Virtual Accounts

If your corporate clients are chasing lost payments or juggling dozens, even hundreds, of operating accounts, it’s time to introduce them to virtual accounts. These sub-ledger solutions don’t just organize incoming funds, they drive automation, visibility, and trust. But the real game-changer isn’t just the virtual accounts themselves, it’s the platform that’s managing them behind the scenes.

As a treasury advisor, promoting a virtual account platform as part of your bank’s embedded cash management solution positions you as a strategic partner. And the results speak for themselves: corporates report 30-50% fewer reconciliation errors, smoother audits, and better working capital control.

what makes virtual accounts essential?

A virtual account is only as powerful as the engine that drives it. Without a centralized platform to manage account hierarchy, transaction mapping, and real-time reporting, the system quickly becomes unscalable.
With a best-in-class platform, you’ll gain:

• Real-time reconciliation against the core operating account.
• Customizable account hierarchies (by customer, business unit, or geography).
• Audit-grade tracking of all virtual-to-physical account flows.
• Dashboards and alerts for exception management.
• Seamless API integrations to eliminate manual keying.

Banks offering these platforms can position themselves as value-added partners, not just transaction processors.

treasury use cases that demand platform integration

Your clients in high-volume industries will benefit most from a virtual account platform that ties directly to their operations:

• Title and Escrow: Assign virtual accounts to individual transactions, enabling automated reconciliation and faster disbursements without co-mingling funds.
• Property Management: Rent payments flow into unique tenant virtual accounts, and the platform reconciles deposits in real time – across dozens or even hundreds of properties and thousands of tenants.
• Logistics and Transport: Clients use shipment-specific virtual accounts and receive instant updates on fund inflows linked to fulfillment data.
• Wallet and Prepaid Providers: The platform ensures wallet top-ups hit the right sub-ledger instantly, with built-in controls to monitor balances.
• Payroll and Departmental Spend: Assign virtual accounts per department or payee class; the platform handles aggregation and monitoring.

bank-level benefits of platform adoption

The upside for institutions offering an integrated virtual account management platform is just as compelling:

• Sticky treasury relationships with high-margin service layers – virtual account numbers are issued to individual clients who view them as their own account number. Migrating away from a given FI and having to change deposit instructions for thousands, or even millions, of customers is such a tedious process that it helps maintain long-lasting relationships with fintech clients.
• Operational efficiency by reducing manual tracking and exception resolution – through payment orchestration with the banking core, incoming payments are automatically routed to the correct virtual account, ledgers updated, and payments are attributed to the correct entity. Outbound payments receive similar treatment and all operations are recorded in the single source of the truth: the banking core itself and not across multiple ledgers.
• Regulatory confidence with audit trails – financial institutions can easily trace the source of all payments, incoming and outgoing, and KYC information can be directly correlated to the virtual accounts, strengthening the institution’s compliance posture.
• APIs for extensibility, making your bank easier to embed within clients’ ecosystems – as treasury services are becoming increasingly digital. Whether due to the sheer volume of a fintech’s payment operations or the consistent growth and availability of instant payments, APIs and modern technology are becoming table stakes for institutions that want to attract opportunities with corporate clients.

transform reconciliation from pain point to power play

Let’s not forget the downstream value to clients: fewer suspense items, cleaner reporting, and happier auditors. According to Embat, finance teams using virtual account platforms cut receivables reconciliation time by 50% – from 40 hours per month to 20 – and dramatically reduced compliance issues tied to account sprawl.

your clients are ready – is your platform?

Virtual accounts alone deliver structure; virtual account platforms deliver scale. As treasury partners, you can guide clients toward a future where payments are precise, reconciliation is instant, and account structures flex with business needs.

Ready to explore virtual accounts and help provide a strategic embedded payments solution to your corporate partners?  We’re here to support you. Through the Jack Henry™ Payments Orchestrator, we can help you attract corporate customers with high volumes of payments, helping you increase deposits and non-fee revenue through a sophisticated, strategic approach to embedded payments.

connecting possibilities

Learn more about seamlessly embedding payments for both your corporate clients and innovative fintechs.

For more information about Jack Henry, visit jackhenry.com.