Bank of America’s corporate clients want to make payments the same way they handle their personal money — by mobile phone.
This summer, an international electronics company completed a $1.6 billion payment that way, the biggest transaction ever on the bank’s CashPro app, according to Bank of America Corp.
The platform, which is geared toward corporate treasury departments and smaller companies, has 500,000 online users and was used to approve $144 billion in payments in the 12 months through September. That’s almost double the rate from a year earlier, according to the bank’s third-quarter earnings presentation.
“You can do a payment on an Apple Watch through our CashPro system for 500 million bucks — I’m not sure I’m capable of doing that, they don’t let me have that kind of authority,” Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan joked at an investor conference Tuesday in New York. “But the reality is, you can do it because people want to interface through their devices.”
Global banks are spending billions to revamp their digital offerings for consumers, launching online and mobile services for managing money, trading and investing. The biggest challenge for traditional banks is the need to invest in overhauls that allow them to compete with digital innovators, McKinsey & Co. said in an October report.
