BNY Mellon Launches Vaia, a Multi-Faceted Platform That Includes Real-Time Payments

BNY Mellon announced early Monday it has launched a payments platform called Vaia, which allows clients to offer real-time payments, same-day automated clearing house transfers, tokenized payments, debit cards, and payments through the Zelle peer-to-peer payments network.

The nation’s 10^th-largest bank by assets said the panoply of payments capabilities can be accessed “through a single integration” with the bank and on a panel branded by the client business. For now, the new service is available only to U.S. clients, though BNY Mellon says it will support cross-border payments “in future rollout phases.”

The bank says the new service answers a need among businesses that struggle to stay current with available and emerging payment methods. This is the case, the bank says, even though businesses are increasingly relying on banks to enable the widest possible choice of methods to make it easier for clients to pay.

The new service, and its wide range of payments technologies, also arose out of a competitive necessity for banks, BNY Mellon says. “End customers want greater choice in how they are paid, but with so many digital payment options emerging, businesses are struggling to stay up to date with, and connected to, the latest capabilities,” says Jennifer Barker, the bank’s chief executive of treasury services, in a statement. “Vaia does the heavy lifting to ensure that our clients’ end customers always have access to the latest suite of digital payment options.”

To manage risk, the service relies on BNY Mellon’s account-validation services to establish the identities of payees and validate accounts. This will be especially important as the bank adds more payment methods, which it says it intends to do.

The service emerged through a collaboration with Verituity, which BNY Mellon said earlier this year it had added to the bank’s accelerator program for emerging technologies. Verituity’s technology establishes links between banks, payors, and payees for digital payments. The bank announced in February it was working with the McLean, Va.-based company to enable real-time payouts.

In earlier developments, BNY Mellon announced in September last year it was working with Verizon Communications Inc. and Citibank to allow Verizon customers who maintain accounts at Citi to pay their bills in real time. And in July 2020, the bank said it would work with Early Warning Services LLC, the bank-owned operator of the Zelle network, to offer businesses and other banks the ability to verify in real time the status and ownership of accounts before the money moves.

Zelle has recently been embroiled in a controversy in which some U.S. Senators have charged the network isn’t doing enough to control fraud on the network arising from cases in which users are gulled by fraudsters into authorizing transfers.