Universal Payment Account
Payall’s Universal Payment Account is a flexible and powerful utility that can fulfill many roles depending on your needs and where you sit in the cross-border payments value chain—offering unprecedented adaptability.
For Originating and Clearing Institutions, Payall’s Universal Payment Account can act similarly to a U.S. Federal Reserve Master Account; that is, it can receive deposits for a financial institution. But unlike a Master Account, it also can provide subledgers or transaction account functionality for disbursers and receivers.
For Central Banks in Europe and many other parts of the world, UPAs can ringfence accounts, isolating and protecting funds from ineligible disbursement, as well as protecting funds received by recipients.
UPA: At the Core of the Payall Platform
Payall’s UPA is a true double-entry account—not simply a declining balance transaction account—that ensures financial integrity and easy exception reconciliation.
For Originating and Clearing Institutions, a Payall UPA can serve as a core account. Or, similar to a U.S. Federal Reserve Master Account, it can reflect the sum of all funds associated with a financial institution's cross-border business. But unlike a Master Account, it can provide subledgers for disbursers and receivers.
Some Originating and Clearing Institutions may even use the UPA as the account from which they send cross-border funds.
For Central Banks in Europe and many other parts of the world, UPAs can ringfence accounts, isolating and protecting funds from ineligible disbursement.
Preventing Fraud in Cross-Border Payments
All transactions from a financial institution’s client pass through a UPA for the purpose of secure funding and exit the UPA to recipients.
Because Payall “sees” and records both sides of the transaction, we’re able to monitor all activity and conduct sophisticated analysis of the sends from disbursers with accounts at multiple Originating Institutions to recipients who may have multiple bank accounts.
UPAs and Payall’s monitoring support prevention of terrorist financing, money laundering and payments for other nefarious purposes.
UPAs for Senders and Recipients: Regulated & Secure
The Originating Institution issues a UPA to every sender—business or individual—making a cross-border payment. The sender is the “owner” of the account, enabling the Originating Institution to execute Know Your Customer directly.
For recipients with the option to decide how to receive and manage the funds from their cross-border payments, the UPA becomes their regulated digital account to safely hold their funds. This mobile-forward structure can be an entry point to propel unbanked individuals into modern financial services.
Other participants in the ecosystem or those with particular use cases may also require a safe, bank-grade, core-like account—and the UPA is the ideal solution.
Configuration & Structure
Architecturally, UPAs may be configured as a cascading parent/child construct to maintain total funds ownership accountability and visibility under each Originating or Clearing Institution.
UPAs support the account numbering structures of ACH, SEPA and other domestic and multinational payment schemes for funds-in/funds-out functionality.
UPAs may have multiple payment identifiers or identifier constructs, client-assigned numbering or identification paradigms, including biometric and tokenization.
