Standard Chartered (LON: STAN) and global payments platform Tazapay announced a global partnership to deliver best in class payments and commerce enabling experiences as part of the Bank’s broader initiative to provide curated financial services on B2B platforms.
This builds on the memorandum of understanding “signed between the two organizations in May 2021 and the pilot launch of the digital Escrow-as-a-Service (EaaS) on Proxtera, a Singapore based cross-border marketplace, in addition to successfully collaborating with select B2B marketplace clients as pilot engagements.”
Driven by growing customer expectations and opportunities “to develop new business models, an increasing number of corporates from manufacturing to the service industries are expected to embrace marketplace platforms.”
In fact, B2B marketplaces are reportedly “the fastest-growing channel in B2B e-commerce1, with sales doubling from USD56 billion in 2021 to USD112 billion last year.”
This rapid growth translates to “a need for innovative marketplace-specific financial services.”
Standard Chartered and Tazapay’s purpose-built proposition “allows global marketplaces and e-commerce merchants to accept payments from buyers locally in more than 70 markets based on their preferred payment method via a single application programming interface3 (API), offering a cost-effective and frictionless checkout (Tazapay Checkout) experience when settling commercial cross-border transactions.”
Tazapay Checkout comes “with buyer protection that helps enhance the commercial trust between the buyer and seller.”
Buyer protection is “built upon the EaaS service, with the ability to build in document verification (for example, shipping proof) as well as customized payment release only when transactions are completed.” The partnership further “enables B2B marketplaces to onboard third-party sellers across 170 markets.”
The organizations “have further strengthened the partnership with deeper integration of the processes and technologies to deliver these composable solutions.”
Tazapay can now “leverage Standard Chartered’s banking services including bank accounts, payment acceptance, payouts and FX solutions.” The partnership will “focus on clients across the Bank’s network.”
Anurag Bajaj, Global Head of Bank, Broker Dealers and Fintech Client Coverage at Standard Chartered, stated:
“Innovation drives a lot of what we do at Standard Chartered, and the extension of our partnership with Tazapay is another step we’ve taken in our journey towards meeting the growing needs of enterprise marketplaces.”
Rahul Shinghal, Co-founder and CEO of Tazapay, said:
“Tazapay is focused on simplifying cross-border payments and together with Standard Chartered, we can now serve larger ecommerce merchants and enterprise marketplaces to collect payments instantly in over 70 markets, delivering superior customer experience and conversion rates.”
WTX.com, an online B2B platform “for used commercial vehicles, is among the pilot clients who has tapped on the partnership proposition.”