Vendor bank account numbers, routing details, and tax IDs should not be sitting in your ERP, your shared drive, or a spreadsheet on someone's desktop. That information should live in a system built specifically to store and protect it, separate from the rest of your financial operations.
If your company is currently holding onto this data inside your core systems, you are carrying an added security liability. Every bank account number you store is something you now have to protect, audit, and answer for if it is ever exposed. Most finance teams never made a deliberate choice to take on that risk. It built up slowly, one vendor and one workaround at a time, until sensitive banking details ended up spread across systems that were never meant to protect them.
Is it safe to store vendor bank details in your ERP?
No. Your ERP is designed to track what you owe, what you have paid, and what your books look like. It was not built with the access controls, encryption standards, or data governance that sensitive banking information requires.
Most finance teams keep their vendor baking data in their ERP, a spreadsheet or an email thread because that is simply where it ended up. No one made a deliberate decision that this was the right place to store it. Someone had to put the information somewhere, and it stayed there.
That default comes with real exposure. Bank account numbers and tax IDs are exactly the kind of data that attackers look for, and exactly the kind of data regulators expect companies to protect. Holding onto more of it than you need, in more places than you need, increases your risk without adding any value to your business.
What are the risks of storing vendor banking information in-house?
ERPs are built for transactions, not storage. They track financial activity. They were not designed to be a secure repository for sensitive banking information, and most do not offer the level of access control that this kind of data requires.
Spreadsheets have no real access control. Once a bank account number is in a spreadsheet, it can be copied, forwarded, or downloaded without anyone knowing. There is no audit trail, and no way to guarantee who has seen it.
Every additional place data lives is another point of exposure. If vendor banking details are duplicated across your ERP, a shared drive, and an old onboarding form, you now have three places that could be breached, three places to secure, and three places to update every time something changes.
Why access controls alone don't solve the problem
Most companies try to fix this by locking down access, adding approval steps, or restricting who can view the spreadsheet. Those measures help, but they do not solve the underlying issue. The data still lives inside your systems, and your company is still responsible for it.
The real question is not how to store this data more carefully. It is whether you should be storing it at all.
Your finance team does not need to hold vendor banking details. It needs the ability to pay vendors correctly. Those are two different problems, and they do not require the same solution.
If the sensitive data itself lives outside your core systems, in a purpose-built, secure environment, your company's liability drops immediately. You are no longer the party responsible for storing and protecting information you never needed to hold in the first place.
Where should vendor bank account details be stored instead?
Vendor banking details should be collected directly from the vendor and stored in a secure, encrypted system built specifically to hold banking data, not typed into your ERP by someone on your team.
This shifts custody of the sensitive data to a system designed to protect it, and it removes your company from the chain of responsibility for storing information you were never equipped to secure in the first place.
How does a secure vendor payment portal work?
This is the problem our platform was built to solve. Ascendant's aPay uses a secure, self-service portal where vendors enter and manage their own banking information directly, since they are the ones who know it best. That data is then stored in a secure, encrypted system built specifically for banking information, rather than being sent to your team to store internally.
Here is how it works: You add the vendor's name, email address, and the currency you plan to pay them in. The vendor receives an invitation with a one-time secure link, followed by a separate access code that expires within 10 minutes. The vendor enters their own account details directly into the portal. Your team never sees, handles, or stores the raw banking information.
Our Payee Intelligence technology then validates the submission in real time, checking that the required fields are complete and correctly formatted for the destination country and currency. Once approved, the vendor is ready to be paid, and their sensitive data stays stored securely, separate from your systems.
The result is that your company holds less sensitive data, not more of it in a slightly safer place. That distinction matters. A more secure spreadsheet is still a spreadsheet. Removing the data from your environment entirely is a different level of protection.
What to look for in a secure vendor payment platform
Does the data actually leave our systems, or just get encrypted within them? There is a real difference between data that is protected inside your environment and data that is held entirely outside it.
Who has access to the raw banking details, and can we audit that? You should be able to see who accessed vendor payment data and when, without relying on manual tracking.
Does the vendor update their own information, or does it come back to your team? If every change still routes through your AP team for re-entry, you have not removed the underlying risk, only added a step.
Is the validation built for international formats? Storing data securely does not help if the information itself is wrong. Look for a system that checks formatting requirements specific to the destination country, not just a generic bank account field.
Common mistakes companies make storing vendor payment data
- Believing that access restrictions alone solve the problem, when the data still lives in a system that was never built to hold it.
- Assuming this is primarily an IT or security team issue, when finance teams are usually the ones creating and collecting this data in the first place.
- Treating vendor banking data the same as other vendor records, like addresses or contact names, when it carries a different level of risk and regulatory attention.
- Waiting for a breach or audit finding before addressing where this information lives.
Key takeaways
- Vendor bank account details, routing numbers, and tax IDs should not live inside your ERP, shared drives, or spreadsheets.
- Every system that stores this data is a point of exposure your company is responsible for protecting.
- The real fix is not tighter access controls. It is removing the data from your environment entirely.
- Vendors should enter their own banking details through a secure, purpose-built portal.
- A platform like Ascendant's Payee Intel takes custody of sensitive payee data, so your company holds less of it, not just a better-protected version of it.
Most companies did not decide to store vendor bank account details the way they currently do. It happened by default, one vendor and one spreadsheet at a time. The fix is not a more secure version of the same setup. It is removing that data from your environment and letting it live where it was always meant to: in a system built to protect it.
If your finance team is evaluating ways to simplify global payments, reduce payment failures, or automate AP and treasury workflows, a conversation with Ascendant can help you understand which approaches fit your environment. Whether you ultimately work with us or not, understanding the available options can help you build a stronger payments strategy.
FAQ
Should our company be storing vendor bank account numbers in our ERP? No. ERPs are built to manage financial records and transactions, not to serve as a secure repository for sensitive banking data. Storing this information there creates risk without adding any operational benefit.
What is the risk of keeping vendor banking details in spreadsheets?
Spreadsheets have no meaningful access control or audit trail. Bank account numbers and tax IDs stored this way can be copied or shared without anyone knowing, and there is no way to track who has viewed the file.
Is it enough to just restrict who can access the spreadsheet or ERP field?
Access restrictions reduce risk, but they do not remove it. The sensitive data is still stored inside your systems, and your company is still responsible for protecting it. Removing the data from your environment entirely is a stronger approach.
How does a secure vendor portal reduce our liability?
When vendors enter their own banking details into a purpose-built portal, that information is stored in a secure, encrypted system built specifically for it, not held by your company or by the vendor. This shifts custody and responsibility away from your internal systems.
Does this only matter for large companies?
No. Any company that pays vendors, in any volume, is holding sensitive financial data somewhere. Smaller finance teams often have fewer controls in place, which can make the risk higher, not lower.
What should we look for in a vendor payment platform from a security standpoint?
Look for a platform where the vendor enters and owns their own data, where you can audit who has accessed it, and where validation is built for the specific banking formats required by different countries.