SMEs remain underserved

SMEs are the lifeblood of Europe’s economy. In the UK alone, they make up [99.9%](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2021/business-population-estimates-for-the-uk-and-regions-2021-statistical-release-html#:~:text=SMEs (small%20and%20medium%2Dsized,4.2%20million%20had%20no%20employees “SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) account for 99.9% of the business population (5.6 million businesses). At the start of 2021:”) of the [5.6million businesses](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2021/business-population-estimates-for-the-uk-and-regions-2021-statistical-release-html#:~:text=SMEs (small%20and%20medium%2Dsized,4.2%20million%20had%20no%20employees “Business population estimates for the UK and regions 2021”), three-fifths of private-sector employment, and around half of the industry turnover.

So why are they still being underserved when it comes to their payments needs? From your morning coffee to your daily commute, making individual payments can be a relatively painless task. For small and micro businesses, when it comes to paying multiple recipients for contracting work, payroll, or commission, the task becomes much more complex.

Making payments to a large number of payees efficiently and without any errors should be easy. However, many SMEs are still stitching the data themselves to make payment runs between multiple accounts, invoices, and payees, which is incredibly time intensive. This can create a huge amount of overhead cost which takes time away from business functions that owners and managers really care about.

While bulk payments were introduced to solve these problems, historically in the UK, bulk payments have only been accessible to medium and large scale businesses with corporate bank accounts. This has forced SMEs to rely on inefficient legacy payment processes that cause significant headaches and issues when it comes to paying staff, suppliers, and customers on time, every time.

Removing the headache of manual entry

Comma was founded to remove the fatigue caused by manually keying in payments once and for all. Comma’s goal is to make it easy for businesses to pay salaries, taxes, and invoices, giving any SME the power to pay multiple suppliers at once from their existing business bank account. By automating the process, Comma empowers business owners to forget the stress of month-end.

To make their payments revolution a reality, Comma knew they needed access to open banking solutions to automate several pain points often associated with bulk payments.

Where Yapily comes in

Working in close partnership with Comma, Yapily has simplified the complex bulk payments process through the power of open banking. With the customer’s consent, our solution initiates bulk payments to multiple recipients without the hassle, providing an enhanced experience for the end-user.

Yapily’s infrastructure provides the API connection Comma needs to build a reliable, secure, and scalable bulk payments feature for their accountancy, payroll and bookkeeper clients. Even better, Yapily is invisible, working away in the background so Comma owns the customer journey and interface of their product - placing the customer’s needs and experience first.

Launching an embedded payments experience

Harnessing Yapily’s Bulk Payments offering, Comma users can pay business expenses such as bills and payroll in just a few clicks straight from their bank account allowing financial tools such as payroll systems and accounts receivable platforms to offer new payment services to clients - a number of which SMEs have been waiting for what feels like an age. As SMEs look to rebuild post-pandemic, this level of operational efficiency is essential.

Since partnering with Yapily, Comma has:

• Processed over £12 million in payments through open banking.
• Automated payments to over 10,000 suppliers and employees, saving the end-users both time and money
• Improved efficiency, reducing the time their customers spend processing payments every month by 77%

“It’s fair to say that Yapily is an integral part of Comma - the value that Yapily adds by delivering API standardisation and bank integrations really helps us focus on our mission to make payments better for SMEs.” - Ger Kelly, Head of Banking, Comma