Stripe reduces bank transfers friction for UK, EU, and Mexican businesses

The fintech’s new solution, which is already available in Japan, offers automated reconciliation, simplified returns and refunds, full platform integration, and universal payment method acceptance. Stripe says that bank transfers, despite their popularity and ease of use, are ‘filled with friction’, with businesses losing hundreds of hours on confirming transfers, reconciliation and accounting, and refunds.

Because bank transfers are payer-initiated, Stripe says, mistakes may be made when initiating the transfer and businesses must reconcile manually. The company has therefore built a solution that takes away the ’operational pain’ of receiving and manually reconciling transfers, augments the bank transfer experience, and facilitates it to operate as a payment method.

Its automated reconciliation provides a virtual bank account number (VBAN) for each customer, so that incoming transfers automatically map to the correct customer. Additionally, its simplified refund and return processes allow Stripe users to return a payment to a customer without initiating a new bank transfer from their account.

The solution is also integrated into other processes such as invoices, subscriptions, and revenue recognition and via Stripe’s Payment Intents API, users can accept other payment methods alongside bank transfers without additional code.

Stripe says it intends to expand the new solution to the US, replacing the current credit transfer beta, and build new account-to-account payment experiences, such as Open Banking payments in the UK.