Open Banking on ProConnect: faster, cheaper invoicing (especially with WhatsApp)

Of all the new features rolling out on ProConnect, Open Banking is the one we shout about the least — and arguably the one with the biggest financial impact. If invoicing and credit control are part of your business (and for most of our customers, they’re a huge part), the savings here are significant.

And when you pair it with the new two-way WhatsApp messaging, you get something genuinely transformative: a way to chase, collect and reconcile payments end-to-end without anyone in your team having to lift a finger.

What Open Banking actually does on ProConnect

Open Banking is a regulated framework that allows your customers to pay you directly from their bank account, in a single tap, without typing card details. The payment goes account-to-account — bypassing the card networks entirely.

Three things flow from that:

• Lower transaction fees. Card processing fees typically sit around 1.4–2.9% per transaction. Open Banking is materially cheaper — often a flat pence-per-transaction fee instead of a percentage. On a single £500 invoice that’s a small difference; across thousands of invoices a year, it’s a serious line on your P&L.
• Faster settlement. Funds land in your account in seconds or minutes, not the two to three working days you’d wait for a card settlement. Cash flow improves, reconciliation gets easier.
• Fewer failed payments. No expired cards, no 3D Secure friction, no chargebacks. The customer authenticates with their own banking app and the payment either goes or it doesn’t — in real time.

The WhatsApp tag-team

Here’s where it gets interesting. ProConnect’s new two-way WhatsApp messaging means we can now send an invoice reminder directly into the channel your customer already lives in — with an Open Banking payment link attached.

Picture the flow:

1. An invoice falls due. ProConnect detects it automatically.
2. A WhatsApp message goes out to the right contact: “Hi James, your £482.50 invoice is due Friday. Tap here to pay.”
3. The customer taps the link, authenticates in their own banking app, and pays.
4. ProConnect logs the payment against the invoice and updates the CRM.

The customer never has to leave WhatsApp. The wholesaler never has to chase. The finance team gets a cleaner ledger.

Where the savings really come from

It’s tempting to focus purely on the per-transaction fee saving, but in practice the bigger wins for our customers come from the indirect savings:

• Less time spent chasing. If WhatsApp + Open Banking can recover even 30% of overdue invoices automatically, that’s hours back every week for your credit control team.
• Lower DSO (Days Sales Outstanding). Faster collections improve working capital, which compounds across the year.
• Fewer bad debt write-offs. Earlier, more frequent, friendlier nudges tend to recover invoices that would otherwise have aged into uncollectable.
• Cleaner reconciliation. Account-to-account payments arrive with full reference data, so matching to invoices is straightforward.

Why now

Open Banking adoption has tipped past the awkward early-adopter phase. UK banks all support it natively now, customers are familiar with the flow, and the regulatory framework (PSD2 and successors) is stable. The technology is no longer the constraint; the only question is whether you’ve plumbed it into the customer journeys where it actually saves money.

For B2B wholesalers, distributors and brands — especially those running on tight margins — this is genuinely one of the highest-ROI features we’ve ever launched.

Getting started

Open Banking is available now to all ProConnect customers. It works alongside your existing card payment options — you don’t have to choose — and integrates with the two-way WhatsApp messaging, email and SMS channels.

To see how Open Banking could lower your cost of collections, email hello@b2b.store for a free demo.