I was at a local farmers market last weekend, and it hit me again: every time a small business owner plugs in a dongle from a giant tech firm, a little bit of that financial relationship drifts away from their local bank.
It’s not that these business owners don’t love community banks and credit unions … many still do. But they’re often forced to choose between the personal service they get from you – their primary financial institution – and the sheer convenience they get from a fintech. The reality is that small business banking is a massive opportunity, but it’s also where we see the most friction.
We know that if a business owner has to jump through hoops to accept a simple payment, they’ll look for the path of least resistance.
How Community Financial Institutions Can Compete With Fintechs in Small Business Payments
Most small businesses aren't looking for a "banking product" – they’re looking for a way to get paid and get back to work.
Whether it’s a contractor on a job site or a florist at a wedding, they need tools that live on their phones, not in a desk drawer. That’s the gap Jack Henry® wanted to help fill when we developed Tap2Local™. We wanted to create something that feels like a natural extension of your digital brand; something built for the way small businesses actually work.
This means you can offer a hardware-free solution that lets accountholders accept tap-to-pay transactions directly through their mobile banking app. No extra gadgets, no separate logins, and no "fintech-poaching" of their deposits.
Tap2Local: An Award-Winning Mobile Payment Solution for Your SMB Strategy
We were recently honored to see Tap2Local named the "Small Business Payments Solution of the Year" in the 2026 FinTech Breakthrough Awards.
While awards are always nice to receive, the real win is seeing financial institutions reclaim their role as the financial heartbeat for their local businesses. Offering integrated mobile payment acceptance provides more than just a cool new banking app feature to your small business accountholder.
When you provide these tools, you'll access ways to:
- Simplify their day: Deposits hit their accounts faster, and reconciliation with accounting tools like QuickBooks becomes a breeze.
- Strengthen your relationships: When small business owners don't have to go elsewhere for merchant services, you remain their primary partner.
- Reduce barriers: You can identify the businesses you already serve who might be struggling with clunky setups and offer them a better way to accept payments.
Providing an alternative to unaffiliated fintech providers also protects against them soliciting your valued small business accountholders for other traditional services like lending.
Strengthening SMB Relationships with Integrated Merchant Services
At the end of the day, our mission at Jack Henry is to help you strengthen connections.
Innovation doesn't have to be about "disruption" – it can be about making things easier for the people who keep our local economies running. If you’re looking for ways to make your small business experience feel a bit more "sticky" without a heavy lift for your team, we would love to share more about how Tap2Local is making that happen.
Visit our Tap2Local page to learn more and connect with our team to start strengthening those small business connections today.
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