SWBC, based in north central San Antonio, announced May 3 that its subsidiary, SWBC Payments, is now called Swivel Transactions and that its focus has shifted toward streamlining financial transactions for clients.

According to a news release, Swivel’s launch accompanies account holders’ increasing demand for quicker, more efficient self-service and communications, and seamless transactions across phone, chat, email and other digital platforms.

Lisa Pinto, SWBC’s vice president of public relations and corporate communications, told Community Impact Newspaper that SWBC originally opened SWBC Payments in 2004 as a direct payment system to help financial institutions take loan payments over the phone.

“Today, our transaction enablement platform supports more than 800 financial institutions, enabling transactions processing across digital channels,” Pinto said.

SWBC officials told Community Impact Newspaper that financial institutions are now seeking even more ways to distinguish themselves by raising the amount of positive account holder experiences and addressing rising levels of risk associated with streamlining transaction processing and accelerating the availability of funds.

“To meet the growing digital needs of our clients, we established a business that applies deeper and greater focus on building the technologies necessary for their success. We reorganized to align software engineering, quality assurance and product management teams—from top to bottom, Swivel will run like a tech company,” Pinto said.

Swivel's technology features flexible transaction enablement, or the application of intellectual property and software to support a consumer moving money between financial institutions, Pinto said. Integration, reporting, risk mitigation and fraud monitoring are all part of Swivel’s offerings, company officials said.

Jason O’Brien, who will spearhead Swivel, said in the release that the organization has grown transaction volume over the past five years through higher use across more channels and transaction types as well as adding capabilities for new clients.

O’Brien also said the past decade has brought a rapid evolution in how digital transactions are made.

“Institutions had to take leaps to improve digital channels as a service to their account holders. Now all end users—account holders and the employees providing services—have high expectations,” O’Brien said in the release.

“Swivel’s ultimate goal is to enable amazing transactions by building software that helps clients easily activate the necessary payment [money movement methods], integrations, user engagement features and risk-management capabilities for their specific needs,” O’Brien added in the release.