Shieldpay Adds New Deposit Method With Vocalink’s Pay by Bank Tool

Making payments back and forth can be a simple task, but not always. Sometimes there are payments that are conditional in nature, and thus the escrow account is a good plan. The funds are held in trust until certain conditions are met, and then the funds are disbursed. Recently, Vocalink got together with Shieldpay to advance a similar concept, as Vocalink provided its Pay by Bank app as a new deposit method for Shieldpay users.

Shieldpay is a self-described “trusted payments network” that allows all parties involved in a transaction to verify each other’s identity first before releasing payment. Shieldpay takes in the funds in question, places them in the Shieldpay Vault, and holds these until both parties agree to disburse.

With Pay by Bank, meanwhile, the user who’s bringing the funds in to be deposited in the Shieldpay Vault can use a standard mobile banking app to do the job, and even allows customers to see a balance in real-time while making that transfer. This allows for up-to-the-second understanding of a bank balance, which can be useful in connecting a transfer to overall budgets.

Shieldpay’s director of consumer and SMB, Tom Clementson, noted “Fast, reliable and secure marketplace payments are why platforms choose the Shieldpay API. I’m delighted to welcome Pay by Bank app as a new funding method, for consumers and businesses it means they can make frictionless payments instantly and even more securely.”

The more payment measures a location can accept, the better the likelihood that the location will transact business. This has become a truism of late, but it’s still worth pointing out for its sheer accuracy. If a business only accepts cash, for example, it loses out on everyone who would have come in with Apple Pay, with PayPal, or even a credit card. By expanding the slate of what’s accepted, all that other business can come in. Shieldpay’s move to accept the new payment mechanism should help bring in all those folks who would have used Shieldpay, but couldn’t until now.

Whether or not this is a major new source of users and income for Shieldpay is as yet unclear, but it could be the start of a new push for the company.