Citigroup has integrated real-time account verification and payment tools into its Citi Present and Pay commercial invoicing platform.

The white-label platform is designed for large institutional clients such as corporations, insurance companies, and state and local governments’ customer billing, addressing consumer-to-business (C2B) payment flow. Both the Citi Verify account verification tool and Request for Pay electronic bill distribution tools have been available separately but are now folded into and can be activated within Citi Present and Pay.

The integration of the two fully automated tools will save clients considerable time and make it easier to deploy Citi services, said Chris Chazin, North America head of emerging and cross-border receivables at the $2.4 trillion Citi‘s Treasury and Trade Solutions business.

“The marketplace has gotten more complex, and billers need more services,” Chazin told Bank Automation News. “We’ve taken these services, which are standalone offerings and very widely used, and built them into Present and Pay so that a customer who’s using or buying Present and Pay doesn’t have to do separate integrations.”

The platform’s infrastructure is delivered via Burlington, Mass.-based Aliaswire, a payment-processing solutions provider and Citi partner for nearly a decade. Aliaswire, founded in 2005, raised $6 million in a series A funding round in June, according to Crunchbase.

Such partnerships combine the innovation and specialized technology of a fintech with Citi’s highly regulated, secure solutions, Chazin said.

Citi Verify
The integration of the Citi Verify account verification tool, launched as a stand-alone solution in 2019, comes partly in response to the Web Debit Account Validation Rule from the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA), which is intended to help fight fraud in automated clearing house (ACH) transfers. Enforcement of the rule begins March 19, 2022.

The validation rule requires institutional billers and other ACH payment originators to confirm the validity of a payer’s bank account before using an ACH direct debit to collect payment. Citi Verify can confirm those bank account details in seconds, Chazin noted, versus other account verification methods that can take much longer — such as making a deposit into a payer’s account using multistage authentication.

“Citi’s new functionality enables the payer to acknowledge the payment request and authorize the payment in real time, eliminating issues of account fraud, data entry mistakes and bank account insufficient funds errors,” Scott Goldthwaite, president of Aliaswire, told BAN.

Request for Pay
Citi’s Request for Pay electronic bill distribution and real-time bill payment messaging tool utilizes The Clearing House’s RTP (real-time payments) network. Chazin said Citi believes the Request for Pay functionality is “a huge opportunity to improve the way that consumers pay their bills today.”

The Present and Pay solution allows institutional clients to distribute bills digitally to customers online and through mobile apps, email, text and voice, and to collect payments through ACH transfer, credit or debit cards, and other payment methods.

The Request for Pay tool can boost operational efficiency for clients, including through reduced ACH exceptions and easier reconciliation of billed amounts and payments collected, Citi said in a release. The tool is designed to increase transparency and real-time visibility of when payments will be settled, in turn decreasing service calls.

Since the solution allows for collection of funds 24/7, it can improve institutions’ access to working capital, according to the bank. By the same token, it lets consumers pay bills at any time and allows payments to be scheduled, providing more control compared with typically batched ACH transfers or paper checks.

“That real-time nature of the data flowing and the money flowing creates the opportunity to really change the user experience for these customers and their clients,” Chazin said.

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