It’s well known that small businesses are underserved by banks. About one-third of small businesses look outside their banking relationships for financial products such as loans, according to research from Aite Group.

Malauzai is looking to help banks serve their small business customers with a new product called Retail+, which empowers retail bankers to sell products for small businesses. The first clients will go live on the platform in April.

The idea is that small businesses, though they may resemble consumers in many aspects of relationship management, require different products. Small businesses are in danger of falling into the chasm that separates consumers from commercial enterprises, and the lack of innovative products, and the thirst for alternative financial services offered by the Squares and PayPals out there, shows it.

“Small businesses aren’t consumers and shouldn’t be treated as such,” said Christine Barry, research director at Aite Group. “Even some of the smallest businesses are becoming more sophisticated, requiring some business capabilities not found on traditional consumer online banking platforms. As a result, we are seeing banks and technology vendors looking for creative ways to fill the current void and increase small business satisfaction with their banks and slow down or eliminate the growing trend for small businesses to go outside of banks to meet their needs.”

Austin, Texas-based Malauzai is best known for consumer mobile innovations, such as helping build the app for BankMobile, a high-profile new mobile bank. But the company serves banks of all sizes, and sees trends in how different kinds of customers relate to the bank. One trend Malauzai was seeing, according to Chief Product Officer Robb Gaynor, was this gap small businesses were toppling into.

“Retail+ allows the retail banker to manage a small business account,” Gaynor said, noting that not all small businesses are necessarily in this bucket. “It’s part of a trend of vendors building off a single (retail) platform to serve small business customers.”

Mobile is growing in importance in the business sector with products like commercial mobile check capture, which is coming soon, and plays a large role in giving initiatives like Retail+ momentum. “The functional gaps between mobile and traditional online banking are disappearing,” Gaynor said. “E-statements, text chat [coming soon], and mobile-only users — by the end of this year, mobile banking will be fully as functional as internet banking.” Tablets play a key role in advancing dashboard functionality for treasury managers and executives.

Community institutions are still playing catch-up on the mobile side. Other products on the wishlist for smaller banks this year, Gaynor said, are peer-to-peer payments, and mobile wallets.

Barry noted that the small business problem is not going to disappear anytime soon. “The jury is still out,” she said, “on whether it makes sense to add business capabilities to consumer platforms or to migrate small businesses onto commercial banking platforms.”

Over 250,000 end users through more than 300 banks use Malauzai’s mobile and online banking platform.