Standard Bank Collaborates with Transaction Capital to Empower Businesses in Driving Smarter Payments and Collections Decisions

Standard Bank, Africa’s largest financial services organisation, has collaborated with Transaction Capital to develop an intelligent data solution that will empower businesses with a deeper understanding of consumers’ payment and transaction behaviours.

Coined AUTHENTIFI, the value proposition is designed to assist businesses enhance risk management, optimise cost and efficiencies, and improve cashflow and collection success ratios.

Currently, businesses source different data elements from a combination of their own sources and various external providers including credit bureaus. At present, there is no existing offering in the market that enables companies to access this information from a single source.

“While there has been an incredible amount of regulatory change aimed at trying to better protect the consumer, little has been done for businesses as they try to introduce innovations to improve business efficiency and better manage cash flows,” says Stuart McDermid, Head of Product Solutions, Business Development at Standard Bank.  As a result, clients are constantly looking for more data to enhance decision making processes along with cost optimisation, reduced risk and improved cash flow. “Our collaboration with Transaction Capital, a market leader in data collection, with a proven ability to manage and leverage big data and business intelligence, will offer companies a significantly enhanced set of data and an in-depth view of their clients’ behaviour.

“With the recent enforcement of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), it is essential to partner with an organisation that understands data confidentiality,” says Ben Britz Executive Solutions Strategy at Transaction Capital. “Any and every data point that is stored will also be compliant with POPI.”

Britz adds: “We believe that AUTHENTIFI has the potential to add significant value to clients’ current collections processes, optimise transaction costs, reduce delinquency rates, substantially enhance decision making throughout the collections lifecycle and be truly game changing in the world of collections.”

A number of Standard Bank’s corporate clients have indicated an appetite to become early adopters of the solution. This is the first step of the journey in  shaping the solution by co-creating it with clients and ensure real business value is derived.  “This forms part of a strategic decision taken by Standard Bank to involve clients as early as possible as we embark on various innovation journeys in our drive to become a future ready financial services provider,” says McDermid.

Clients will be able to access the AUTHENTIFI solution via Standard Bank’s OneHub platform, which is an online marketplace where they can access digital solutions provided by the bank as well as third party solutions provided by its trusted partners.

“As we become a platform provider, these types of collaborations are critical in enabling client centric solutions that continue to add value to our client base. We see tremendous potential in our collaboration with Transaction Capital as we navigate and build our platform business,” says McDermid.