Reinventing small business checking by helping customers get paid

“America’s Most Convenient Bank.” For most financial institutions, delivering on such a bold promise might seem unrealistic — or even impossible. For TD Bank, this promise is more than just a catchy motto. It has become a reminder to never settle, and to continue to provide the high value their customers have come to expect. 

Of course, customer expectations often change over time, as do the tools required to continue to meet those expectations. This is a given. What was less predictable was the way consumers have changed in the last few years, as a response to the pandemic. One segment in particular — small business — was deeply impacted. 

This pain was not lost on TD Bank’s Jo Jagadish, Head of Corporate Products Services “As a result of the pandemic, and the fact that we had to close a number of our store locations, we asked ourselves an important question: how do you allow small business owners to take their banking into a remote digital environment, so they can continue to conduct their day-to-day operations with minimal interruption?” 

“How do you allow small business owners to take their banking into a remote digital environment, so they can continue to conduct their day-to-day operations with minimal interruption?” 

To address this pressing need, TD Bank partnered with Autobooks to revamp a popular product: their small business checking account. Together, the two teams integrated digital payment acceptance and invoicing tools as standard features into their TD Business Simple Checking, making it easier for small and micro businesses to get paid faster. 

Although these powerful payment acceptance tools, powered by Autobooks, were already available inside the bank’s existing TD Online Accounting solution, Jagadish realized that their customers would benefit immediately by integrating these newfound digital capabilities into their checking account. 

"Probably the greatest pain point for small businesses is actually getting paid for the services they provide," said Jagadish. “It was a good time to launch the product because we enabled businesses to get up and running and accept payments — especially businesses that were incredibly cashflow sensitive and impacted by the pandemic.” 

"Probably the greatest pain point for small businesses is actually getting paid for the services they provide." 

Since introducing the account in late 2021, TD Bank has seen a significant uptick in enrollments. The bank experienced a 421% increase in enrollments over the last six months — coinciding with the full launch of the solution in October.  

In addition, the bank discovered that when a small business owner uses Autobooks, they sign up for more than 2X the amount of products than a customer that doesn’t have Autobooks. More specifically, on average, a customer has 3.89 products with TD. The new-to-bank customers with Autobooks have on average 8.22 products — doubling the portfolio average. 

“We continue to see really strong retention rates of customers that are using the product,” noted Jagadish, “and if you take a step back and just kind of think about the reason for that is when small business customers look at investing in a bank partnership, or even a non-bank fintech partnership, what they're looking for is kind of that ease-of-use and the ability to interact with their own customers in a more seamless way.”  

TD Bank’s partnership with Autobooks reinforces the crucial role that technology plays in helping the bank fulfill its mission to continue to be America’s most convenient bank. By integrating Autobook’s payment acceptance tools, TD Bank’s small business team can now offer a powerful solution embedded into the customer experience, right inside their online banking.