Introducing Comma – The UK’s first native open banking bulk payments system

Who are Comma?

Comma is the UK’s first native open banking bulk payments system. It helps owner-managed accounting firms keep up with the growing demand for outsourced financial operations. It makes it painless to setup, share, and initiate bulk payments for bills, taxes, and salaries.

It’s the missing glue between accounting systems and business bank accounts.

Working across mobile and desktop, it allows accountants, bookkeepers, and internal teams to automate and de-risk time-wasting processes.

What the pilot companies say:

“It provides us with a solution that allows us to scale without having to throw extra bodies at the problem”

Gary Bell @ FLB Chartered Accountants

“It closes the gap between banking systems and accounting software and enables us to offer additional services to our clients”

Paul Meades @ Meades Group

“Comma removes the security challenges and risk involved when getting access to client bank accounts”

Eamon McManus @ McManus Williams

How does Comma help small businesses?

Most small business have little process around making payments, and hardly any of them have access to corporate banking systems.

Traditionally, this means they are left to key in bill payments and salaries manually into their bank. The process involves searching around for bank details, amounts, then copy / pasting or re-keying them into their bank account.

As it’s mostly the owner or the senior manager that has access to the bank account, it’s often their time that is wasted making payments which should be used adding value to their business.

The effect of this is that payments are missed, or delayed because of the hassle factor in making them. This problem spirals down the supply chain to delay the movement of money – affecting the whole economy and supplier relationships.

Comma removes all of these pain points by replacing this out-dated way of working with a new, simple, innovative process allowing small businesses to pay bills and salaries in a fraction of the time.

How does Comma help accounting firms?

Traditionally, offering payment services was a hassle. Members of the team would need to be added to the customers bank account. You were then exposing the firm to risk as you would need to manage bank access for dozens or hundreds of clients, and you would need to key in payments directly to the bank.

In addition, firms would need to send spreadsheets around just to communicate what they were paying and to get sign off on that.

Existing software solutions to payments require the use of virtual accounts – which can be a hassle to set up on a per client basis as they require additional KYC checks and directors signatures.

Comma helps accounting firms work closer with their clients by offering payment services with zero hassle. All they need to do is link their clients accounting system to Comma and they are able to instantly create payment runs for clients using existing invoices.

These payment runs are then shared with clients and paid without the need to set up intermediary accounts or accessing bank accounts. By removing the legacy process, accountancy firms can instantly add value to their clients and offer services they were reluctant to in the past.

How does Comma work with accounting software?

• Link your accounting system to our platform. We connect to Xero, Sage, Quickbooks, FreeAgent and many more.

• Our platform pulls invoice data and bank details from the accounting system.

• Add or import custom payments such as taxes and salaries

• Select which invoices to pay in the run and push them directly to the client/approver.

• The client/approver approves the payment run, payments are pushed to the bank account via open banking and initiated to suppliers.

• Transactions are then posted back to the accounting system to mark the payment as complete

• Magic.