Bento Pay is a first of its kind digital payment solution that makes it easier for businesses to pay businesses. The technology marries the ease of use of digital, check-free consumer payments with enterprise-grade security and spend controls business owners and managers need.
B2B business payments solutions provider Bento for Business announced the new solution this morning. Available to customers in July, Bento Pay will only require the payee’s email address in order to send payments rather than force fund recipients to set up new accounts or share personal financial information. Funds can be received by single-use virtual card or an ACH transfer.
Highlighting the efficiency of banking and payments in the consumer area, Bento for Business CEO and co-founder Farhan Ahmad believes business payments can be made better. “Businesses today are demanding the same level of convenience and control,” he said. “They want to move away from complex, high-cost workflows towards a solution that is flexible and secure. Bento Pay users can smoothly and securely complete business payments to their suppliers while controlling their cash from one central place.”
As such, Bento Pay is a significant contribution to the company’s product suite, which now features debit and virtual cards, real-time payments, and ACH transfers. The new offering also validates the company’s evolution from a spending and expense management innovator into a holistic payments solution provider for small businesses.
“Until now, we’ve seen no meaningful revolution in the B2B fintech space that can viably address the underserved needs of SMBs,” Ahmad said. “We envisioned Bento as the financial operating platform of choice for SMBs, and the addition of real-time payment capabilities is a continuation of our vision.”
San Francisco, California-based Bento for Business demonstrated its first offering, the Bento Mastercard, a prepaid commercial card solution for SMEs, at FinovateSpring 2015. The card gives owners and managers the ability to empower employees and workers to make necessary business expenditures, while maintaining a high degree of control and transparency into all activity on the card.
Last month, Bento made a pair of major, C-level hires, adding Paula Bachman as Chief Financial Officer and Tracey Hansen as Chief Marketing Officer. Bachman is most recently from data analytics firm, Networked Insights. Hansen was formerly CMO of education software company, Renaissance Learning. This spring, the company announced a partnership with Visa that added a new payment card option for small business owners using the Bento for Business platform.
With $18.5 million in funding from investors including Comcast Ventures, Edison Partners, and MissionOG, Bento for Business was one of 15 investors to back Bipsync, a research automation platform for investors, at the beginning of the year. Bento was founded in 2014.