Citi: Making Payments Pay For Clients

When judging Model Bank nominations, Celent looks for innovative and differentiating use of technology, with demonstrable business benefits. Citi merits our Commercial Payments award for a group of initiatives, each of which was a worthy contender for an award.

One initiative addresses the very real pain point a corporate has in managing disparate, usually manual, accounts receivables processes—especially when serving customers overseas. Citi’s solution not only creates a unified, automated platform but simplifies the process of doing business cross-border as well.

The other group of initiatives focus on enabling clients to utilise the growing number of instant payment systems that exist globally—from how to manage systems with different technical and business requirements, to sending instant payments cross-border, to sending payments to anyone instantly.

When the initiatives are considered together, an even more powerful story emerges. Each initiative starts with understanding a customers’ pain point, and then explores how Citi can both bring its technology prowess to bare with a goal of making the client’s business better.

It is this combination of market leading if not global technology firsts and client-centric design thinking that made Citi’s entry such a worthy winner.