Cross River Bank is leveraging digital payments platform PayTile’s banking-as-a-service (BaaS) offering to power the fintech’s peer-to-peer (P2P) geolocational services.

PayTile, which counts Plaid among its existing integrations, facilitates digital payments based on geographic proximity, giving users the ability to send and receive instant payments without exposing personal information.

The company equates the process with digital cash, giving examples of tipping a valet or buying from a farmer’s market. Only names and pictures are visible, though users can choose to remove them, keeping the iPhone’s AirDrop-like process anonymous and secure.

Fort Lee, N.J.-based Cross River will now power the process and provide a digital banking and payments infrastructure, Phil Goldfeder, the bank’s senior vice president of global public affairs, told Bank Automation News.

“You can have all the technology in the world,” Goldfeder said. “But you need access to the payment rails and the banking system to facilitate the movement of money in real time with consumer protection and regulatory compliance in place.”

The partnership furnishes PayTile with automated clearinghouse (ACH) and real-time payment access, along with “push-to-card” capabilities, which bypass long clearing times and send funds directly to cards instead of bank accounts. Cross River will also power a mobile wallet for the management of PayTile transactions.

The $11 billion bank has made a range of fintech moves in the past year, partnering with payments fintech Payment Approved and application programming interface (API) developer Astra, as well as acquiring finance and credit management fintech Betterfin. Goldfeder said that Cross River’s latest partnership is a “natural evolution” of its banking and payments digitalization strategy.

“The idea of preserving anonymity within the payment space, for the purposes of consumer protection, fits exactly with what Cross River tries to do,” Goldfeder told BAN. “The goal is to work alongside partners and enable them to perform their work without hindering their ability to evolve and grow.”

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