Customer success guru Carlin Easton explains how advancements to b2b.store's open banking solution is improving user experience
There’s been increasing noise around open banking in the UK in recent years and as the decibel levels rise around the innovative payment technology, developments have inevitably followed.
That’s no different at b2b.store. When we first launched our B2B Open Banking product, our main focus was simply on providing a way for wholesalers to cut the costs associated with card transactions and handling cash – low rates were the key, but we couldn’t stop there.
Once the basic functionality was in place, we started to build on it to make the user experience slicker, easier to understand and help wholesalers to drive more customers to the B2B Open Banking payment page.
The next step in our development journey was to create dynamic links, meaning businesses could share open banking with their customers however they pleased. Whether that was on an invoice, in an email, via WhatsApp or simply written on a note, open banking could appear everywhere with no development and technological knowledge. We then added to that further by adding the ability for wholesalers to generate QR codes themselves.
All wholesalers’ customers would need to do is click, tap or scan once and they’d instantly be taken to the payment screen. Now we had the ability to offer open banking as a service and a clear plan of how to get people there.
Once there, B2B Open Banking requires a user to enter their customer details and the amount they want to pay. But while that’s a pretty straightforward process, we saw another opportunity to make the experience even more efficient.
We created a simple-to-use feature in the wholesaler's admin panel that means they can input the customer reference and the amount that needed to be paid before sending out the link or QR code. This means the payment screen becomes personalised to that specific customer, with all their details automatically populated for them – and with a user’s preferred bank remembered after the first use, it could take only two taps to set up the entire transaction.
By building on the basic low-rate offering when we first launched B2B Open Banking, we’ve created a slick and convenient experience that not only saves on transaction fees, but also on time.
We're always looking at ways to improve our services and are keen to work with our customers to do that, so we welcome their feedback. And as a result, you can guarantee further improvements are in the pipeline.
