According to foreign exchange specialist Bidvest Bank, South African foreign exchange regulations and financial surveillance have entered a new era. “National Treasury and the Reserve Bank have announced higher allowances and a new capacity for dynamic hedging and forward cover,” says Bidvest Bank managing director Alan Salomon, adding that Bidvest Bank has responded with systems aimed at supporting importers and exporters looking to maximise these opportunities.
The bank has launched a rebranded, updated Internet/web-based corporate foreign payment service that it hails as the future of global online payments.
“Bidvest Bank was the first to introduce a web-based, client-friendly global payments system in 2006 – a lead later followed by many of our competitors,” says Salomon. “Now we’re innovating further in the new regulatory environment. Additional refinements and customer-service enhancements are already in the pipeline as we intend to entrench our industry specialisation.”
The product, Bidvest Bank Global Payments Online, supersedes the bank’s previous fxpaynet platform. It is introduced in collaboration with Travelex, the global foreign exchange specialists and represents the company’s new generation of global payments.
“The new system is web-enabled, balance of payment-automated, modified for rapid foreign exchange approvals and designed for smoothed integration with document-scanning technology to save even more time,” says Salomon. “This is all supported technologically by the extended international reach of Travelex’s expanded Global Business Payments division. We have already begun rolling out the new offering to our corporate clients and response has exceeded our own expectations.”
The internet-based platform is installed for free at a corporate client’s offices or from anywhere offering secure Internet connectivity. In line with Bidvest Bank’s simplified flat-fee model, clients only pay when they put through a transaction. There are no licence fees and user training for the benefit of a corporate client’s staff is also free. The system set-up is non-disruptive, takes only 48 hours and requires no software installations on a client’s own computer system.