods and services can happen more smoothly.

The cost of virtual accounts can vary, depending on the provider, volumes processed and the additional services used.

Treasury management systems: best for large corporates

Large banks like JP Morgan and Citi provide companies with a centralised system to manage funds, including tools for cash flow and investment and financial management. Treasury management systems can be good for large volumes, such as having to process 10,000 transactions in a day.

Large corporations or multi-nationals making high volumes of payroll or invoice payments may prefer this bulk payment system. Cost is higher here than with other options, since it offers greater functionality across different parts of an organisation. For example, it can include additional costs that comprise transaction, account, implementation and service fees.

Open banking bulk payments: best for companies with SMEs as end customers

While Yapily simplifies the bank API complexities, it’s important to remember that not all banks offer the same level of API functionality, and Open Banking bulk payments may have limitations on the number of transactions per request (e.g., 5,000), and these limits vary by bank.

However, open banking works on the more modern and Faster Payment rails in the UK (and SEPA Instant in the EU), providing greater operational efficiency and speed with near-instant account-to-account transactions.

Depending on the provider, you may have access to Account Information and Payment initiation services (AIS and PIS, respectively). AIS verifies the recipient’s account information to ensure your payments go to the right beneficiary. PIS starts the open banking experience for you. It initiates the transaction from the sender’s bank account and asks for the sender’s consent before completing the payment, helping to simplify bank transfers and reduce fraud.

Open banking can be a good fit for accounting, payroll, wealth management and invoice software providers whose SME clients care more about efficiency and cost-effective solutions, which traditional payment solutions running on legacy systems can’t provide.

How Yapily’s bulk payments work

Yapily offers bulk payments via a single RESTful API integration and secure data connections, enabling you to tap into local payment rails and open banking solutions.

Our open banking bulk payment solution is more efficient than legacy systems. It allows you to make multiple transactions to various recipients in a single API call. You can group payments together and send numerous payments in one go instead of processing individual payments.

Open banking bulk payments service with Yapily includes AIS and PIS capabilities. With AIS, you can verify your recipient’s bank details beforehand, reducing fraud and human errors. Our PIS functionality enables you to make one-off payments on your end customers’ behalf.

With Yapily, bulk payments must originate from the same bank account on the same date using the same payment scheme in the same currency. We can also support multiple currencies if they are available via your end customer’s bank.

Who can partner with Yapily to offer bulk payment services?

As a payment service provider (PSP), you can partner with Yapily to streamline bulk payments for your clients. As a PSP, you can partner with Yapily whether or not you have your own payment initiation service provider (PISP) licence.

If you already have your own licence, you can use Yapily’s API to deliver a customised experience to your customers. Alternatively, you can take advantage of Yapily Connect’s licence to bypass the lengthy third-party provider (TPP) application process.

Curious to know how our infrastructure works? Check out our bulk payment documentation and try the demo.

An example of Yapily’s bulk payments in action

Here’s how a payroll provider can use Yapily’s infrastructure to offer their SME clients bulk payments directly from their native software environment:

1. The payroll provider leverages Yapily’s ecosystem (and licence) through a single API connection. They can then access nearly 2,000 financial institutions to help their SME clients make salary payments in bulk (assuming the financial institution supports bulk payment services through open banking).
2. The SME clients first authorise the payroll provider to access their accounts and their recipients’ banking information.
3. The payroll provider can then initiate payments on behalf of their SME clients, first by verifying employees’ bank information via AIS. Then, they can start the open banking process through Yapily’s PIS, paying multiple staff members simultaneously.
4. Staff receive their salaries quickly, helping to boost employee satisfaction with timely settlements.
5. The payroll platform simplifies an otherwise manual and time-consuming process for their SME clients, helping them to pay staff at scale in a few clicks.

Why partner with Yapily for your bulk payment services?

Yapily has been a leading provider of bulk payments in the open banking space since 2017. Here are three key reasons why we can be the right partner for your bulk payment needs.

1. You can integrate Yapily’s API easily, enabling you to start offering bulk payments quickly

Our API integration is developer-friendly, and you’ll have access to our easy-to-understand reference docs so you can implement your solutions quickly.

With our RESTful API, you can handle large transaction volumes while receiving fast response times. This way, you can provide your end-customers with the information they need to set up and process mass payments at speed.

Yapily has also standardised the information request fields, reducing the information your end-customers have to input. This streamlines the use of open banking through our API, making it more user-friendly for your end-customers.

2. You can provide end-customers with broad coverage of the most popular banks across the UK and EU

You won’t have to worry about using multiple open banking providers because partnering with Yapily means connecting to nearly 2,000 banks across the UK and Europe. We can even provide you with flexible options, like enabling you to connect to a preferred banking provider where we have less coverage in certain areas of Europe.

The UK banks we partner with that provide bulk payments via open banking include the nine largest banks chosen by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA9) and non-CMA9 institutions (see image above). This means most of your end-customers will already be account holders with these financial institutions, making it quick for them to make bulk payments via open banking and scale their business.

For example, we recently worked with a PSP that specialises in integrating online banking accounts with ERP systems, specifically Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The PSP leveraged Yapily’s infrastructure to provide open banking bulk payments to their end customers.

By offering open banking’s secure account-to-account payments, we helped reduce their end customers’ common pain point of using clunky legacy file-sharing systems to connect banking information.

3. You can get expert support to tailor a solution that meets your business payment needs

Our agile structure and size enable us to tailor solutions to your specific needs. Our staff understands the complexities of the banking industry, so we can provide the expert support you need to meet your business goals. This includes dedicated onboarding assistance and expert consultation.

With Yapily, you’ll get hands-on guidance to optimise open banking integrations, reducing time to market and enhancing overall performance and end-customer adoption.

Additionally, our commitment to continuous improvement means that we constantly update and refine our API to keep pace with industry advancements, ensuring that your solution remains cutting-edge and future-proof, as well as meeting regulatory compliance.

How Yapily helps Crezco optimise bulk invoice payments through open banking

The B2B payment provider Crezco came to us to help them improve accounting solutions for their partnership with Xero.

The Crezco-Xero partnership would help Xero customers process their invoice payments through open banking directly from Xero’s website. \

Once Crezco connected to and built out their solution with Yapily, it could offer Xero customers bulk payments. Here’s how it works:

• Xero customers can sign up for Crezco, where they’ll see their invoices in one place.
• From there, they can request approval for an invoice payment.
• Once they have approval, they send bulk payments via open banking powered by Yapily.

Thanks to Yapily’s infrastructure, Crezco can optimise the bulk accounting process for Xero customers, reducing the time and task-intensive processes they once used and enabling secure, fast payments through open banking.

Read more about our Crezco collaboration.

Offer your end-customers bulk payment services with Yapily

As you can see, offering bulk payment services doesn’t have to be clunky, costly or limited in coverage.

With Yapily, you can provide end-customers the services they need to help them scale their businesses more efficiently. End-customers will have access to a variety of financial institutions with open banking bulk payment capabilities, saving them time and money (as they don’t have to process multiple single payments).

And you can connect to our infrastructure quickly and easily with the extra support other solutions may lack.

Start providing bulk payment services to your end-customers with Yapily. Contact us today to learn how to get started.