Stanbic Bank’s Host-to-Host enhances payment systems for corporate organizations

Stanbic Bank’s host-to-host service has made significant strides in leading the provision of innovative financial solutions to corporate clients in Ghana and thereby emphasizing the Bank’s commitment to providing its clients with bespoke solutions which meet their specific financial needs.

Globally, digitization has pushed the frontiers of business transactions – from an era where businesses had to rely solely on brick and mortar banking to an era where the customer can now have absolute control of transactions from regular deposits to complex universal financial services.

The Stanbic Host-to-Host Service is a secured automated integrated channel for managing high volume financial transactions and reporting. While the service gives clients multiple options to upload a range of file formats, it also has features that allow for viewing and managing transmitted files, status dashboard and alerts among others.

The secured and seamless integration allows corporate clients to carry out banking transactions from their financial management system, without having separate access to the bank’s electronic platform. It also enables them to receive extracts and transaction reports on their own financial management system in a seamless manner providing greater operational speed, independence, confidentiality and security.

Through an Enterprise Planning Resource system, clients are able to transmit payment instructions to the bank and are also able to get periodic updates on transactional activity on their accounts. This reduces the cost of operating the client’s finances as well as time spent on running such operations.

As a client centric organization, Stanbic bank has deployed this service to some key corporate clients in Ghana. One of the key beneficiaries of the Host-to-Host platform is Gold Fields Ghana. Unit Manager of the Finance Department at Gold Fields, Bernice Armah, says the platform has transformed the way business is conducted at the multinational company.

“Before the implementation of the Host-to-Host system, we used to run payments from our ERP system and manually recapture these payments on to the online banking system. We spent a lot of time doing this and it was prone to a lot of errors as well” she said.

She further noted that “Stanbic’s Host-to-Host system is one of the best things that has happened to the Finance Department. It has actually helped us to be more efficient because we are able to run a lot of payments within a short time. We don’t have to process payments in our ERP system and recapture them anymore. We are able to process payments without errors since there are no manual interventions. I believe the system will be useful to other corporate institutions because it is efficient, it’s reliable, it’s well secured and gives a lot of feedback in terms of payment processes,”.

Speaking on the development and efficacy of the platform, Head of Transactional Products and Services of Corporate and Investment Banking at Stanbic Bank, Musah Abdallah, said constantly evolving new and innovative ways of banking has become a vital part of supporting our clients in their growth ambitions.

“Just keeping up is not enough today, businesses need to go beyond the status quo for superior performance – safe and secure technology has proven to be an enabler of this and there has been no place that tech is more vital than in the management of finances. At Stanbic Bank, we understand this hence the deployment of Host-to-Host service to our corporate clients to give them absolute control,” Musah Abdallah said.

The Host-to-Host service allows for full two way secured integration into customers in house financial management systems making transactions seamless, efficient and secured. Automation also optimizes the efficiency of the organization’s business allowing their employees to focus on their core business.

The Host to Host platform is a novelty and can be integrated with large number of ERP systems used by corporates globally. Stanbic Bank is currently expanding the service to cover more corporate organizations in Ghana.