By James Berry, Senior Product Manager– Payments, Business Banking
James is part of the team shaping seamless payments experiences to make it effortless for businesses to move money and manage their finances with confidence.
Payroll and supplier runs shouldn’t take all afternoon
For many UK businesses, making bulk payments is a monthly ritual, and a frustrating one at that. Whether it’s running payroll, paying contractors or handling supplier invoices, too often the process is slow, manual and prone to error.
We spoke to customers who were entering payment details one by one. Manually checking every field. Repeating the same process again and again – just to pay multiple people at once.
And with other banks? You’d often hit limits, like 25 payments per file, or be pushed to use Bacs, which means waiting three days for the money to land. Not ideal when you’re trying to move at speed.
A smoother way to send multiple payments
We wanted to build something better, faster, and radically easier to pay many people, fast. Here’s a quick bulk payments feature overview of what you can now do with OakNorth Business Banking:
- Upload a CSV file directly on the web platform
- Pay up to 250 recipients in one go – up to £1m per payment
- Run unlimited batches each month
- Save drafts and return later if you’re not ready to pay
- Rely on built-in checks to flag any mismatches, errors or duplicates before you pay
No hidden limits or clunky workflows. Just a better way to do the same job, and in far less time.
Real feedback, real impact
We started with a small group of early users in April, then opened it up to all our customers this summer. The response has been encouraging:
- “Couldn’t get much simpler than that!”
- “The whole experience is so much easier than a traditional bank… and it looks good.”
- “It used to take me an hour to do pay runs. Now it’s done in minutes.”
For high-growth businesses who need to send multiple business payments regularly, whether it’s five or fifty-five, bulk payments make the process faster, cleaner, and less stressful.
What’s next
We’ve just added approvals in the app, so you can review and approve bulk payments on the go, but we’re not stopping there. Soon, you’ll be able to:
- Schedule payments: Pick a future date to process your batch (ideal for payroll planning)
- Pre-select recipients: Select saved contacts to auto-populate your template
We’re continuing to build for scale – because good business banking starts with the basics done right.
Already with OakNorth? Log in to try bulk payments.
New here? See how we help UK businesses grow, and get a bulk payments demo.
