For smaller enterprises the concepts of ‘bank’ and ‘business finance’ have for the longest stayed as two separate entities. The ‘bank’ aspect typically involves accounts, collections, loans, and payments whereas ‘business finance’ covers Accounts Receivable/ Accounts Payable (AR/AP), payroll, expense management, and accounting. HSBC and Zoho have come together to bridge the gap between accounting and business banking to create what they call a “seamless experience”. At YourStory’s flagship event TechSparks 2022, Arpan Nangia, Director and Head of sales, Global payments solutions, Commercial banking HSBC and Mohamed Daanish Basha, Enterprise account manager, Zoho in a masterclass broke down how the two companies have joined hands to offer a truly ‘connected banking’ experience.
Following is a cheatsheet of the masterclass:
What are/ were the challenges faced by customers?
01. OTP (one-time-password) based transaction authorisation which creates logistical issues.
02.No synchronisation between ERP (enterprise resource planning) and the net banking platform of the bank.
03. Multiple approvals required to be done daily on respective net portals of banks.
04. Duplication of work.
05. Tracking the fund flow is not easy.
06. Reconciliation is not easy.
07. Non-digital account opening and operations.
08.No proper hand holding in multiple cases.
09. Requirement of new setups for different use cases.
What are the HSBC-Zoho connected banking USPs?
01. Pay multiple invoices of multiple vendors at one go.
02. Freedom from OTP based authentication.
03. Plug and play native experiences.
04. 100 percent digital onboarding.
05. Smart reconciliation.
06. Auto bank payment invoice knock off.
07. Single-click banking for multiple use cases.
08. Free Zoho setup for HSBC customers.
09. Dedicated support from both Zoho and HSBC.
10. Training sessions.
11. Payment advice auto email to the vendors.
12. Cross-border payments.
The collaboration’s aim is to empower SMEs (small and medium enterprises) to have ‘powerful’ banking solutions and payment solutions. Traditionally, having business banking on one side and business accounting on the other side has been a “luxury” only enjoyed by large enterprises. The HSBC-Zoho partnership is making efforts to break that trend and democratising the whole process by bringing customers connected banking where one “can do everything under one roof”.
HSBC has integrated with Zoho finance suite of applications such as Zoho Books – an online accounting software, Zoho inventory – a robust auto management tool for clients for their marketplace management, Zoho Expense – a reimbursement management tool and Zoho Payroll – which breaks down the complex payroll process and refines it for clients so that the organisation itself can run their pay easily.
On the payments side of things, the association is helping ease vendor payments, bulk payments, advance payments, tax payments, and cross-border payments, which HSBC believes is a big differentiator because of its international banking footprint across more than 60 countries. Once the client has integrated HSBC with the Zoho suite of applications, they are able to carry out global banking seamlessly within their in-house platforms such as Zoho Books and Zoho Inventory.
