Bill.com Adds Open API to Banking Platform

November 7, 2012

Boca Raton, Fla.,17th ANNUAL SMALL BUSINESS BANKING CONFERENCE — Bill.com, the leader in integrated bill payment, invoicing, and cash management solutions for businesses, today introduced the next major milestone in its banking platform. Bill.com has added broad integration capabilities to its cash flow-centric banking platform for banks and their small and mid-size business (SMBs) customers. Bill.com enables banks to develop additional revenue streams and increase customer acquisition and retention by offering business customers a powerful accounts payable and accounts receivable service. More than 100,000 companies are now getting paid and paying millions of bills, worth billions of dollars, using Bill.com.  Bill.com is the only solution that empowers businesses to have full command and control over their cash flow at any time, from any location or device.

Current business banking solutions are limited to transactional payment processes. This leaves businesses of all sizes with the need to use disconnected bill payment and accounting solutions to gain control of their finances. The result is a cumbersome process plagued by inefficiencies, security risks, and errors. In contrast, Bill.com is the only solution that puts banks at the core of their customers’ business.  Bill.com allows banks to integrate the Bill.com solution with their own platform, creating their own branded offering. Bill.com empowers banks to own the entire cash flow management process—from payables and receivables, to cash flow visualization. Bill.com makes banks the focal point for all of their customers’ transactions, letting banks monetize the full cash management process while solving a significant pain point for SMBs by finally automating and connecting all of their financial processes.

“Just as CheckFree helped banks revolutionize the consumer payments industry, Bill.com is now enabling banks to do the same for their business customers’ cash flow management and payments processes,” said Mark Johnson, former Vice Chairman of CheckFree Corporation and current Bill.com board member. “Bill.com understands the problem banks have faced trying to cobble together a business solution from their consumer offerings. Bill.com has fixed the problem via an integrated, efficient platform that helps banks win customer loyalty and brings them the ability to earn additional revenue.”

The Bill.com Banking Platform is based on six key components, all of which offer new and unique features. With this newest release of the Banking Platform, Bill.com has enabled API access to each of the components of the platform.  These APIs enable banks to seamlessly integrate with their banks’ SMB offerings, giving SMBs a seamless, cash-flow centric approach to running their businesses.

These components are:

  • Authentication:  Bill.com offers single sign-on and multi-factor authentication (MFA), meaning customers can gain access to their cash flow management control center anytime they log into online banking.  Using their bank’s authentication, their critical financial information is easy to access and secure.  The MFA framework enables the highest levels of security to enable business processes and secure payments.
  • Entitlements: Entitlements govern the information employees and accountants have access to and the functions they can perform, such as approving bills and making payments. Bill.com alone provides out-of-the-box roles and permissions, while also enabling customers to create their own to suit their unique controls. It takes just a few clicks for payees and customers to be set up.
  • Business Objects: Through the Bill.com platform, banks can offer their clients robust payables, receivables, cash flow management, document management, and workflow applications. Now they can also integrate Bill.com objects into their business banking services, using the company’s next generation API, based on JSON. The API gives banks an unprecedented ability  to customize business objects, incorporate them into their own user interface, and easily change them as the bank platform grows and changes. Bill.com’s extensive business objects enable banks to tailor and support their cash-flow centric platform like never before.
  • Business Systems Integration: Bill.com integrates with all popular accounting packages so all your customer’s data is accurate and synchronized, and all of their existing financial processes and reports carry on as usual. Through advanced two-way synchronization, Bill.com eliminates the time-consuming and error-prone tasks of keeping all these various systems in sync. This sync process is superior to other solutions, which simply import and export data. As the Banking Platform expands, Bill.com will also be adding integration with a variety of other business systems in order to enhance companies’ overall cash flow control.
  • Payment Processing: Through Bill.com, banks can provide their clients a convenient and secure means through which they can send, receive, and reconcile payments across multiple payment channels, including ACH, checks, wire transfer, and credit card payments.  The Bill.com Bank Platform integrates with banks’ existing payment systems, to further leverage these investments.
  • Payment Network: Bill.com offers a secure business network designed specifically for the needs of SMBs.  Through Bill.com’s cloud-based portals and payee directory, business can securely interact and transact with their customers and vendors.  They can exchange business documents, notes, eBills, eInvoices, and remittance information electronically to enable greater efficiency and convenience in traditionally cumbersome, paper-based processes.  The Bill.com network makes it easier for bank clients to connect and transact with their partners, vendors and customers while allowing the bank to capture a new source for fee-based revenue.

“Bill.com has already revolutionized how small and mid-sized businesses work and now we are transforming how they bank,” said René Lacerte, founder and CEO, Bill.com. “We built the Bill.com Banking Platform based on direct feedback from banks, who told us that their current systems just couldn’t meet their business customers’ needs. We are glad to be helping banks turn the old banking paradigm on its ear, by making banking solutions cash flow centric. The result will be banking solutions that work the way businesses do.”

About Bill.com’s Banking Solution

The Bill.com cash flow command and control system is the only solution that makes banks the core of their customers’ business. By allowing banks to integrate the Bill.com solution with their own platform, Bill.com empowers banks to own the entire cash flow management process—from payables to receivables to cash flow visualization. Bill.com makes banks the focal point of all their customers’ transactions, letting banks monetize the full cash management process while solving a significant pain point for SMBs by finally automating and connecting all of their financial processes. The award-winning Bill.com platform is being embraced by banks because it creates significant new revenue streams while enhancing customer loyalty and satisfaction.

About Bill.com   

Bill.com is a cash flow command and control system that manages accounts payable and receivable for businesses of all sizes. Offering online bill pay, custom invoicing services, unlimited document storage, collaboration tools, and mobile access, Bill.com's services easily sync to users' accounting software programs and online bank accounts to better control company financials. Bill.com guards against errors and employs enterprise-class fraud protections that current methods cannot match. More than 100,000 users are now getting paid and paying millions of bills, worth billions of dollars, using Bill.com.