Virtual accounts

How does it work?

1. The bank reserves a series of account numbers with the Belgian IBAN structure for your business.
2. You allocate a number in this series to each of your clients and include it in your invoices.
3. Your debtors (inside and outside the SEPA zone) make domestic payments to the virtual account opened with them in mind.
4. BNP Paribas Fortis detects incoming transfers to your various virtual accounts and diverts them to your main account, stating in the transaction report the account to which the transfer was made.
5. Your accounting system reconciles the payments automatically based on the indicated virtual account.

Advantages

• Simple: the bank provides you with a series of virtual accounts.
• Efficient: your accounting system can reconcile the incoming transfers automatically, identifying the debtor and processing them correctly, so that you do not have to take further action (still manual in all too many cases).
• Narrow the gap between order and cash: the processes are rationalised, costs and throughput times reduced, and centralisation of the cash optimised. Enhanced insight into the performance of your business units. Your organisation becomes more efficient.
• Cash management: your cash flow needs are easier to predict and control of your credit risk is improved.

Good to know

• The Virtual Accounts solution is currently operational in ten countries: Belgium, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Turkey. And other European countries will be added soon.
• Virtual Accounts is a multi-currency solution and operates in all the currencies handled by BNP Paribas Fortis.
• The bank statements for your main account contain all the information needed to identify the debtor and the virtual beneficiary account: the Virtual Account Reference stated in the reports is included after the /VACC/ code. Statements are not provided for the virtual accounts themselves.