All you need to know about Open – banking that gets your business

By Ria Mariam Thomas
October 12, 2020
7 min read

It’s a well-known fact that small businesses & startups play a substantial role in contributing to the GDP of the country. But wait, how often have you heard about banking services that are specifically built for them?

Not very often I guess!

There is a huge need for this & that’s why we built Open – a neobank that offers small businesses & startups an online bank account & a credit card that combines banking, payments & accounting in one place.

We’re Asia’s first neobank and our journey started three & a half years ago. However, it’s only recently that the fintech space has started to warm up to the buzzword – neobank.

As a neobank for businesses, we’re here to solve the pain points business owners go through with the current banking system.

That’s exactly why we’ve put together these top questions from our users. These will help you gain better clarity on how we cater to small businesses & startups.

How does Open’s online bank account help my business?

If you are a small business, you’d second that while setting up your venture, an online bank account plus a business credit card is the need of the hour. Most of all, you need a bank account to start collecting payments.

By signing up on Open, you’re entitled to all of this within two minutes.

This account enables you to start collecting payments instantly & yes, there is no limit on how much you can collect. You could also start generating invoices & send payment links to your customers.

Post sign up, share a few KYC details and you can unlock powerful features like activating your business credit card, settlements, payouts & more.

In fact, Open’s online bank account is the ONLY account that combines banking, payments & accounting – all in one place, as a result, saving you time to focus on growing your business. You will no longer need to switch between multiple tools to manage your business finances. In other words, as you collect payments & make payouts, your accounting is fully automated, saving you tons of precious hours.

How is Founder One card different from other business credit cards?

The Founder One is a VISA business card that comes integrated with your Open online bank account. This card is the smartest for a few reasons. They are:

Best debit card alternative
Integrates your expense management
Works in both debit & credit mode, allowing you to use it where only credit cards are accepted
Reward points for services that your business uses

As a founder, you can use this card for your business expenses. As for your online team expenses, you can simply assign virtual cards (digitally generated cards), to your teammates. You can set limits for each & load them directly from your online bank account.

How is expense management integrated with banking & accounting on Open?

Managing expenses requires a credit card, but getting one for your business is no easy task. You are required to make an upfront deposit & secure a credit card against it. AND, you still end up losing out on almost 10% of the deposit amount.

That leaves you wondering what your options are. 🤔

Well, what if there is a game-changer?

With Open’s Founder One card, you can separate your business AND personal expenses with ease. You can get this card with minimum documentation & no upfront deposit. Even better – The card has a credit limit up to Rs. 200,000 at interest-free credit for the first 30 days.

You can even manage your team’s expenses with virtual or expense cards or both.

Use virtual cards for online subscriptions like Google ads or Facebook ads or AWS bills. Just set limits & load them directly from your online bank account.

Expense cards can be assigned to teammates who step out of the office & have to make card swipes. When the card is swiped, your teammate will receive a Whatsapp message where he/she can upload the receipt & the expense is filed, just like that.

Cash payments can also be recorded by uploading an image of the payment receipt. Open lets you manage the approval flow & reimbursements too. The best part? All these expenses are automatically recorded in your accounting since your banking & accounting are integrated.

This is expense management, simplified.

How exactly does Open automate accounting?

Consider this – you run a dance academy & your course starts from Rs. 3000. You have 7 students who joined your classes by the 5th of the month. You also paid your rent of Rs. 9000 & an electricity bill of Rs. 1500 for the previous month.

Now you want to find the details of all your incomes & expenses. Simply log in to your Open dashboard & this is what it will look like.

Now you know that 4 out of 7 of your students have already paid & all your expenses are being tracked.

Your entries are automatically categorized as income & expense without any manual intervention.

Yep! This is a true time-saver! 😌

You can even tag your incomes & expenses, which will give you a better understanding of payments that are due or made already.

What’s more?

If you’re already using third-party accounting software like Tally, you can use our plugins to integrate your Tally account with Open too. This way you can initiate all your payables and request payments against invoices directly from your Open dashboard. And just like that, it will automatically reflect on your Tally account too. One thing less to worry about when growing your business.

How can Open simplify payment collection from multiple customers?

There are a number of ways in which you can simplify payment collection for your customers & yourself depending on the nature of your business.

Let’s take a look at the options you have:

1. Payment links: Say you are the business owner of a music academy. Instead of sharing your account number individually with students where they can transfer fees, you can send payment links to all of them at once. Students can click on the link & pay via NEFT, IMPS, RTGS, debit & credit cards, or even UPI.

The problem with sharing your account number is that you have to manually check UTR numbers to track who has paid you & who hasn’t. With Open, all you need to do is send out a payment link & simply login to your Open dashboard & track the payments. The payment received will automatically be categorized as income with the student’s name in your accounting.

You can even set this as a recurring feature to avoid sending out links at the end of every month.

2. Payment gateway API: Here, you can integrate Open’s payment gateway API to your website where customers can pay during the checkout process.

3. Android & iOS SDKs: In case you have a mobile app where your customers’ shop, you can integrate the payment gateway on your app with the help of our Android & iOS SDKs.

4. Seamless checkout: Create a better checkout experience for your customers. When a customer checks out, instead of getting redirected to another page, they will remain on your website while making a payment.

5. Payment plugins: If you’re using an e-commerce platform like Magento or Woocommerce, you can integrate our plugins to your website for payment collection.

But can you guess what’s the best part?

All the above payment options can be used along with our automated accounting that ultimately eliminates the need for manual entries for every payment received. Thus, saving you a ton of time to focus on what’s essential – growing your business.

Does Open offer vendor payments, customer refunds & disbursement of loans?

Oh, yes! Open offers bulk payout APIs for vendor payments, customer refunds & loan disbursements.

For example – You can make instant payments to all your vendors using Open’s payout APIs and that too without adding beneficiaries. There’s no limit on the amount for the first-time transfer either. So don’t worry about transferring a limited amount to that vendor you onboarded only a few minutes ago. 🙅🏻‍♀️

You can also choose to make instant vendor payments the non API way. You don’t need tech bandwidth to start using this. Simply upload recipient details & send multiple payments at the same time.

How can I start using the salary payouts feature of Open?

Salary payouts is an otherwise tedious task that is made super simple on Open’s platform.

The steps in making salary payouts via traditional options include adding a beneficiary, filling in long excel sheets (details pertaining to employees), & recording these payouts as journal entries on your accounting software.

With Open, there is no need to add a beneficiary & wait for the next couple of hours to make a payout. You can simply upload an excel sheet with minimal details of employees & send out the salary of employees with a single API hit.

What’s even better? Salary payouts are auto-categorized as expenses in your accounting as and when they’re made.

Make instant salary payouts whenever you need to. You don’t need to pause because of a bank holiday or the weekend or even if it is after business hours.

What kind of APIs are available for AEPS merchants?

In India, Aadhar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) is a bank-led model that pushes for financial inclusion.

AEPS merchants equip small-town retailers to collect payments from their customers & also send payments to their vendors online by integrating APIs.

Open helps create E-wallets, in other words, unique virtual accounts for each payer via APIs. A virtual account is a digitally generated account issued by a physical bank. Retailers can send out payment links through which customers can pay using UPI or other modes such as NEFT, IMPS, or RTGS.

The best part? You can easily track who paid you how much & when as it automatically gets updated at the backend through reconciliation.

Retailers can make single & bulk payments at the same time. They can also make instant payments to their vendors without spending time on adding beneficiaries by using Open’s payout APIs.

Open – the all-in-one bank account built for your business

With Open, banking becomes way simpler for businesses like yours as we enable plug-and-play solutions that cater to your banking needs. Now manage your banking, payments, expenses, accounting & a whole lot more from just ONE account.

So what’s the wait for? Make a choice to finally focus on growing your business. 😎 Sign up for your Open online bank account today!