Stripe and Lloyds Bank launched a partnership aimed at small businesses in the United Kingdom.
The collaboration will see the lender use Stripe to power Lloyds Accept, a suite of payments tools designed to give small businesses access to the same payments infrastructure as the world’s largest companies like Amazon or OpenAI, according to a Tuesday (June 9) news release.
“A small business on any U.K. high street can now run on the same payments infrastructure as the largest and fastest-growing companies in the world,” Stripe Chief Revenue Officer Eileen O’Mara said in the release. “World-class financial tools shouldn’t be gated by size and, together with Lloyds, we’re reaching more businesses than we ever could alone.”
Lloyds Accept is integrated directly into a Lloyds Business Account and lets small businesses accept payments in person with terminal devices, tap to pay, or through payment links for online sales. Businesses can get set up within minutes, the release said.
“Simple, flexible payment solutions are essential for growth,” Amanda Murphy, CEO of Lloyds business and commercial banking, said in the release. “These new tools enable customers to get set up and start trading instantly—supporting healthy cash flow, which is critical for every stage of growth.”
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “The Cross-Border Opportunity: What Global Sourcing by US SMBs Means for Payment Providers” found that many small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the United States have been carrying out multinational operations without having multinational infrastructure.
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SMBs “are doing things like sourcing materials from Vietnam, manufacturing in Mexico, hiring contractors in Eastern Europe, selling through global marketplaces, and managing customers across multiple currencies,” PYMNTS reported Tuesday.
More than half of the SMBs surveyed bought goods or materials from overseas suppliers, a figure that rose to almost 3 in 4 among companies with annual revenues between $1 million and $10 million.
Most payments systems available to SMBs, however, remain essentially domestic-first, crafted around assumptions that companies transact primarily inside of one country, one banking system and one currency.
“The result is a widening disconnect between how SMBs operate and how they move money,” the report said. “Increasingly, that gap is creating operational friction that directly affects supplier relationships, liquidity management and growth planning.”
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