Berkeley Intros Real-Time Business Payments

Global payments solution firm Berkeley Payments is introducing DirectSend to offer corporates frictionless real-time transfers, the company announced on Thursday (Jan. 30). 

Berkeley is also the first Canadian firm offering 3D Secure 2.0 for money transfer transactions.

Jonathon Hamburg, chief executive officer and founder of Berkeley Payments, said DirectSend’s technological capability “is unmatched on the market today.”

He added that Berkeley is offering this service globally and has “already received wildly positive reviews and feedback” from current customers who are using it.

DirectSend can be personalized with a bespoke platform or completely merged with a firm’s present network. The solution supplies economical, real-time, business disbursements, peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers and B2B supplier payments to accommodate every corporate demand. 

The service also supports new debt repayment and collections resources as well as the real-time transference of prepaid cards directly from consumer bank accounts. DirectSend is quicker than ACH, checks and prepaid alternatives. Through this service, payments of all sizes can be established in under three seconds, the company said.

The solution is now available in Canada and will roll out in the U.S. in the late spring. 

Berkeley Payments was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Toronto. It manages over a billion dollars for business clients worldwide.

In October, Berkeley acquired Toronto-based FinTech startup Pungle, a fast, integrated payments platform. The acquisition puts Berkeley in the position “to be one of the most innovative, fastest-growing FinTech companies globally,” Hamburg said at the time.

The founders of Pungle — Paul Birkness and Braulio Lam — joined Berkeley’s executive team as chief product officer chief technology officer respectively.

Although about 40 percent of respondents surveyed for the January 2020 Real-Time Payments Index said concerns over technical integration are holding back implementation plans, the adopters are moving full speed toward real-time payments.

The core appeal of real-time payments is improving cash flow, however, there is also considerable interest in what else the system can do.