Goldman Sachs and Fiserv tie up to boost transaction banking
Goldman Sachs has announced a tie-up with Fiserv to scale up its transaction banking business which was launched in the UK recently and has been gaining some good traction over the last few months.
Goldman Sachs had launched transaction banking services in the US last year to help businesses process domestic and international payments at a low cost. This service was extended to the UK recently and in both countries, the bank has been able to generate good traction with more than 250 clients in the US already who have processed over $1 trillion in transactions since the launch last year.
David Ades, head, global enterprise solutions, Fiserv, said: “Efficiently managing the delivery of cross-border payments across an extensive network of international suppliers is a pain point for our clients with a large global presence. Pairing our B2B accounts payable technology with an industry leader in transaction banking offers these clients a secure solution that brings new levels of automation, efficiency, and cost savings to accounts payable.”
Fiserv is a payments processing and data services group and its tie-up with Goldman will throw open the transaction banking service to the clients of Fiserv. These clients, who number more than a thousand, would now be able to send and receive payments from domestic and international companies directly within their accounts receivable and accounts payable platforms.
While the payments industry has progressed fast as far as retail payments are concerned, the business payments space has long been the reserve of very few companies that continue to hold their sway. This space is in dire need of some innovation and disruption, something that has not happened for quite some time now. It is difficult for startups to enter this space due to the infrastructure and the logistics that are involved. Also, the regulatory controls surrounding this space make it very difficult for new entrants and this is one of the main reasons why this business payments industry is still lagging in terms of technology and innovation.
While these tie-ups do help to take this space forward, the barriers of entry must be lowered so that new entrants would be able to come in and make their mark and this would in turn help to spur on the old legacy-based banks and financial firms to do better as well.
