• U.S. Bank launched its Accounts Receivables platform, U.S. Bank Advanced Receivables, in partnership with Billtrust.
• U.S. Bank Advanced Receivables will help businesses keep costs low and benefit from real-time visibility into cash flow and financial position.
• U.S. Bank most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall 2021 in New York.

Courtesy of a partnership with Billtrust, U.S. Bank has launched its new comprehensive accounts receivable (AR) platform. U.S. Bank Advanced Receivables will help suppliers accelerate cash flow, lower costs via automation, and provide better payment experiences.

“Suppliers face many challenges from the time they receive an order until the cash is in their account. This includes numerous manual and paper-based steps, a cumbersome credit process, billing errors, and payment delays,” U.S. Bank Global Treasury Management Head of Product Alberto Casas explained. “With U.S. Bank Advanced Receivables, businesses can transform their entire receivables process to drive down costs and gain real-time visibility into their financial position and cash flow.”

U.S. Bank Advanced Receivables combines U.S. Bank’s payment and risk management capabilities with Billtrust’s AR technology. The new offering is comprised of five core solutions – invoicing, payments, cash application, collections, and credit – each of which enhances the B2B receivables process. U.S. Bank Advanced Receivables builds on the bank’s complementary digital payment solutions, such as U.S. Bank AP Optimizer, which automates accounts payable operations from invoice receipt to payment disbursement. Together the two offerings enable companies to digitize and automate their end-to-end payment processes.

With $680 billion in assets, U.S. Bancorp is the parent company of U.S. Bank National Association. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the firm serves millions of customers locally, nationally, and around the world with services including consumer banking, business banking, commercial banking, institutional banking, payments, and wealth management. Billtrust, which partnered with U.S. Bank to launch the bank’s new AR offering, is an integrated AR solutions provider whose technology is used by more than 2,400 companies worldwide. These clients range from Coca-Cola and FedEx to Staples and United Rentals.

Earlier this month, Billtrust announced that it had extended its collaboration with Visa to support its Business Payments Network (BPN). Introduced in partnership with Visa in 2018, BPN links suppliers to buyers via connectivity to their preferred bank and payables providers. Headquartered in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, and founded in 2001, Billtrust was acquired by EQT Private Equity for $1.7 billion in 2022.

U.S. Bank most recently demoed its technology at FinovateFall in 2021. At the conference, the bank demoed its U.S. Bank Card as a Service (CaaS) solution. The technology enables fintechs and other businesses to extend corporate credit digitally, and to create a custom virtual payment experience for customers via API integration.

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• U.S. Bank is using technology from Pagaya to help underwrite unsecured personal loans.
• Pagaya’s AI model generates underwriting recommendations and completes a secondary credit decisioning review of borrowers who were originally rejected.
• The partnership, which has the potential to expand U.S. Bank’s borrower pool, has already led to the approval of more than 2,000 personal loans over the past few months.

U.S. Bank announced today it has tapped alternative underwriting solutions company Pagaya to help more borrowers qualify for loans.

U.S. Bank initiated the partnership to help more clients access personal loans, which often pose more risk for lenders because they are unsecured. Pagaya leverages AI to complete a secondary credit decisioning review of borrowers who are initially rejected. If Pagaya approves the borrower, U.S. Bank will originate and service the loan.

Key to the solution is Pagaya’s AI model that analyzes thousands of data points to generate tailored underwriting recommendations. Because the model uses more data than a traditional regression model, U.S. Bank can more efficiently find applicants who are responsible borrowers, but who don’t fit into the bank’s FICO score cutoff.

As interest rates remain high, banks will continue to face challenges in managing their lending operations. When higher interest rates lead to increased borrowing costs, some customers are unable to afford previously attainable loans. Also contributing to the smaller borrower pool, banks have become more selective in their lending practices by focusing on borrowers with strong credit profiles and stable financial histories.

“We know that we have many clients who don’t fall within our traditional credit parameters,” said U.S. Bank Head of Consumer Lending Partnerships Mike Shepard. “By expanding access to responsible credit solutions, we are giving clients access to funds when they need it the most, through their existing and trusted banking relationship with us.”

Ultimately, using Pagaya helps U.S. Bank extend loans to more clients by delivering credit to individuals who would otherwise be rejected. Since U.S. Bank began working with Pagaya for underwriting a few months ago, the bank has been able to approve more than 2,000 clients for personal loans.

New York-based Pagaya was founded in 2016 and has raised $1.6 billion in combined debt and equity across ten funding rounds. The company went public via a SPAC merger in 2021 and currently trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker PGY with a market capitalization of $8.95 million.

“We share U.S. Bank’s commitment to increasing access to life-changing financial products and services,” said Pagaya Chief Growth Officer Leslie Gillin. “With Pagaya’s integrated and seamlessly embedded lending technology, our lending partners can expand and deepen their client relationships to a more diverse group of borrowers.”

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• U.S. Bank launched a new suite of embedded payments solutions within Microsoft Dynamics 365.
• The collaboration embeds U.S. Bank payment capabilities across Microsoft platforms.
• U.S. Bank said it plans to embed additional payment capabilities within platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Power Platform.

U.S. Bank’s collaboration with Microsoft announced earlier this year has borne fruit: the bank has introduced a new suite of embedded payments solutions within Microsoft Dynamics 365. The integration embeds U.S. Bank payment capabilities across Microsoft platforms. It also makes U.S. Bank among the first financial institutions to take advantage of the opportunity of directly integrating into the popular enterprise resource planning (ERP) and finance solution.

Among the solutions available to businesses using Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the U.S. Bank AP Optimizer. Available directly from their business application, the technology gives treasury management teams the ability to automate invoice processing for both business and consumer payment disbursement within Microsoft Dynamics 365. This will facilitate automated accounts payable workflows, including matching and reconciliation.

“We are committed to meeting clients wherever they are in their digital journey, bringing payments to businesses in a way that’s instant, embedded and connected to the technology they use every day,” U.S. Bank vice chair and head of Payment Services Shailesh Kotwal said. “Our integration with Microsoft – which businesses rely on daily to serve their customers – opens new possibilities for U.S. Bank clients to improve efficiencies and enable faster payments.”

According to U.S. Bank, this week’s news is only the beginning. The bank announced that it has plans to embed additional payment tools within Microsoft platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Power Platform.

“Embedded payments can deliver powerful, new ways for businesses to streamline processes, enhance visibility, deliver better experiences, and reduce risk,” Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Worldwide Financial Services Bill Borden said. “We are excited to build on our work with U.S. Bank, delivering integrated, easy-to-use digital payments capabilities to our customers through Microsoft Dynamics 365 with additional embedded solutions to come.”

The two companies have been working together closely since February, when U.S. Bank announced a “substantial investment” in the modernization of its technology by choosing Microsoft Azure at its primary cloud provider for applications. The move will give customers more tools and more options when it comes to accessing banking services and provides U.S. Bank with opportunities to grow via new partnerships and what the bank sees as an “ever-evolving financial services marketplace.”

U.S. Bank’s collaboration news comes just one month after the bank introduced a new cash flow prediction tool for small businesses. The solution gives SME owners a 90-day forecast of cash flow and enables them to factor in external client data along with data from their own U.S. Bank accounts to provide more comprehensive cash flow insights.

U.S. Bank most recently demoed its technology last September at FinovateFall 2021. At the conference, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based bank demoed its Card-as-a-Service (CaaS) solution. The offering enables fintechs, partners, and clients to digitally extend corporate credit, and to leverage API integration to create a custom virtual payment experience in their own ecosystem. Spending limits, tokenization, and encryption are all features of U.S. Bank’s CaaS solution.

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• U.S. Bank introduced a new tool to give small business owners the ability to see a 90-day forecast of their cash flow.
• The new offering is the latest innovation from U.S. Bank’s Business Essential suite of banking and payments solutions.
• U.S. Bank made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateFall 2021. At the conference, the bank demoed its Cards-as-a-Service (CaaS) technology.

U.S. Bank unveiled a new solution to enable small business owners to see a 90-day forecast of their cash flow. The tool allows users to leverage external data from their clients along with their own U.S. Bank accounts to provide more comprehensive insights. The offering is designed to address what U.S. Bank Chief Digital Officer Irv Henderson called “a top concern for today’s business owners.”

“Giving our clients the ability to forecast their cash flow outlook, including, in the future, the capability to consider various scenarios, will provide them with vital information to make smart decisions for today and the future,” Henderson said.

U.S. Bank’s new cash flow tool gives users a 90-day historical view along with its forecast of account balances up to 90 days ahead. The bank plans to introduce additional functionality to enable users to build “what if” scenarios and observe the impact of those scenarios on future cash flow.

The tool is currently available to clients of U.S. Bank from their online dashboard. Part of U.S. Bank’s Business Essentials suite of banking and payments solutions, the cash flow tool is the bank’s latest effort to “bring together digital capabilities and the power of data” to provide small businesses with actionable insights, according to Henderson.

U.S. Bank made its Finovate debut a year ago at our all-digital FinovateFall 2021 conference. At the event, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based bank demonstrated its Card-as-a-Service (CaaS) technology that enables companies to extend corporate credit digitally. With the touch of a button, virtual cards -with precise spend limits, tokenization, and encryption – can be pushed to users’ mobile wallets in real time. The Card-as-a-Service solution also gives businesses the ability, via API integration, to build custom virtual payment experiences in their ecosystem.

The parent company of U.S. Bank National Association, U.S. Bancorp serves millions of customers through a range of businesses including consumer and business banking, payment services, corporate and commercial banking, wealth management, and investment services. The institution has $591 billion in assets as of June 2022.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska