One of the main barriers to business growth is slow payment collections. However, fintechs like Navro, are looking to alleviate this burden with new offerings.
Formerly known as Paytrix, Navro simplifies payouts and collections for international businesses and has introduced local accounts denominated in all major European and a number of international currencies. These accounts will be accompanied by individual IBANs and will, in turn, enable fast-growth businesses to collect payments in European countries and beyond on local payment rails.
Navro allows customers to open business accounts denominated in the local official currency without requiring an office or business registration in-market. Some of these include:
- UK
- Germany
- France
- Italy
- Spain
- Poland
- Australia
- New Zealand.
Eddie Harrison, Navro’s co-founder and chief product officer, said: “Enabling international businesses to transact like locals is at the heart of the Navro proposition.
“The introduction of our local accounts allows businesses to operate with a truly local footprint and takes us one step closer to realising our vision. Our customers can now receive payments through local payment rails. We will further continue to lay the foundations for them to chase commercial opportunities in new markets.”
Due to Navro’s unique payments curation approach, its local accounts eliminate many of the shortcomings associated with the use of conventional IBANs in cross-border transactions.
IBAN challenges
IBANs’ launched in 1997 as a standard format for European bank accounts aimed at facilitating simpler, faster cross-border transactions and reducing the risk of payments errors. However, despite being designed as an international standard, IBANs are often only functional on a domestic basis. IBAN discrimination — where a bank or business declines a legitimate payment from an account in another country — is prohibited by European legislation, but is nonetheless commonplace.
In other instances, differences in IBAN formats across countries can lead to unnecessary rejections. These are particularly common issues with multi-currency IBAN technology solutions.
Valid payments can be rejected for a variety of other reasons, including a lack of organisational awareness of legal responsibilities, varying national regulations and compliance requirements across markets that intrude on the payments process, and the need to manage the higher perceived risks of accepting foreign payments.
Navro steps in
Navro’s payments curation solution provides access to payment services in every region of the world through one platform, one API, and one contract. Furthermore, it tackles behind-the-scenes complexities to ensure that business customers can receive payments made in their name in local accounts, in local currencies, via local payments rails.
In addition to these capabilities, Navro also now offers business accounts in a range of major international currencies. This includes US dollars, Chinese Yuan, Japanese Yen and United Arab Emirates Dirham; for firms operating outside those markets but who hold and trade those monies.
Harrison continued: “As we build out our payments curation platform, we’re giving our customers more control and flexibility over how they manage large volumes and complex layers of incoming and outgoing payments in multiple currencies. Our local and international accounts will lower costs, reduce the management burden and free up working capital.”
Navro’s collections capabilities build on top of its existing payout services, which also enable customers to make payments in 130 countries in 200 locations across the globe.
