Standard Chartered announced on the first day of Singapore Fintech Festival the launch of Payouts-as-a-Service (PaaS), a bank-grade fintech solution that allows digital businesses to seamlessly manage one-to-many payments to parties in their ecosystem. Available in five major e-commerce hubs across India, Malaysia, Singapore, the UAE and UK, the Bank is the first leading transaction bank to introduce an application programming interface (API)-first (modular, inter-operable APIs) programmable payouts offering, with live pilot clients on the platform set up through a series of co-creation engagements.
By integrating with the Bank’s PaaS APIs, clients can embed and automate payments on their digital commerce platforms by providing details of transactions as they occur – such as a purchase or sale made on an e-commerce marketplace – along with preferences around who, when, how and how much to pay that can be either be pre-set or provided as and when necessary. The Bank then programmatically executes the payment contract based on these parameters, without requiring clients or their counterparties to issue separate payment instructions.
This allows the Bank’s corporate and institutional clients to enable complex pay-out constructs such as split, scheduled, conditional or clubbed payments. With conditional payments and automation available via a single integration, this translates to significant reduction in payment administration overheads, as well as time saved that can be channelled towards higher value activities to scale the business.
“To support businesses in capitalising on the economic growth driven by today’s digital economy, banks have an important role to play in enabling and facilitating future ready payment solutions between all parties in the ecosystem,” said Philip Panaino, Global Head of Cash, Transaction Banking at Standard Chartered. “Our PaaS solution aims to be at the forefront of meeting our clients’ evolving embedded payments needs, with the ability to contextualise and configure payment contracts to meet their desired business outcomes.”
“PaaS allows Tazapay to create transaction level payment contracts that are aligned with our customer journey for escrow protected payments and marketplace pay-outs,” said Aayush Singhania, Head of Product and Partnerships at Tazapay.
Deepika Sharma Ong, Head of Brand and Marketing at Olea, added: “With the introduction of PaaS, Olea – a joint venture between SC Ventures and Linklogis – is able to embed complex payment workflows into our operations.”
