Truist Financial Corp. is courting merchants and their banking and payment needs with a new service called Merchant Engage.
The free service is an integrated merchant-services platform, enabling small businesses up to large merchants to view all of their transaction data in one location.
Announced Tuesday, Merchant Engage also brings in Pollinate International Ltd., a London-based fintech, to provide the overarching data view, marking its U.S. launch, Truist says.
Charlotte, N.C.-based Truist says Merchant Engage is available to clients who bank and have a merchant account at the bank at no cost to them, Chris Noe, Truist head of wholesale payments, tells Digital Transactions News. Pollinate’s fees for its service are covered by Truist, Noe says.
Merchant Engage was born out of client requests and the bank’s desire to fulfill them, he says. One key characteristic of the service is the integration, Noe says. Truist clients are looking for ways to have all their needs addressed in one service, including dispute management, new-location onboarding, and transaction processing, he says. “Merchant Engage brings all that into a single digital-experience platform,” Noe says. Traditionally, access to this variety of functions has been siloed, with different providers for each component.
That’s where Pollinate, which has a U.S. office in Charlotte, N.C., comes in. It sits above the traditional processor level, Noe says. Pollinate uses pre-built and customizable modules to address multiple aspects of the merchant lifecycle, from acquisition to onboarding, activation and data insights, to connectivity and growth.
Noe says this means Merchant Engage users don’t have to worry about aggregating the data and the processor tie-in. “The client is able to get a rich, intuitive user experience that shows all of the processing, all of the settlements, all the dispute management, and anything that they would possibly need from an account management or location management standpoint,” he says.
For example, a merchant adding a new location can handle all of the onboarding within Merchant Engage. Instead of logging into multiple separate services, the merchant can use the Truist service to make that an easier process, Noe says.
Truist may be the first with a consolidated platform, but other banks, too, are amping up their merchant-services products. In April, U.S. Bank announced its U.S. Bank Essentials service, which combines a business banking account and merchant services.
