Revolut Business Doubles Down on Automation in B2B Payments Space With Clear Books Partnership

With the explosion of automation in the B2B payments space, Revolut Business is doubling down on its APIs with a unique partnership with accounting software Clear Books. The innovative product partnership provides business customers with a quicker and easier method to manage bills and payroll directly from their Clear Books accounts.

Latest data from Revolut Business shows that 25% of all B2B payments are now initiated from an API – up from 5% two years ago. While much of this trend has been driven via Open Banking solutions, many software companies in the SME space are reluctant to take on the burden of becoming a fully-fledged payment initiator.

Revolut Business worked with Clear Books to solve this problem with Revolut’s innovative “draft payments solution” which has enabled Clear Books to embed payments creation functionality directly into its accounting and payroll software without having to be a registered payment initiator. This new functionality allows joint customers of Revolut Business and Clear Books to save valuable time in managing their bills and payroll.

Revolut expects this trend for financial services embedded in third party products to continue, and has built a dedicated Marketplace to house these apps. Clear Books is the first app of this type and thanks to the close & unique collaboration between both parties, customers of both platforms are now able to work more efficiently and can benefit from the best of finance and accounting from today.

The new integration is available from Revolut Business’ Marketplace, and allows customers to manage bills and their employees’ payroll directly from Clear Books where they have linked their Revolut Business account. Business owners or account admins can choose up to 20 bills to be paid at once within Clear Books, and employee salaries can also be paid this way. Once submitted, Clear Books sends the bills as ‘draft payments’ directly to the Revolut Business account, so all the owner or admin has to do is review and approve all payments on their Revolut Business account with just one click. Clear Books is automatically updated with the payment status, so owners have effortless up-to-date insights of their business finances from their accounting software.

With this new addition to its offering, Revolut Business and Clear Books give customers an extra layer of safety and security, as payment data syncs directly between Clear Books and Revolut Business and only authorised users can draft and execute payments.

Clear Books is also offering any Revolut Business customers who are new to Clear Books 50% off its accounting software for six months when they sign up and connect their Revolut Business account.* They also offer a 30-day free trial to try out the new draft payment integration.

James Gibson, Head of Product at Revolut Business said: “We’re focused on building innovative products that help businesses save precious time and money. Our partnership with Clear Books does just this – allowing customers to set up draft payments directly from Clear Books in a couple of taps. Going forward we see a huge opportunity for the automation of basic tasks by using the power of APIs.”

Ruth Fouracre, CEO at Clear Books said: “Small businesses can face an overwhelming amount of business admin. By allowing users to create draft payments directly from Clear Books, we’re removing the admin burden of rekeying all that information into Revolut to make the payments. Together, we’re making bill and payroll payments quicker and easier for small businesses so they can get back to doing the things they enjoy most.”