NAB and Plenti Team on Pay by Bank for Loan Repayments

Australian bank NAB has launched a collaboration with FinTech lender Plenti.

The partnership, announced Wednesday (July 24), lets Plenti’s customers make faster loan repayments via NAB’s pay-by-bank offering PayTo.

“Plenti is the first NAB business customer to integrate the new account-to-account payment solution in its online lending platform, allowing its customers to make real-time payments via PayTo to pay down their debt faster,” NAB said in a news release.

According to the release, PayTo provides Plenti customers and simpler, more secure experience by eliminating manual entry and giving them the ability to authorize and see payments immediately in their banking app.

Plenti Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Glenn Riddell said customers expect a simple yet superior end-to-end lending experience.

“We wanted to offer our customers a faster, smarter and more convenient way to make payments to their Plenti loans. PayTo ticked all these boxes,” Riddell said.

“Customers making extra loan payments will be the first to access Plenti’s instant PayTo option, and we look forward to working with NAB to make PayTo payments more widely available across our platform.”

The companies say the service can also help business by letting them improve cash flow, speed reconciliation and prevent fraud.

“The improved payment experience for consumers is also a key benefit for businesses enabling PayTo, which offers a faster, more secure and enhanced experience compared to other payment options such as direct debit,” said Shane Conway, who oversees transaction banking and enterprise payments for NAB.

PYMNTS explored the growth of pay-by-bank methods — or open banking payments — last month in an interview with Nate Marquiss, head of financial services at Trustly, and Johnson Cook, co-founder and president of Greenlight.

Among the advantages of open banking is its potential to revolutionize payment systems, offering an alternative to traditional card payments. These payments can be processed in real time, lowering the costs connected with card transactions and eliminating the risk of chargebacks, Marquiss said.

However, in spite its benefits, open banking remains relatively new to the U.S. market, with one recent survey showing that just 11% of U.S. adults had used open banking payments in the prior year, mostly due to a lack of familiarity and understanding of the system.

“But as awareness and understanding grow, the adoption of open banking is likely to increase, driven by the demand for seamless, instant financial services — particularly from younger generations,” PYMNTS wrote.