BOSTON, April 18, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MineralTree, Inc., a developer of cloud-based payment solutions designed specifically for small and medium businesses (SMBs) has been awarded the 2012 Monarch Innovation Award for Most Innovative Industry Partner from Barlow Research Associates, a provider of research to the financial services industry.
MineralTree's Secure Payments Platform offers a secure and simple payments solution for small and medium sized businesses. Businesses in the annual revenue range of $500,000 to $50M are caught between online bill pay solutions (which are too simplistic to meet their payment needs), and corporate treasury solutions (which are far too expensive and complex). Further, their relatively high payment volume and lack of effective payment controls exposes them to the increasing incidences of fraud and online account takeover.
As Nick Miller, President of Clarity Advantage Corporation, and one of the judges on the Monarch Awards panel explains "I applaud MineralTree for hitting the bases business owners care about - sophisticated fraud prevention with simple start up, simple set up, simple payment management, simple approval and decision-making in real time from anywhere in the country."
The MineralTree solution is offered as a private-label solution in partnership with banks. For banks, the MineralTree solution provides a unique and differentiated way to serve a classically underserved business segment - the "messy middle" of businesses with $500,000 to $50M in annual revenue - whose payments volumes, processes, and risks resemble neither smaller microbusinesses (who are well served through solutions such as retail online bill pay), or larger corporate accounts (who are served by higher-end treasury solutions).
By offering the MineralTree solutions to their SMB clients, banks bring security, simplicity, and automation to SMB payments, while also creating a significant revenue stream, become deeply embedded into the payment supply chain, and ensure that they are less likely to be dis-intermediated by non-bank payments solution providers.
"For 3 million US businesses, payments and cash management are ad hoc, paper-based, manual processes that are hampered by poor security and weak controls. As a young, but growing business, we at MineralTree feel the same payments pain as these businesses. We have longed for a solution that integrates directly with our accounting system, eliminates the dual entry of payment information, provides an integrated payables interface across the common payment channels, eliminates check printing and paper documents, and provides a simple workflow that ensures separation of duties, and provides an audit trail of all payment activities," said BC Krishna, founder and CEO of MineralTree.
"We are honored that Barlow Research and the judges for this year's award recognized this same need and concluded that MineralTree has delivered an innovative new solution that addresses this painful, unsolved problem. Continuous innovation and customer service are the essence of the MineralTree culture, and we look forward to working with our banking industry partners to drive customer delight and bank revenue."
About the Barlow Research Associates Monarch Innovation
Awards
The Monarch
Innovation Awards are presented by Barlow Research Associates,
Inc., and are made to recognize B2B innovations within the
financial services industry. Awards are presented to financial
institutions and industry partners that provide the most innovative
products to business customers as well as recognize risk takers who
create/promote innovation within their organizations.
The Monarch Innovation Award winners will be recognized at Barlow Research's 2012 Annual Client Conference, held in Atlanta, GA on April 24th and 25th, 2012.
About MineralTree
MineralTree is a
venture-backed software company based in Boston, Massachusetts. Our
team has a long track record of creating innovative new
technology-based solutions to long-standing problems in banking and
financial services. Our experience is both wide and deep--from a
strategic understanding of what drives value in business banking to
the everyday tactical issues covering payments and fraud.
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