Case Study: Standard Bank reduces cross-border payments turnaround time with Microsoft Azure Forms Recognizer

Standard Bank of South Africa uses Azure to significantly reduce turnaround time

Standard Bank of South Africa, Africa’s largest bank by assets with a 150‑year history, faced lengthy, manual due diligence for cross‑border payments. Employees had to register, classify and rekey invoices, shipping waybills, customs documents and bank-issued Balance of Payments forms, a process that was time‑consuming, costly and hard to scale during peak periods.

Partnering with Microsoft, the bank deployed Azure Cognitive Services Forms Recognizer plus computer vision and APIs to automate document classification, registration and data capture. The solution makes registration instant, prepopulates data into bank systems for staff validation, reduces manual data entry, improves data quality and significantly shortens payment turnaround times while enabling further cloud‑based automation.

Standard Bank

Shivaan Moodley

Product Owner