Getting Your App to a Smooth Launch with BaaS

Choosing the right banking as a service provider is crucial to the development of your embedded finance app. Your BaaS partner will be the main point of contact to help you set up banking products, easily integrate with other third-party providers, and partner with banks. 

As you consider working with BaaS platform Treasury Prime, you may be wondering: What happens after you sign the letter of intent?

This post goes over our implementation process. We’ll start by explaining what you can expect during your first interactions with our team, then go through all the big steps along the way toward launching your app or product. 

What sets Treasury Prime apart from other BaaS platforms is our end-to-end support for our clients.  Banking is complicated, and rather than a DIY approach, Treasury Prime provides personalized guidance through implementation to launch, and beyond.

 Step 1: Partnership Evaluation

First, we'll help you find a bank partner.  Our sales team will gather key information about your company to determine the best potential bank partners for your business needs and help you connect with prospects quickly.

We'll aim to match you with a bank that can help your company meet your goals and your target products. Some of our partner banks focus on small businesses; others work with specialized or targeted neobank offerings; and certain banks have a strong interest in emerging markets like cryptocurrency. No two fintechs have the exact same needs, which is why Treasury Prime partners with more than a dozen banks (and growing), all with varied offerings. 

Then, we will pre-qualify you with one or more potential bank partners. We will then help facilitate an initial call with each potential partner, so you can determine whether they are right for your needs. While this is going on, your developers will also have the opportunity to play around with Treasury Prime’s sandbox to see how our banking API works. If you came to Treasury Prime through a referral from one of our existing bank partners, you’ll skip the matchmaking and go straight to the sandbox.

To discuss how we can help your company launch embedded finance products, contact us.

Step 2: Kickoff

Once you’ve connected with a bank partner, the paperwork begins. You’ll sign a letter of intent (LOI) with Treasury Prime and your partner bank. You’ll also sign two master services agreements (MSAs) — one with Treasury Prime, and one with your bank. The MSA governs terms and conditions of working with each party. Before signing its MSA with you, your bank will conduct a due diligence process to assess risk. Treasury Prime will help guide you through this process.

As part of the implementation kickoff, Treasury Prime will assign you a customer success manager (CSM) who will guide you through implementation and serve as a point of contact when your company has other questions down the road. You’ll have regular calls (usually weekly) with your CSM and partner bank during implementation. 

You’ll also have access to your CSM on an ongoing basis after your integration with Treasury Prime is up and running — whether to  answer questions, troubleshoot problems, or work on implementing new features. Having this central point of contact ensures you have someone who knows the whole story of your work with Treasury Prime so you don’t have to waste time re-explaining things. 

At this point, you’ll start setting up your program with Treasury Prime. We’ll share policies and control documents, and we’ll explain the logistics of moving money through accounts. These logistics include things like what time of day certain types of transactions get processed and any limits your bank may place on processing funds. 

Step 3: Production Setup

Once your ducks are in a row — you’ve signed all the necessary agreements, you’ve funded a reserve account if needed — you’ll be ready to go into production. This is the stage where your developers and Treasury Prime will work on integrating our systems and setting up the products you have elected to use. 

• Opening accounts: You’ll open your operating and reserve accounts with the bank, and fund your reserve account if required. Depending on your integration model, you may open up an FBO (for benefit of) account with your partner bank, from which you’ll create virtual accounts for customers. Or, you can have your customers open accounts directly on the bank’s core. 
• Once you have your operating and reserve accounts open and funded, you will be able to access the developer dashboard, where we give you the tools to manage and access your activity in the Treasury Prime API. 
• With your new API keys, you have full access to the features and services available to your organization through your Treasury Prime partner bank, and open an account for your first customer in minutes.
• Card customization: If your company is issuing cards, you’ll start the process of finalizing card artwork and network approvals at this time. You can integrate digital cards with digital wallets like Apple and Google Pay. Plus our partnership with Plaid allows end users to link to your company from popular apps such as Venmo. We’ll also help you manage chargebacks and disputes, including Reg E compliance.
• Third-party provider integration: During production, your company will also start integrating with any third-party fraud monitoring or risk management platforms you choose to use. Treasury Prime partners with Alloy and Unit21 to offer compliance solutions.

Production happens at your company’s pace. The phases of implementation that can take the longest are due diligence by your partner bank, card setup, and your company’s own product development. 

Step 4: Testing and launch

The last phase before launch is testing. You’ll apply for test accounts to make sure the process is smooth, issue test cards, and make test transactions. Both Treasury Prime and your partner bank will want to watch closely during testing to catch any problems early. With our experience working with roughly 100 fintechs, we may notice issues before you do. If you see something we miss, we’ll fix it rapidly. 

And with that, you’re ready to go to market. 

‍Treasury Prime has the largest bank network in the industry, giving you the most flexibility and affordability at scale. If you want to be the next unicorn, you need a direct bank relationship and the best Baas company. To discuss how we can help your company scale, contact us here. Want to learn more about our process? View our API reference or play around with our Developer Sandbox