Hi everyone,
Dana and Claire from the product team here at Orum. Today we wanted to talk about our smart money movement platform, Momentum. We started focusing on enabling instant payouts. This can be anything from immediate payouts for gig workers to real-time settlement of insurance claim distributions. Now, we’re tackling the second half of the payments puzzle: account-to-account transfers (A2A transfers). Our customers agree that the next value unlock is making it easy for businesses and consumers to fund accounts – like transferring money into a brokerage account, converting crypto into fiat, or even transferring funds among accounts that an individual holds.
These types of transfers can be tricky, often requiring multiple transactions to accomplish a single transfer, each using different payment rails. Momentum’s single API handles all the real work around transfer orchestration on the back end. Orchestrating the multiple pieces of a transfer is hard, of which managing rails is one piece but not the only piece. Even an ACH debit + ACH credit requires lots of back-end orchestration around validation of the parties involved in the transfer and the timing of each leg of the transaction.
This means we’re automating the A2A process from end to end, removing the need for businesses to be involved in rail selection, correct timing of transfers, error handling, etc.
Let’s dive into how this will work and why it could have a big impact on your business.
The complexities of account-to-account transfers
Traditionally, A2A transfers have required companies to carry out extensive integrations with different banks and payment rails, or to integrate with a simple payments API that provides access to these rails, before they can tackle coordinating the optimal set of rails for each transaction, much less managing the risk and operational overhead of each transaction. Sounds fun right? No thanks.
There hasn’t been a universal platform that takes a high-level, holistic approach to money movement. This is where Momentum comes in. We take care of coordinating between multiple rails to pull and push payments quickly and automatically through the same, single API. Plus, we power all transfers with our proprietary payment intelligence to help accelerate the transfers, so they can be delivered in as little as 60 seconds. Huge sigh of relief!
Imagine sending a package abroad with modern logistics infrastructure. Each delivery service you find runs according to a limited schedule and fixed route—some by land, some by air, some by sea. If you’re handling it yourself, you’ll have to coordinate between them all to find a way that’s swift, secure, and cost-effective.
With Momentum, there’s no need to tend to the minutiae or juggle multiple API calls, platforms, and integrations. Every aspect and leg of a transaction is handled effortlessly on the back end, so businesses can focus on their business.
How Momentum works
Momentum takes a single A2A API request and breaks it down into two discrete segments for the debit and credit legs of the transfer.
From there, Momentum:
- Verifies and authorizes the parties and accounts involved through built-in, streamlined regulatory compliance measures
- Assesses the risk of each transfer to determine the appropriate payment rails (ACH, same-day ACH, RTP, etc.) and acceleration speed
- Tracks and manages the available balance of a business to fund transfers
- Selects the optimal bank processor for the use case
- Initiates the transfers across available payment rails using smart routing, which routes transactions along the best possible course
- Handles hundreds of potential errors from payment rails/processors and clearly communicates needed actions to businesses
- In addition to the individual, transfer-level activities, Orum provides reporting and analytics to customers so they can understand their program performance and how to improve it
That means businesses can simply request an A2A transfer and trust that the orchestration of multiple, complex processes is being efficiently handled for them, while still gaining valuable insight into each transaction.
Simplified visibility into transfer status
To remove the complexity of money movement, Momentum also makes it easy to view a transfer’s status. Businesses can query Momentum programmatically for the status of a transfer, or sign up for our real-time notifications via webhooks to learn if a transaction succeeded, failed, or is still being processed. In other words: did everything go smoothly, or is there something else they need to do? The alternative? Interpreting and normalizing 70+ status combinations to deduce an actionable top-level status.
In the event of an unsuccessful payment, Momentum provides ample context for businesses to get under the hood, painlessly troubleshoot the issue, and ensure the transfer goes through.
What this means for businesses
Momentum’s advanced intelligence, including smart routing capabilities, allows businesses to support a wide range of customer experiences.
For instance, crypto exchanges can help customers quickly onboard and convert fiat into crypto, acting in a fast moving market, lenders and companies with recurring payments are working to reduce returns and manage their cash position, and neobanks face a dropoff in account openings if customers face a long wait time to fund their new accounts. In many of these cases, companies are faced with weighing speed, risk, cost, and resources, sacrificing at least one of the four. With Orum, you can unlock instant deposits with low cost risk-managed instant payments.
Want to learn more?
Check out what Momentum’s automated, all-in-one money movement API can do for your business.