Today, Standard Chartered and global payments platform Tazapay announced a partnership to deliver payments and commerce-enabling services as part of the bank’s broader initiative to provide curated financial services on B2B platforms.
This builds on the momentum from 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 the fastest-growing channel in B2B e-commerce, with sales doubling from $56 billion in 2021 to $112 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 interface(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 customised payment release only when transactions are completed. The partnership further enables B2B marketplaces to onboard third-party sellers across 170 markets.
The organisations 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 said, “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 e-commerce 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.
“We find the joint proposition from Standard Chartered and Tazapay to be compelling for both buyers and sellers on our platform, besides being easy to work with,” said Bruno Palma, COO, Business Development Operations and Marketing at WTX.com.
