Commerzbank is pressing on with pioneering bank payment obligation (BPO) transactions, this time in Austria, where it processed the country’s first BPO, covering the import of bus components from Germany and Italy.

The buyer, a customer of Commerzbank Austria, is Tam-Europe, located in Maribor, Slovenia, one of Europe’s largest bus and commercial vehicle manufacturers.

The suppliers are Munich-headquartered Man Truck & Bus (also a Commerzbank client) and ISAF Bus Components, an Italy-based supplier and customer of UniCredit.

Bryan Zhao, CEO of Tam-Europe, says that the company aims to eventually handle all its trade transactions with the BPO.

“As an innovative company, Tam-Europe is very interested in adopting new technological solutions for optimising processes. With the BPO, we are following the digitalisation trend; we see it as a new payment instrument that can be a successful supplement to open account transactions and letters of credit,” he says.

Commerzbank first went live with the BPO in October 2014. The bank has since increased its BPO business, settling transactions with partner banks for multinational companies, large corporates and SMEs, both within Europe and overseas. In 2016 the bank facilitated the first BPOs in the UK and also processed the first live BPO transaction between Germany and China.