Santander UK introduces new cashflow app for UK SMEs

Santander UK has begun the initial rollout phase of a new mobile app, built using Open Banking technology, that will provide payments, cash flow management and invoicing support for business banking clients.

The app has been created in partnership with Open Banking fintech tomato pay and will give Santander’s UK SME clients a single view of their account balances and transactions across their different banks.

The rollout of its ‘CashFlow Manager’ app is underway for selected Santander UK corporate and commercial banking clients, enabling them to not only view account balances from multiple banks in one place but also collect payments from customers instantly using QR codes.

When customers use the QR code to pay, the payment is settled immediately in the business’ bank account, Santander said.

The app can also analyse a business’ transactions, using that information to assess its future cash flow position to provide detailed forecasts.

The invoice processing facility feature within the app has been designed to streamline and semi-automate what is typically a manual process, by integrating contract acceptance and payment instructions to speed up the process by which companies pay their suppliers.

John Baldwin, head, commercial clients at Santander UK, said: “SMEs are working incredibly hard to get on the road to recovery from the pandemic. The CashFlow Manager app is designed to help them by removing the manual and time-consuming workload involved with day-to-day banking so they can instead focus on running and growing their business.”

Santander is currently testing the app with chosen corporate and commercial banking customers, with a view to it being launched more widely to customers following the initial roll-out phase.

Nicholas Heller, CEO and co-founder of tomato pay, added that they had wanted to create “something with a tangible impact” following a tough year for UK SMEs.

“Together with Santander UK, we’ve created an app that joins two critical elements – cash flow management and payments – to give businesses back their time and money otherwise spent on unnecessary admin and payment processing fees,” Heller said.