A massive ability to accelerate: a virtual accounts Q&A with Matthew Little

Welcome to the future of banking, where innovation meets efficiency, and possibilities are limitless. Imagine having the ability to offer new products and features without waiting for a core modernization that might not align with your goals or timeline. Virtual accounts are the game-changer that allow banks to address pain points and achieve their vision quickly and effectively. We sat down with Matthew Little, Vice President of Product at Episode Six, to talk about the benefits and potential of virtual accounts, and how they can empower small banks to differentiate themselves from the pack.  

What are the main benefits of virtual accounts?  

The main benefits are being able to access the products and features that you've wanted to offer your customers, without having to wait for a core modernization that may or may not fit your goals or your timeline. You can actually achieve what you want as a product owner or businessperson by implementing virtual accounts as the underlying system that powers all the segmentation and hierarchies you want to design. 

Across all use cases, a tangible benefit is real-time account opening and processing. Even a simple deposit product can be digitally enabled. You also then get access to things like sub-ledgering and addressable virtual accounts.  

If you want to offer virtual accounts to your clients, it’s difficult to integrate a digital solution into a core. Even if you can link the virtual account, the process of working on an outdated system is time intensive and you are bottlenecked by the core system capabilities. 

Once you have access to the real-time nature of virtual accounts, you can expand the use cases that you can support from a deposit perspective. The virtual accounts act as a central hub to other opportunities to easily add upsell and cross-sell products like installments, credit and features like rewards.  

By implementing the virtual accounts abstraction, you're unlocking the potential of progressive modernization.  

What can virtual accounts power?  

Virtual accounts are flexible and configurable. They can power multiple use cases, including wallets-as-a-service, treasury management and expense management. You can easily attach any product offering to any account, including any type of card, account-to-account payments, FX, installments and rewards.  

 You can move away from reliance on core for products and product processing within the bank. Virtual accounts present a basis of new product revenue opportunities through digitization as well.   

What are the current pain points that a modern virtual solution can solve? 

Virtual accounts can enable smaller banks to compete with some of the bigger banks by differentiating their offerings. If a smaller bank is using the same system as one of the largest banks in the world, what benefit can the small bank offer? They may offer efficiency at scale or a price point differentiation, but they run the risk of falling behind. The key is that virtual accounts make it easy to quickly and easily roll out new product offerings, setting your bank apart from the competition.  

Virtual accounts can enable smaller banks the chance to offer more compelling products with a faster time to market than if they were using a traditional core system.  

What should banks consider when adopting a virtual accounts program?  

One of the key questions banks can ask is: what’s the path to revenue? It's not always as simple as offering virtual accounts to significantly grow your business. 

Virtual accounts have the potential to grow your deposit space, and you'll likely see an increased number of transactions, but those won’t necessarily automatically generate revenue.  

So banks can consider how virtual accounts fit into a greater overall strategy of product offering and revenue, either through credit or card transactions. 

Additionally, they can identify the types of products they want to offer. One option is BaaS, where the bank can use the new virtual account layer to enable them to offer banking as a service. Alternatively, the bank might be looking to offer wallets as a capability to consumer brands. In either case, banks can consider focusing on a specific set of products to set themselves up for success with virtual accounts.  

How can modern virtual accounts set banks apart from competitors? 

Smaller banks need to craft a different approach to compete with larger institutions. They can do this through stronger community relations, more engagement locally, or through pricing or product differentiation.  

We believe that product differentiation through virtual accounts is a largely untapped option for smaller banks, and one that can potentially allow them to compete with larger institutions.  

What makes E6 virtual accounts unique? 

I think it's the ability to easily work alongside core. We're very experienced in working with different banks, specifically regarding how our system integrates with various cores. We have done virtual accounts at scale with top-tier global banks, and we can provide solutions across a variety of use cases.  

Our system has taken into account a lot of the shortcomings of solutions that have been built by banks for very specific use cases. We've done multi-currency virtual accounts, we've done closed loop payments, we’ve done expense management. We have such a wealth of experience, and our platform has been battle-tested across all these different use cases. Plus, it's ready to go out of the box.  

Because we're already multi-use case, banks are buying more of a capability than a single product enablement, meaning our solution is hyper-flexible and configurable to whatever the bank is looking to build. Ultimately, E6 presents a massive ability to accelerate.  

About E6 

E6 helps banks and brands create payment products their customers love. We provide ledger and cards technology that can power almost any payments use case. Our cloud-based platform, TRITIUM®, is designed to fit into your existing tech stack, so you can easily build market-leading products without disrupting ongoing operations. Our solutions are scalable, flexible, and powerful, giving you the ability to stay ahead of the market and strengthen your business.  

With over 50 enterprise clients processing transactions in 29 countries, E6 is trusted by banks and brands around the world. TRITIUM offers real-time RESTful API processing, powers thousands of transactions of per second, and has market-leading compliance, security, and reliability with over 99.99% uptime and 24/7 support. Our technology is proven to make even the most ambitious product roadmap a reality. 

Ready to accelerate your business? Contact E6 today.