Timed to coincide with the Vista launch, a consortium of banks and financial services vendors has unveiled a set of products intended to be a one-stop shop for small business banking needs. The suite is being targeted both toward small businesses, as well as toward other banks that want to boost their services to the small business community.

The consortium is called the PASS (Payments as a Secure Service) Consortium, and is made up of CIT Group Inc., Chase Paymentech, Internet Commerce Corporation, BankServ, CashEdge, PayPal, and IP Commerce Inc., a software company enabling open payments services between businesses from whom the idea for the consortium and new product suite originated.

The PASS Commerce Center, as the newly unveiled suite of services is called, allows small businesses using Windows Vista to view cash flow, present invoices, take new forms of payment and apply for financing directly from the Windows Vista desktop.

“The small business market is a major market and unfortunately half fail in the first two years. Looking at what the limitations in financial management and payment were for small businesses, we found there was a lack of visibility into and control of cash management,” said Chip Kahn, CEO of IP Commerce.

The collection of services in the PASS Commerce Center is intended to solve what Kahn identified as the pain points of small business banking. Within the PASS Commerce Center, CIT Group provides the small business banking services, including small business lending, technology financing and payment protection; Chase Paymentech provides credit and debit card processing; BankServ is the Check 21 service provider, providing remote deposit and truncation services; PayPal provides payment-enabled email invoicing services; CashEdge is a provider of small business transfer and invoicing services; and Internet Commerce Corporation is providing PASS EDI Pay, a user-friendly, desktop electronic data interchange solution.

For CIT Group, the largest provider of small business administration (SBA) loans, participation in the project was somewhat of a shift, but a welcome one. The company is used to white-labeling its product, but normally to vendors who offer CIT loans and their financing services.

“This is a new origination channel for us; we generate from the person who is selling copy machines or office furniture. It’s different that we’re integrating right with the software on the desktop,” said Jeffrey Simon, president of CIT vendor finance and global major relationships. “We thought it was really unique that small business managers could have a gadget on their desktop with which they could pay their bills, invoices, and manage their finances securely.”

CIT Group became involved both through its relationship with Microsoft through which it provides financing for customers buying Microsoft products and services, as well as through a working relationship it has with IP Commerce.

IP Commerce’s role is to provide the service-oriented architecture to seamless payments between businesses.

“We enable the back-office systems from all those providers to have their services provisioned and published to the desktop. Rather than reaching out and plugging in each one, we have enabled them all to be bundled for real-time messaging,” Kahn said.

The whole suite of services offered through the PASS Commerce Center is tied to Vista, and Kahn said that packaging addresses one of the issues of small business banking.

“It runs on Vista in conjunction with Microsoft and this ties back to the pain points – we’re giving businesses a single location on a desktop to address payment and cash management needs,” he said.

In addition, Kahn noted that several Vista features enhance the product suite. For example, Windows Vista Business security settings help ensure that firewalls are enabled and users can be alerted prior to sending business documents if their firewalls are not in place. Vista’s powerful integrated search will help businesses quickly find documents, such as bad checks within the system.

The PASS Commerce Center is currently free to download for small businesses using Vista. The different services within the commerce center charge transaction fees much like they would if the services were acquired separately. The PASS Commerce Center is also available to banks or other financial services providers as a white label solution to offer customers under their own brand.

www.cit.com
www.ippaymentsframework.com
www.paymentech.com
www.icc.net
www.bankserv.com
www.cashedge.com
www.paypal.com

By Renee Wijnen Caruthers