Optimising eCommerce cashflows with APIs
Read how API solutions helped an eCommerce firm optimise its' cashflow; allowing it to continue their focus on empowering small businesses through digital technology.
Our client, an eCommerce firm, operates a platform which enables small and medium-sized merchants to sell goods and services online without the need to invest capital in their own market infrastructure.
With its strong focus on empowering small businesses through digital technology, the platform provider wanted to improve payments to its merchants to optimise their cashflows.
It needed to do this without adding more pressure on its own employees – the firm was already working on weekends and holidays to prepare payment files. It also wanted to reduce costly payment errors which were occurring during the preparation of these files.
In order to achieve all of these goals, it needed to implement a fully automated end-to-end payment process and asked if we could help. We are market leaders in the provision of banking API solutions. DBS RAPID, (Real-time APIs with DBS) has more than 200 customers benefiting from the largest banking API library in the world.
We built a solution for our eCommerce client, which automatically directs a merchant’s request for payment to us at DBS, through an API, for account validation. This is done in real-time.
For merchants with a DBS account, we send the payment confirmation back to the platform provider and the merchant within a few minutes. For those without a DBS account, payments are made using a real-time online settlement network and the payment status is then sent back in real-time.
By automating the payment process, the business can now make payments seven days a week, within an hour, whether the merchant has a DBS account or not. At the same time, it has significantly reduced the amount of holiday and weekend work needed to prepare payment files and cut the number of failed transactions to almost zero.
Managing risks, cutting overheads, raising the levels of client satisfaction, improving conditions for staff and creating a competitive advantage by transforming service levels – these are goals shared by many businesses of all sizes and locations. Using our API solutions, we have helped companies across the world realise objectives like this and more.
