$649 million Axiom Bank is partnering with embedded finance platform BankiFi to allow its small- to medium-sized business (SMB) customers to quickly collect payments using digital tools while also gathering and organizing financial data.

Manchester, England-based BankiFi was founded in 2017 and runs on APIs, is digitizing and automating processes for small businesses following its North American launch in June, Keith Riddle, chief executive of the Americas at BankFi, told Bank Automation News.

“One of the key items that we used as part of our strategic entry into the U.S. was that we didn’t want to introduce a platform that would take a considerable amount of time from the financial institution to integrate to their core or to their digital banking platform provider,” Riddle said.

“It’s a platform that includes functionality that brings in accounting data and then basically being able to connect all of your financial institutions.”

The platform allows SMBs to connect multiple accounts to one digitized solution — and 78% have at least two financial institution accounts, according to a release.

Fully automating key actions like gathering account data and connecting multiple accounts gives SMBs the ability to forecast and make decisions based on projected cash flow needs while also giving financial institutions access to that information for potential lending decisions, Riddle told BAN.

“It helps small businesses, but also helps the financial institution become that trusted advisor to that small and medium business by seeing the account data where they’re connected and their cash flow forecasting and having a sense of their receivables and payables activity,” he said.