More companies are placing a premium on the technology that enables fast and accurate payments, yet many business-to-business (B2B) companies still lag in payments automation.

According to a study by American Express, 91% of business leaders surveyed recognize that an optimized payments system drives overall business growth.

However, while roughly a quarter of respondents said that payment issues were a frequent reason for ending a relationship with a supplier, even fewer (17%) reported having fully automated their own payments processes.

The top three reasons cited for not fully automating payments were cost concerns, doubts about the benefits of automation, and security.

Automating the Reconciliation Process

While concerns exist—as they do with all aspects of payment processes—two of the main benefits of payments automation are increased efficiency and security. For example, automating the reconciliation process can help reduce errors and mitigate fraud risks associated with manual processing.

Additionally, payment automation gives business owners much more insight into their operations. With increasing regulatory scrutiny on the relationships between businesses, banks, and fintechs, external audits have become more common. An automated reconciliation process can be instrumental in providing accurate reporting to regulators and avoiding potential penalties.

Driving Business Growth

Becausemany companies have found themselves in these complex relationships with multiple financial services providers, finance teams often struggle to get a consolidated view of the company’s cash position.

Manually aggregating bank statements from multiple institutions and generating reports and forecasts can be a substantial burden on operations. Automation can reduce this lift and allow finance teams to focus on strategic initiatives that drive business growth.

As a result, the trend toward payments automation in the B2B space will continue. However, the central consideration remains on improving the customer experience. According to the American Express report, among business decision-makers planning to update  their payments process this year, the most cited reason is to support  business growth.

The post While Most B2B Companies Value Payments Tech, Automation Adoption Lags appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

In the increasingly complex and competitive world of commercial payments, the benefits of automating the accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payables (AP) functions continue to grow. Automation allows companies to maintain tighter control of their spending, take better advantage of price breaks, and use their financial and human resources more efficiently.

Organizations can benefit from automation in ways they may not even anticipate. A new report from Javelin Strategy & Research, Global AR/AP Automation: Improving Cash Visibility and Reducing Risk, looks at the ways that contemporary automation processes have resulted in fewer errors, reduced risk of fraud, and even a decrease in compliance issues.

The Cash-Flow Challenge

Perhaps the most important advantage of AR/AP automation is that it significantly improves liquidity and cash-flow analysis by providing real-time visibility into financial transactions. Automated dashboards and reports can offer immediate insights into cash inflows and outflows, allowing businesses to monitor their cash positions in real time and make informed decisions about their liquidity needs. This continuous monitoring can help businesses optimize their working capital and ensure that they have sufficient funds to meet short-term obligations.

Artificial intelligence is playing a big role in the development of these automated tools. Through the use of machine learning and AI, predictive analytics can forecast cash-flow trends based on historical data. These forecasts are invaluable for a business’ planning in the short and long terms. They help companies anticipate future liquidity needs, identify cash shortages or surpluses, and plan accordingly.

“The most difficult thing to do in business is to forecast liquidity and cash flow,” said Albert Bodine, Director of Commercial & Enterprise Payments at Javelin and the study’s lead author. “You used to have a room full of MBAs spending days, if not weeks, doing the cash-flow liquidity. Now you can get cash-flow and liquidity recommendations in seconds for some platforms. Predictive analytics have the ability to analyze mountains of data and then identify trends and mitigate risk much faster than humans would be able to.”

Artificial intelligence is passing out of its fad phase and is now seen as a legitimate tool, Bodine said. Machine learning also has a dramatic impact on the financial and banking worlds.

“I think of AI as something that can ingest an enormous amount of information and data in milliseconds, extract trends from that, and then make recommendations,” Bodine said. “Think of the number of humans it would take to do that.”

Comprehensive Compliance

Any business operating in today’s complex financial environment has discovered how important it is to comply with regulatory standards. The easiest way for an organization to get in trouble is by making mistakes when it comes to regulation or compliance issues. In areas such as anti-money-laundering efforts and know-your-customer rules, infractions can result in multimillion-dollar fines.

Automating payment processes can go a long way toward preventing these issues. It’s easy to make sure an automated system is regularly updated to keep itself aligned with the latest regulatory changes, and this frees humans from having to adjust for every new rule. These systems also facilitate real-time audits and reporting, allowing businesses to maintain their compliance responsibilities with minimal manual effort.

“The global regulatory and compliance environment has gotten so complex and so overweighted with laws and regulations that it’s difficult for any organization to keep up these days,” Bodine said. “Compliance-as-a-service companies have started to pop up to completely automate this process, and to integrate AI to assist with keeping abreast of everything. At a minimum, this type of machine learning is a strong addition to compliance efforts at companies. But I would go as far as to say if you know you don’t have a significant level of automation and in your compliance or regulatory efforts, you probably are not compliant.”

Reducing the Human Element

Of course, automation greatly reduces the number of human errors in your operation, enhancing accuracy in everything the organization does. When manual systems are eliminated, invoice receipt, processing, payment, audit trail, and downstream analytics reach new levels of efficiency. Fewer hands involved means maximized streamlining and efficiency.

But Bodine stressed that it’s important for organizations to fully commit to an automation strategy.

“Being 25% automated is almost worse than not being automated at all,” he said. “I’ve never come across an organization that’s 100% automated, even among the biggest, most sophisticated organizations. But a halfway effort into the world of automation can almost be more problematic than just staying entirely manual.

“It really takes a commitment, and there can be significant costs associated with it. But the ROI is certainly there over a reasonable amount of time, in many different areas.”

The post The Benefits of Committing to an Automated Payments Process appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Maintaining a healthy cash flow is essential for any business but using manual accounts payable processes—which is time-consuming and error-prone—can potentially cause irreparable damage to vendor and partner relationships.

Intuit is looking to tackle this very issue, in addition to other cash flow management challenges with QuickBooks Bill Pay. The new solution leverages automation to help businesses create bills and choose how to pay vendors and contractors.

“Across the QuickBooks platform, we’re revolutionizing money movement to improve the number one problem small businesses face—cash flow—which impacts their success rates,” said David Talach, Senior Vice President of the QuickBooks Money Platform at Intuit, in a prepared statement.

“QuickBooks Bill Pay is a key addition to our ecosystem as we aim to deliver a singular, end-to-end financial solution for small businesses to manage their money,” he added.

The Continued Shift to Digital

Accounts receivable and accounts payable processes are increasingly becoming more digital, and much of this can be attributed to the pandemic.

Businesses want to send and receive payments faster, safer, and in a way that ensures accurate record-keeping. Checks are soon becoming an antiquated method of payment for many companies as this particular form of payment is slower, costlier, and more prone to fraud.  

The automation of accounts receivable (AR) also deserves mention as doing so can help businesses boost their cash flow, save money, and is better for the environment. By shifting towards digitization, businesses can leverage both artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect critical patterns, offering valuable insights to enhance their operations in many ways.

One example is that businesses can determine which segment of their customers tends to pay quicker, offering additional insights that can help them craft specific marketing campaigns to target these specific customers.

The post Intuit Launches an Automated Accounts Payable Solution appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Automated Payment Reconciliations Free Time and Drive Efficiency

Payment volumes have seen a dramatic growth in the last decade, along with the number of payment methods available, the type of payment reconciliation required, and increased regulation.

In a recent webinar, Nick Botha, Global Payments Lead at AutoRek, and Steve Murphy,  Director of Commercial and Enterprise Payments at Mercator Advisory Group, discussed how automation can help businesses reconcile the gap between the front-end and middle as well as the back-office processes to stay ahead of the curve and manage the volume of payments.

Biggest Obstacles for Payment Operations Teams

Botha pointed out that as the payments space grows, there’s increased competition and increased regulation. Regulators look after the needs of the end-consumers as well as the organizations providing services.

Regulation isn’t the only obstacle payment operations teams face. Payment volumes continue to grow worldwide. Payment organizations are working to better optimize the process of payment reconciliation. They are doing this with automation and by getting rid of error-prone manual processes.

Cross-border payments also come with their own level of complexities. “With cross-border payments, there’s more complex data,” said Botha. “Data is not standardized. This creates huge havoc for the operations teams. There are time delays. Instant payments become more difficult because of the process.”

“When it comes to cross-border payment reconciliations, the structure of the reconciliation themselves must vary and change per different geography,” he continued. “Having a robust but flexible solution that resides within your middle and back office is extremely important.”   

The different elements that make up the complexities within cross-border payments include exchange rate differences, time differences, incomplete data, incorrect data entries in internal data, unpredictable charges, and fees. Although automation will not have a direct impact on time differences or exchange rate differences, what it does do is streamline mundane and time-consuming processes. It frees up more time for operations teams to analyze key data and resolve issues faster.

Operation Needs Have Evolved

Much is driving the growth in the volume of payments, including increased competition, how much e-commerce has changed amid the pandemic, and the deluge of payment methods out there.

In 2012, payment volume was low, smaller teams were the norm, and competition wasn’t as much. Today, there are more solutions for automation, more companies that have scaled in size, and more competition. And as teams become larger, more processes need to be managed so that the middle and back offices can handle what’s coming through the front-end offices.

Gaps In Efficiency and Solutions

The most common efficiency gaps organizations struggle with include risk of regulatory breaches, dependency of skilled persons, and an inflexibility to meet regulatory demands.

“You need to make sure you are partnering with the right reconciliation solution,” said Botha. “There’s a difference between a certain reconciliation tool and a tool that can handle all your data, all your processes, your workflows. So, matching what your requirements are versus the partner that you are looking to automate these processes, is an important consideration.”

Botha further emphasized that choosing the wrong partner will create more havoc down the line.

Having an all-encompassing solution makes more sense for organizations looking to simplify their processes. “There’s opportunity to reduce those actual systems that you have to integrate with,” said Murphy.

The Significance of Financial Controls and Reconciliations

According to the data presented, AutoRek shared that as many as 50% of those surveyed are using Excel for accounting. About a quarter are using an in-house system, and another quarter are using a third-party system.

Some businesses don’t feel that any of the existing solutions out there are a good fit for their organization. Therefore, they choose to build their own solution. According to Botha, the issue with that is that most in-house solutions are not equipped or flexible enough to handle industry changes. Handling the massive scale of volume can also be problematic.

Those surveyed were asked what back-office capabilities would give their organization the greatest competitive advantage. An overwhelming majority of 78% said having superior reconciliation disciplines. Roughly 11% of respondents said superior data management. The also said understanding and remaining compliant with global regulations would grant them the biggest competitive advantage.

A Look Ahead

Forward-looking companies must continue to look at their current processes and determine where the gaps in payment reconciliation are. By choosing the right partnerships, businesses will ensure they’ll be able to manage the barrage of payments to come and remain in compliance.

Learn how AutoRek’s automated platform can help payments firms with their reconciliation and operational requirements.

The post Payment Operations in 2022: Key Challenges and the Role of Automation appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

No company can afford to lose customers or forego revenue because of errors and inefficiencies, but that’s exactly what’s happening with inaccurate payments.

It’s estimated that failed payments, alone, cost the global economy $118.5 billion in fees, labor and lost business in 2020 according to a study by Accuity. In our current state of economic turmoil, a loss like that is especially difficult to bear.

Today, sky-high inflation, a looming recession, and other macro-economic factors out of our control, are putting intense pressure on organizations to keep a watchful eye on budgets and better manage their cash flow. Business continuity depends on it.

One way business leaders can future proof is to identify and rectify costly payment mistakes before they happen.

Here we examine how businesses can save thousands of dollars per month by identifying the most prevalent payment mistakes within their organizations and nipping them in the bud.

We also look at how automating payment processes with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can help prevent inaccurate payments and create efficiencies that are especially valuable during these challenging economic times.

What’s causing inaccurate payments in your organization?

There’s a gamut of payment mistakes that could be plaguing your organization, including outdated information in your vendor master file (VMF), duplicate payments, data entry miscues, and the bypassing of 2-way and 3-way matching.

It’s easy for information in a VMF to be typed incorrectly or become obsolete as contact names, phone numbers, addresses, and terms change frequently, and companies routinely rely on scores of vendors. The same goes for data entry errors, such as transposing numbers, misplacing decimal points or keying info into the wrong field. Humans make mistakes.

But the resulting incorrect vendor data isn’t just a nuisance. It can lead to paying the wrong vendor or paying the same vendor twice, which can damage vendor relationships when you need them most and result in less money in hand while dealing with higher costs of doing business.

Two-way and three-way matching processes, which ensure that invoice and purchase order amounts align (as well as sales receipt data, in the case of three-way matching), can help prevent many payment errors by catching oversights. However, companies that depend on manual processes for handling invoices and paying bills often operate without them, leaving them more vulnerable to payment errors.

Heightening control amidst economic turmoil

Once you weed out the root cause of payment mistakes that could be costing your organization precious resources, you need best practices and processes in place to help fight against future inaccuracies and errors.

Start by cleaning up your VMF. Verify that vendor information is updated, remove duplicates and inactive vendors, and add any missing information like new contacts’ emails and phone numbers. It’s also a good idea to standardize formatting and put policies in place to ensure proper upkeep and fight against fraud that can result from unscrupulous use of the VMF by employees and vendors.

The next step is to modernize error-prone AP processes with automation. Automated AP software replaces manual processes like data entry, eliminating errors that can lead to inaccurate payments that threaten important business relationships and the bottom line.

These solutions ensure payment accuracy by enabling organizations to create a standardized vendor setup process with internal controls like separation of duties. Machine learning, a type of AI used in AP automation systems, allows for continuous monitoring of invoice and payment processes to better confirm accuracy and fight against fraudulent payments by detecting fake invoices and other types of fraud before sending inaccurate payments.

Automating is especially valuable during times of economic upheaval and uncertainty because of its ability to drive efficiency, heighten security and provide enhanced visibility into the state of the business. With AP automation, business leaders can easily monitor funds coming in and going out, analyze their spending and make quick changes to adjust to new demands or market fluctuations.

There’s never been a better time to invest in payment efficiencies

While economic uncertainty adds to the stress of doing business, it’s also a driver for improvements that can create proficiencies, strengthen important relationships, and empower organizations to better manage risks like payment inaccuracies.

Investing in technologies including AI and machine learning can empower your business to weather the current storm and emerge stronger and better prepared for the future.

The post How to Ensure Accurate, Efficient Payments Amidst Economic Uncertainty appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

At many companies, manual processes still dominate in accounts payable. But, despite the wide availability of software and tools that make invoice processing and payments much simpler and more efficient, digital transformation has been slow to come to the average business.

Today, it is easier than ever for accounting departments to streamline and automate accounts payable. And one of the easiest ways to do so is with straight-through processing (STP) – end-to-end automation of invoice processing workflows that reduces the time and the cost of dealing with invoice payments.

STP reduces time and costs

The time spent on processing invoices manually significantly increases business costs. According to one estimate, the average cost of manually processing an invoice for payment is over $12 and nearly double if there is no associated purchase order.

And this cost is only for getting the invoice approved for payment. Payment costs themselves can also be substantial, with the price of manually cutting a paper check being almost double that of making electronic payments.

STP reduces costs drastically, in many cases to only a few dollars per invoice. Considering the substantial cut in expenses, it would make sense to replace time-consuming and expensive manual tasks with more efficient and cost-effective STP. And while 7 out of 10 customers report favoring a credit card exclusively for making their online payments, less than 20% of businesses have fully automated invoice processing systems and workflows in place.

STP frees employees to be relationship managers

Ask accounts payable personnel why they are resistant to automation, and you get a standard mantra – no one wants to be replaced by software. Employees think they have a vested interest in protecting manual processes because it protects their jobs. But business owners should sell AP automation by showing employees how it can make their jobs better instead of redundant.

With STP tools and systems in place, employees can focus on more substantive, rewarding work rather than repetitive, tedious tasks like data entry. Now, AP clerks can spend their time building better relationships with vendors and their accounting departments. Better relationships can ease the resolution of invoice and payment disputes and perhaps even help get the business better pricing. So rather than being a pure cost center, now accounts payable shifts into profit generation by helping reduce overall costs for the organization.

Concerns about STP are overblown

Given the clear financial and efficiency benefits of STP, what’s the holdup with adoption? If you ask business owners why they have yet to automate accounts payable, you run across a fairly predictable set of objections that apply to almost every digital transformation effort:

• It’s too expensive to pay all the license and setup fees, especially for smaller businesses.
• It would put too much burden on my accounting department to move everything over to a new system.
• No one has the time or inclination to learn a new system.
• I don’t trust that my information and that of my vendors will be safe.
• If we automate everything, we won’t catch mistakes.
• I’ll lose control over payment timing.

These concerns, however, are illusory and stem from fundamental misunderstandings about the products in the market and misconceptions about the difficulties of onboarding.

Yes, it takes time and effort to implement a new AP system or tool on the front end. But given that businesses can generate savings of up to 90% per invoice, the cost-benefit analysis is fairly straightforward and will quickly resolve in favor of automation.

Infrastructure costs will be minimal, as most platforms are now cloud-based. And ongoing license fees will be more than offset by increased efficiency savings.

Businesses should always be concerned about data security, but this should not be an obstacle to adopting STP. Today’s systems are built with security in mind. Just as payment processing tools come with security features such as PCI-DSS certification, STP tools allow you to build more robust and secure workflows that include data encryption, least access identity management policies, and more.

Automated processing tools also give you greater control over the entire workflow. For example, there is never a question of where a document is stored or at what stage of the payment process a given invoice is. And, as an added benefit, businesses can use the data from STP tools for data analytics to help further optimize invoice payment processes and even the supply chain.

Conclusion

Automation of accounts payable with straight-through processing is something businesses cannot afford to ignore. Not only can it substantially reduce the time and cost of invoice processing workflows, but it puts accounts payable employees in a position to truly help manage business costs. It’s a win-win for all involved.

The post How to Automate Accounts Payable and Turn Data Collection Into Relationship Management appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Don’t miss another episode of Truth In Data! Click on the red bell in the lower-left of your screen to receive notifications as soon as the episode publishes.

Data for today’s episode is provided by Mercator Advisory Group’s Report: Autonomous Vehicles, Connected Vehicles, and Their Impact on Payments

The North American Autonomous Truck Market:

• Most goods are delivered via truck — over 70% of goods in the U.S.
• Autonomous electric vehicles will lower operational costs of trucking by about 30% and help address the shortage of drivers.
• The savings could be achieved through decreased labor costs, enhanced driving times and range, and improved fuel efficiency, and more.
• The ability to operate nearly 24/7 without restrictions on daily driving time will double trucks’ daily range from 600 to 1,200 miles.
• After a drop between 2019 and 2020, the North America autonomous truck market size is projected to steadily grow through 2027.
• Public perception of AV technology safety will influence acceptance and adoption, serving as either an accelerator or barrier.

About Report

Mercator Advisory Group’s most recent report, Autonomous Vehicles, Connected Vehicles, and Their Impact on Payments, finds that autonomous vehicles (AVs) is a quickly evolving category with pilot programs, small scale deployments, and implementations happening across the U.S. and the globe. Covid-19 has led to new areas of focus and implementation, speeding up and expanding trial and usage of contactless purchases, payments, and deliveries. The pandemic increased consumer need for, exposure to, and acceptance of contactless delivery and the use of autonomous delivery robots and vehicles.

While much of the AV publicity is related to fully automated self-driving cars moving people in cities, the reality is that the most advanced trials and implementations are happening in the areas of moving packages and food rather than people (zero-occupant) and moving along predefined paths rather than flexible routes. Walmart has been testing self-driving truck and drone deliveries. Amazon has been making deliveries with its autonomous robot, Scout. Uber recently spun out the Postmates X robotics unit under the name Serve Robotics, which has been making deliveries in Southern California. Autonomous vehicles will have a major impact on the payments ecosystem.

AV benefits include time and cost savings, convenience, a smaller environmental impact, and reduced staffing requirements, a particular advantage in areas where there are labor shortages. However, there are also a number of challenges associated with the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles, including those related to infrastructure, legislation, and safety concerns. Companies are testing a range of uses in multiple locations and applying the learning from one situation to the others (e.g., from ride hailing to trucking to local delivery).

“This is a highly impactful report,” stated the author of the report, Don Apgar, Director of the Merchant Services and Acquiring practice at Mercator Advisory Group. “We are following this among a number of similar technology trends that are making payments a frictionless and invisible part of our everyday activities.”

The post The North American Autonomous Truck Market: appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Risk is involved any time money changes hands. Accounts payable departments are constantly under attack from bad actors trying to trick them into sending money to fraudulent bank accounts. However, tight internal controls, ongoing training, and payment automation can all help reduce the risk.

Payment automation enhances AP and finance security. It’s expensive and time-consuming for companies to match the level of security and controls that a specialist firm can provide. Bad actors prey on vulnerable companies who don’t have time to maintain rigorous risk mitigation programs.

Payment automation companies such as Nvoicepay adopt well-established information security standards to invest in the development and maintenance of training programs, procedures, and automation tools. These programs and procedures are assessed by third-party audit firms to establish risk mitigation controls and regularly test their efficacy.

Reduce Likelihood; Minimize impact

Vulnerability management aims to reduce the likelihood of a weakness being exploited. A variety of vulnerability discovery methods and tools are used to generate a consolidated, risk-ranked, and actionable remediation backlog. The risks of the vulnerabilities can be compared with the business opportunities backlog to determine the assignment and procurement of resources when considering whether to remediate vulnerabilities or enable revenue capability.

Threat hunting is actively monitoring for anomalies. Bad actors are frequently masterminding new ways to scam people out of money, so keeping up with them is crucial. It can be challenging to detect anomalies and accurately depict your organization’s threat landscape. An inventory of hunts must provide sufficient coverage across all potential attack vectors. Threat hunting algorithms must also adapt to new exploitation methods.

When a threat is detected, quick and effective incident response is critical to minimize the effect and prevent lateral movement. The following steps can help minimize the impact of a threat:

1. Report the occurrence of the threat to a centralized incident response team. Hunt algorithms are ideally configured to send real-time notifications of anomalies indicating potential compromise. Employees are trained to identify anomalies and how to report them to an incident response team.
2. Reported anomalies are triaged by an incident response manager and routed to the appropriate responder.
3. An incident responder will determine root cause, identify containment procedures, and either identify a solution to prevent future exploits or report details to the vulnerability backlog.
4. Centralized incident response enables a knowledgebase of automation playbooks to be leveraged when addressing future incidents.

Orchestrate, don’t operate

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has revolutionized how companies solve many common business problems. Gone are the days of large, up-front capital investments to fund server rooms, software packages, and expansive IT administration teams. With the advent of SaaS, problems and processes of specific domains are compartmentalized into specialized, complete solutions. Companies can compose and orchestrate any number of SaaS offerings to automate operational aspects of the business, including payments. That allows them to stay focused on their core competency.

Security is typically a significant component of a SaaS offering. SaaS providers are incentivized to invest in security and compliance as a matter differentiation from competitors and resilience to perpetual cyberattacks. Cybersecurity events are pervasively publicized. One mishap resulting in a breach of sensitive data can result in significant reputational damage, a loss of customers, and a loss of revenue.

If you’re making your own ACH bank payments, running a card program, or writing checks, you’re likely not using all the tools you have at your disposal today to prevent fraud and mitigate risk. You can add tools, build up your security department, and train your employees to watch for potential threats. Or, you can automate and orchestrate with a payment automation provider, enabling you to stay focused on your mission.

The post Is Risk Management Part of Your Organization’s Payment Solution? appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Automating and future-proofing operations with digital processes has become a priority for most organizations. This is especially true given the added disruption brought on by COVID-19.  

To optimize their processes and decrease the risk of error, companies must automate and modernize existing accounts receivable (AR) processes. But what is the best method to do so? As more companies prioritize digitization and outsource accounts receivable, there is opportunity to implement a payment solution that solves for the common pain points of existing AR processes.  

To learn more about the current state of AR and how organizations should approach their payments process transition, PaymentsJournal sat down with Beth Bourgoin, Receivables Product Manager at Deluxe, Anna Tallo, Senior Solutions Consultant at Deluxe, and Steve Murphy, Director of Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group. 

Businesses understand the value of AR automation 

For the past two years, Deluxe has partnered with Strategic Treasurer to survey the state of AR processing, gathering insights on pain points, trends, and key findings within the market. Noteworthy findings from the 2021 Accounts Receivable Survey Report, in which 150 corporates and banks were surveyed, can be found in the infographic below: 

“Over 50% of corporates surveyed still maintain commercial lock boxes for the processing of paper payments. That’s just an interesting fact considering the COVID-19 pandemic that we’re moving through and what we know about payers and their desire for less touches in the payment process. Paper payments are still there, they still exist, and they’re still pretty common,” said Tallo. 

On the other hand, these corporates are very much interested in moving toward a more fully electronic accounts receivable process, with 72% of corporates saying that a fully electronic AR process is important or very important to them.  

“That kind of demonstrates, or tells us, a couple of different things,” Tallo continued. “The first is that they’re looking for a better payer-payee relationship, and they know that offering additional payment channels—more electronic options—is what the payers are looking for… I [also] think that corporates are seeing the benefit of moving to fully electronic processes.” 

These benefits are plentiful. Corporates that automate AR processes can not only collect payments more quickly, but they can apply them and use that cash flow to grow their companies more quickly as well. All in all, even though paper processes still dominate many companies’ AR processes, they are eager to automate moving forward. 

The sheer percentage of organizations that see automation as important “shows that they’re ready,” said Bourgoin. “And the question these businesses are asking themselves is: Who’s ready to partner with me and support my strategy? I’m ready to do it, but who is going to walk alongside me?”  

The current state of AR automation 

As reflected in the survey data above, most corporates have forward-looking goals to highly automate their AR processes. At the same time, some have become attached to their manual processes in certain arenas.  

“They kind of have an unfounded confidence. [Manual processes are] working and they just don’t have that moment to take a step back and see what sort of value that automation can bring,” said Tallo. Another portion of corporates have achieved partial automation, such as the introduction of electronic payment options for consumers, but fail to see other obstacles in their way when it comes to streamlining AR. 

For example, organizations that have introduced digital payments may now have cash application teams that spend a majority of their time associating invoices to payments. These corporates may fail to see that there are automated solutions in the marketplace even for that reassociation piece of the process. They are missing the bigger picture. 

There are also several major pain points when it comes to AR automation, with the most noteworthy pain point being limited IT resources. “There are only so many of them, and they’re crucial to bringing an [AR automation] solution like this to bear if you’re wanting to do it in-house,” Tallo added. 

Competitive benefits of AR automation 

Some businesses lack trust in their technology since they worked long and hard to cobble their processes together. However, they must start somewhere: AR isn’t going to request automation itself. The benefits of taking the plunge are worth it. 

“The benefits are just truly exponential, and it’s not until you start whatever you decide to call it—your journey, the transformation, bringing the strategy to life—it’s not until you start that process that businesses start to unlock the visibility to those benefits and really what that means for them and how they operate as a business,” said Bourgoin.  

Multiple competitive benefits of automating existing accounts receivable processes include increased efficiency, decreased time in the order-to-cash cycle, reduction in manual errors, and a greater ability to scale and grow business and support large volumes as needed. 

Reducing the AR errors inherent in manual processes can also strengthen organizations’ relationships with their customers by not taking up their time with questions regarding billing. Rather, organizations can deal with AR issues themselves and leave customers more satisfied.  

Bourgoin used the analogy of a restaurant to underscore this point. “You, as the customer, should not know whether or not there’s chaos in the kitchen, whether someone called out, whether your food got burnt on the first try. You should not be aware of that. And the more automation is brought to AR, the happier customers are going to be,” she explained.  

How organizations should approach automation 

Approaching AR automation may seem daunting, but a good place to start in knowing what can be automated.  

“A lot of times [corporates] underestimate what can be accomplished with help from a solution and with automation and machine learning, and that’s one of the things that I do in my day-to-day, is help them realize what their pain points are and then see if there’s a way to automate that process,” said Tallo.  

Murphy agreed that understanding is crucial, explaining that automation is an evolutionary process. “You need to understand the direction you’re going in and what you want to evolve into. And I also think the other thing is remembering that you can approach this from multiple angles,” he advised. 

By understanding what can be automated, businesses no longer have to settle for partial automations. “Half the time, I don’t even think they know that they’re settling. They think they’ve done what they came to do, and they need help understanding what more there is out there to help them with their accounts receivable automation [and] getting it where it is truly end-to-end with very little manual interaction,” concluded Tallo. 

The post Future Proofing AR Operations with Digital Processes appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Although the middle market is on a renewed path of growth this year, the impact of 2020 continues to have an effect on everything from day-to-day work streams to yearly goals, and businesses are facing the economic after effects. Employees in almost every role can feel the shift, but CFOs specifically are increasingly challenged to control costs and sustain profitability. This becomes even more complex when coupled with leadership responsibilities such as boosting employee morale, improving senior leadership satisfaction, and refining a strong stack of tech tools to make the team digitally resilient.

According to Goldman Sachs, 60 percent of all B2B payments are made by paper check, and small/medium market businesses are responsible for 80 percent of these payments. That means a significant percent of CFOs of small/medium-sized businesses are spending money to print paper checks and buy stamps and envelopes to complete payments – all of which can quickly add up depending on the volume of transactions that need to be processed each month.

So, what’s one thing CFOs can do to help solve for these challenges while focusing on their number one task of cost-cutting? Automate back-office processes. Here’s a breakdown of how one solution can help alleviate three specific pain points.

Boost employee morale

A cost cutting strategy shouldn’t just focus on the numbers in the spreadsheet, it should also focus on the people in the organization who contribute to the bottom line. An AP automation solution can benefit the larger finance playbook and also help boost morale from back-office employees. By eliminating mundane tasks like stuffing envelopes, printing checks, and making runs to the bank, employees can instead focus on projects that make them feel more fulfilled in their role.

Additionally, with the right AP automation tool, payments can be processed in a few simple clicks, saving one of the most precious resources an employee offers – time. With the extra time available from eliminating manual paper pushing, the finance department can begin focusing on modernizing the roles within, giving employees the chance for more growth opportunities and professional development without having to hire additional staff for the team.

Improve senior leadership satisfaction

The role of the CFO has evolved over the years. CFOs are responsible for past, present, and future

books, as well as the entire finance roadmap for the business. On top of these responsibilities, they are now being asked to prioritize senior leadership satisfaction.

CFOs and the finance team can better manage and strategize company-wide spending by automating their AP processes because the platform offers greater visibility into cash flow. This improved oversight into payments and the ability to reallocate resources to more strategic business initiatives inherently lead to better overall senior leadership satisfaction because they are equipped with the right data to make decisions and backed by a team that can grow with the business.

Refine a strong stack of tech tools

Last year helped to uncover whether the tech tools currently in place were lucrative and helpful for businesses, or not. Even before this, 43 percent of middle market businesses were already spending more than 5 percent of their firm’s revenue on new technology, according to a Deloitte survey.

In addition to financial planning & analysis and tax tech tools, many CFOs look to automation tools to strengthen their existing tech stack and overall cost-savings strategy. With the right AP automation solution that integrates with, or supports the existing financial technology, the stack becomes stronger and makes the finance team more resilient for the unexpected. Additionally, with an agile suite of solutions in place, the back-office can attain maximum efficiency and position its resources to scale with the organization.

Like all business leaders, CFOs are facing a new set of challenges in tandem with their expanding role and responsibilities. Implementing the right automation tools can help finance teams work smarter and ultimately achieve their number one goal – cutting costs across the business to achieve maximum growth potential.

The post Back-Office Automation May Be the Missing Piece in Your Cost-Cutting Strategy appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

AP automation offers huge benefits to organizations of almost any size – greater visibility and control of costs, important time-savings and operational efficiencies for finance teams and line of business, reduced risk of fraud, valuable rebates from virtual card payments, and better cash flow management.

Despite all these advantages, there are still two primary obstacles that most often stand in the way: one, integration of existing enterprise finance systems with multiple electronic payment types (e.g., ACH, virtual card, FX); and two, getting suppliers signed up and onboarded to accept electronic payments. There has been plenty written on the former – and a handful of AP automation solution providers have solved the integration problem – but the supplier enablement issue is a little trickier.

In a recent survey of 669 finance professionals conducted by MineralTree, respondents reported a strong increase in their organizations’ use of digital payment methods and their intent to make even more digital payments in 2022. But, the same survey also found that the top barrier to converting more spend to digital payment methods is supplier willingness to accept them, cited by 51% of respondents, followed by team capacity to contact and enroll vendors (31%).

Given the survey panel was finance professionals–not suppliers themselves–the first obstacle may be more myth than reality, as many suppliers preferred digital payments during the pandemic to eliminate challenges with collecting and processing checks and get paid faster. While the second obstacle remains a very real challenge for finance teams, the good news is that some AP automation platforms include supplier enablement services to onboard suppliers to accept digital payments. Without any of the effort or hassle, you can maximize cost savings, security, and cash rebates from digital payments, while freeing up resources to focus on other strategic initiatives.

Suppliers drive the importance of AP automation as much as internal operations 

The pandemic and remote work put a harsh spotlight on the importance of digitizing back-office functions like AP. In fact, in that same research study by MineralTree, finance professionals point to AP as their number one back-office digitization priority. There are a lot of internal efficiency and operational challenges that reinforce the need to automate AP, but supplier relationships are also a big driver.

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored how critical suppliers are to a business, providing the goods and services needed to continue servicing customers and running operations smoothly. As a result, maintaining strong supplier relationships has become more important than ever.

In the research study, 58% of finance professionals interviewed said their supplier relationships were more strategically important than a year ago. The number is even higher for healthcare organizations (73%) where the steady flow of supplies is critical to delivering care. Not surprisingly, organizations that made more payments also viewed supplier relationships more strategically (74%), a sign that suppliers are essential to their continued growth. This growing importance of suppliers is likely to continue as organizations focus on moving their businesses forward and preventing future supply chain vulnerability.

Getting suppliers onboard

Supplier enablement requires effective planning, management, and execution. As you consider AP automation solutions, look for providers that can help you do the following:

• Evaluate the last 12-18 months of invoice spend and volume to identify the suppliers that drive the most activity. The greater the dollar volume and number of invoices, the more there is to gain from AP automation for both you and your suppliers.
• Educate those suppliers on why accepting electronic payments such as virtual cards is beneficial to them – faster receipt of payments, detailed remittance, reduced manual effort reconciling receivables, and reduced risk of fraud – and work with them to address any questions or concerns they might have.
• While it is advantageous to convert as much spend to digital as possible, you have to balance that with supplier preferences. Vendors are concerned about a lot more than whether or not to accept a virtual card for payments. They also want to know that any existing contracts or agreements on payment types or terms will be honored. Your solution provider’s ability to address these questions up front will help ease their concerns.
• Be collaborative. Some providers can be very aggressive and force suppliers into accepting specific electronic payment methods. This can turn suppliers off and make them less likely to work with you when you need them most.

On top of supplier enrollment, the right AP automation solution provider can take other things off your plate: managing vendor payment details, responding to day-to-day supplier inquiries about payment status and the like, and addressing payment issues.

Adopting a continuous improvement mentality

Many AP solution providers do a “one-and-done” enrollment campaign at the onset of the relationship. For companies that regularly add new suppliers (e.g., biotech in R&D mode) this leaves a lot of payment volume on the table. Real success requires continuous enrollment where new vendors are flagged when an invoice appears for the first time. In most cases, your provider can enroll them before that first invoice is paid, ensuring that you maximize adoption of electronic payments and all the benefits that come with them.

Both you and your suppliers stand to gain a lot from AP automation, no matter where you are starting – greater visibility and control of costs, time-savings and operational efficiencies, reduced risk of fraud, and better cash flow management. The more you can digitize, the more value there is to be gained. If you are already paying some suppliers digitally, set specific goals for signing up and onboarding more based on specific criteria for which suppliers would benefit the most.  Do the same with the number of virtual card payments in your mix to maximize your rebates. Even if you’ve adopted an end-to-end platform, don’t stop there. There is always opportunity to gain greater value and ROI through continuous improvement.

The post Getting Over the Supplier Enablement Hurdle in AP Automation appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

In this release at the Wells Fargo site, we see a new product release announcement on the receivables side of the payments ledger.  As part of corporate payments modernization, receivables has in the past played second fiddle to accounts payable automation, with frankly neither one getting enough investment.  However, that has been changing during the past couple of years, and as companies reconsider end-to-end payments modernization, banks can also step up to offer more flexible and latest gen tech solutions as well.  We have been covering this trend for members, most recently in a report on the very subject. In this case, Wells Fargo is offering integrated receivables in conjunction with Dade Systems, a Florida-based fintech specializing in receivables automation.

‘ “Integrated Receivables allows our clients to spend less time working on piecing together payments data and more time focusing on their core business objectives,” said Danny Peltz, head of Treasury Management & Payment Solutions for Wells Fargo. “By automating the capture of payments and the matching of funds to invoices, Integrated Receivables can help produce significant operational cost savings, reduce the risk of incomplete or inaccurate data entry, and accelerate cash flow.”…Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology enables Integrated Receivables to correct errors and improve matching logic over time, which can help companies devote less time and resources to manually applying payments….“With this solution, the software does the bulk of the heavy lifting behind the scenes,” said Chris Noe, Wells Fargo’s Head of Treasury Management Product Innovation. “We have incorporated multiple receivables solutions onto a single platform that is payment channel agnostic. We are able to use artificial intelligence and advanced data capture to memorize historical corrections and apply them automatically and accurately where needed.” ‘

We have also covered the importance of cash cycle convergence, or taking a strategic view of financial operations as a connected set of systems and processes, rather than point solutions to address isolated transaction sets.  The ability to integrate the various capabilities across cash cycle operations has been greatly enhanced by APIs, and as companies further digitize these processes, they can better take advantage of the latest gen solutions like AI and RPA.  Banks are collaborating with fintechs to help optimize such solutions and offer their treasury clients easier experiences and up to date products to improve working capital management.  This is another good example of such collaboration.

‘Integrated Receivables’ customer implementation process is highly-configurable, and has been streamlined by Wells Fargo to help make it easy for clients to get up and running quickly. “Making it easier for our clients to do business with us is a top priority for the organization,” said Peltz. “We think they will be impressed with how smooth the setup is for this solution, and how it translates into faster access to working capital.”…Integrated Receivables is based on technology from DadeSystems, a leading provider of AR automation solutions. In February of 2020, Wells Fargo made an investment in DadeSystems to support the growth of the company’s suite of technology solutions….“We are excited about this extension of our relationship with Wells Fargo,” said Bill Zayas CEO, DadeSystems. “Wells Fargo and DadeSystems recognize the potential for accounts receivable automation to improve efficiencies for a wide range of businesses from smaller companies to the largest and most complex.” ‘

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Wells Fargo Announces AI-Powered Offering to Simplify Accounts Receivables appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

The world is evolving at a rapid pace, and payments are no exception. For the fintech industry, this exponential growth highlights the need to address back-office challenges and inefficiencies. To do so successfully, fintechs must take a holistic approach to financial controls.

To learn more about how fintechs should approach back-office modernization, PaymentsJournal sat down with Marc McCarthy, SVP of Sales & Reconciliations SME at AutoRek, and Steve Murphy, Director of Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group.

Register for the upcoming webinar – Setting the Standard: Borderless Financial Controls in Payments. On September 14th at 1pm EST

The stratospheric growth of payments

Gone are the days when it was frowned upon to use a credit or debit card to make a small dollar purchase. Now, consumers are using their cards for purchases of any value. These small dollar purchases are pushing payments into the future. “Having just gone through and still [being] in the middle of the pandemic, we see there’s a lot more e-commerce [and] a lot more micropayments taking place. And I really do think that’s just an accelerant of what we were already looking at in the past decade, and what we were looking forward to in the coming decade,” said McCarthy.

The chart below, provided by AutoRek, displays anticipated cashless transaction volume growth into 2030:

“There’s going to be a proliferation of payments, and I think microtransactions are going to push the way forward. Evidently, we are seeing a reduction in the use of physical cash and becoming more e-money focused,” added McCarthy.

Moving forward, embedded finance and the Internet of Things (IoT) will play a strategic role in microtransactions. For example, EVs, solar panels, and privately owned wind turbines will fuel generation and storage of electrical power by individuals who can make money by selling excess power back to the grid.

The influx of payment types is causing financial services providers to rethink how they manage their financial processes. As fintechs continue to mature, it will become more urgent to address.

questions around their ability to demonstrate controls around payment reconciliations, settlement funding, foreign exchange (FX) management, liquidity management, and interchange fee validation.

It’s time to bid farewell to spreadsheets

The fintech industry has focused, first and foremost, on customer acquisition. This makes sense but has left some gaps in terms of efficiency.

“They need to build their business and they need to have revenue coming in, so it’s an understandable approach. But the reality is that back-office processes tend to still be very much Excel spreadsheet based. We have qualified accountants sitting in these organizations, working their way through complex formulas which are very often error prone,” said McCarthy.

Excel, which Microsoft first brought to market in 1985, is simply not equipped to manage the needs of modern day fintechs. Part of the problem is that many companies, including fintechs, attempt to manage functions like interchange fees at a bulk level rather than more granularly. After all, it’s what Excel enables them to do. However, “the back office is not the money pit that many think,” warned McCarthy. “It’s the actual engine that keeps the lights on. It’s the engine that keeps things moving forward, so fintechs will be well-advised to embrace technology themselves.”

For some fintechs, the knee jerk reaction may be to use in-house engineers to build a back-office tool. But dedicating such valuable resources to non-revenue generating activities makes little sense. Instead, it makes more sense for fintechs to bring in outside vendors to rework back-office processes. That’s a realization that many fintechs are already facing. “The more mature fintechs are already at that level and have already accepted that they need to get expertise from the outside,” said McCarthy.

Don’t let data be a missed opportunity

By relying on antiquated tools like Excel, fintechs are missing out on opportunities to harness the data they have access to. “The challenge here is to actually retain your customer base, and the best way to do that is to feed them back with intelligent information or provide them with additional services beyond just the payment process,” said Murphy.

Missing opportunities to utilize data across an organization puts fintechs at a competitive disadvantage. “Understanding your customers better, their needs, their wants, their product choices, it’s more than just efficiency with that process. It’s potentially better customer relationships and increased revenue as well,” Murphy added.

McCarthy agreed, adding that many fintechs view the back office as a process rather than an opportunity. But that mindset is causing them to miss out on valuable data insights. “Once the payments have been processed, or the interchange fees have been applied, or the sales tax has been applied, there’s much more that you can do with that data, and it really is a golden source for very rich MI [management information].”

Internal processes should reflect company ambitions

CFOs and other financial executives must be aware of their companies’ ambitions when determining how internal processes can be improved. “If the company has ambitions to go across borders, for example, then there are a lot more additional pressures that a CFO has to worry about,” said McCarthy.

For companies relying on spreadsheets, it will be difficult to achieve these ambitions. In addition to being inefficient when it comes to accuracy and problem solving, spreadsheets also have inefficiencies around scalability. “If you’re a company that is working multiple jurisdictions on a micro-transactional level and your volumes are suddenly in the tens or hundreds of millions per day, then spreadsheets obviously are no longer going to cut it,” he added.

Ultimately, specific company goals should determine the best approach to financial controls. “As I said before, the back office is the working engine of the business. So therefore, it does need a bit of TLC. It does need a bit of investment. And without that, it’s very difficult to really move things forward,” said McCarthy.

Sufficient liquidity starts with automation

Today, some fintechs have gone out of their way to build up back-office processes or financial control and operations teams. Others have yet to begin that journey. Every one of those companies should be considering how to embark on that growth path. 

When asked how CFOs can know the right actions are being taken to ensure sufficient liquidity to fund customer payments, McCarthy honed in on the importance of automation and technology.

“At the end of the day, most CFOs will be wanting to start looking at how they can automate as much as possible. What can be automated? What cannot be automated? Is it something that a company will want to build in-house, or would it like to hire in through third-party vendors? All of these factors need to start taking shape in the CFO’s mind as they go through their considerations of how to progress their business,” he concluded.

The post Why Payment Firms Need to Take a Holistic Approach to Financial Controls appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

In 2019, Deloitte issued a report that offered eight predictions regarding digital transformation’s impact on finance departments. At its core, one thing was glaringly obvious: changes ARE coming—and they might make some people uncomfortable. But change isn’t necessarily bad. And when it comes to finance, change is necessary to accelerate growth and ultimately alter the way business finance operations are managed.

Although these predictions could never have forecasted a global pandemic, they have been more or less spot on—particularly around automation, which has been recently thrust into the spotlight. Across all industries, we saw companies transforming their backend much faster than they would have normally been able to, or even wanted to in the first place. And more often than not they discovered that automation was the answer to many of their problems.

We’re finally starting to see this transformation come to finance teams, which have traditionally had to execute largely in-person, manual-driven processes. Many of which got even messier when remote working became the norm last year. Yet, despite seismic shifts in finance software over the past decade, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI), finance departments are still not nearly as automated, or autonomous, as they should be.

So if you’re a CFO or head up a finance department, understanding the difference between the various types of software available is not only critical to your company’s bottom line, but also to each and every person on the finance team, regardless of their role and how they execute relevant tasks.

Automation has laid a solid foundation

Ironically, while many enterprises were developing new, emerging technology before the pandemic, their finance departments remained functioning as if still in the late 90s, spending copious amounts of time manually reviewing expense reports and clipping receipts together.

This is where we have seen automation have a positive impact. Automation improves efficiencies, reduces costs, and helps companies manage risk. It’s also able to catch errors that even the most eagle-eyed of employees might miss. This is why we’ve seen so many companies quickly get onboard the RPA train. RPA, or Robotic Processing Automation, is ideally suited to those business functions that are repetitive and have structured data. For instance, pre-defined expense report templates, which are either accepted or rejected by the software being used, is a process that would benefit greatly from RPA.

However, while automation can speed the process, there will still be times when a person needs to step in and review a report if data can’t be recognized by the system. Specifically, RPA cannot read or understand unstructured data, such as formats or templates outside of a predefined set, nor can it go beyond that to ultimately approve expense reports. To do that, you need to add AI into the mix, which can understand, learn, and adapt to anything you throw at it. And if there’s anything the pandemic has taught us it’s that adaptability is critical, so a system that can handle ALL types of data—both structured and unstructured—will always outperform one that’s only partially automated. By leveraging both RPA and AI together, limitations are lifted around what the technology can achieve.

Autonomy takes it to the next level

Finance departments require more than just automation—they need to be autonomous. And to have a truly autonomous finance team, you need to add AI to your tech stack. AI blends machine learning, semantic understanding, and neural networks and allows a system to work with complex business challenges, while also learning and self-correcting over time.

It’s also tempting to think the difference between automated and autonomous is only semantics, but the distinction is very real and, if not properly understood, can have dangerous consequences. I like to simplify the difference by likening automation to driver-assist functions in a car. Rear collision warning, cruise control, and blind-spot detection all help the driver get safely from Point A to Point B but can’t replace the actual driver. An autonomous car, meanwhile, uses AI to take over the driving. The only human “interference” required is someone to define points A and B.

Modern finance teams have arrived

Finance teams have long performed manual, time-consuming tasks such as reading through receipts, compiling and collecting physical documents, ensuring compliance, and even good old data entry. But thanks to software systems that combine RPA and AI, today’s finance departments are able to leverage technology to process much of that work so they can focus on more strategic initiatives such as planning, budgeting, and forecasting.

Determining what software is best suited for your company requires knowing what your current solutions are, where your data comes from, how the data is formatted (i.e. is it structured, unstructured, or both?), and ultimately how the software will be used. Ask yourself what processes you would like replaced? What must be upgraded at the risk of your finance team (and your company) remaining in the past?

Today, finance departments can leverage the strengths of both RPA and AI to not only streamline workloads and automate policy enforcement (while flagging errors or instances of misconduct, for example), but the ultimate goal is to eliminate unnecessary spend. But first, they need to be ready to take a leap of faith into the future—right now.

The post Move Over Automation, the Future of Finance Is Autonomous appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Artificial intelligence and automation are quickly moving beyond being buzzwords and becoming an integral part of the digital transformation of our world. Banks too need to deploy these technologies at scale to remain relevant. AI and Automation has the potential to drastically transform front to back-office operations using a next generation workforce.

AI can help augment various human capabilities such as vision (read documents, images, etc.), listening (understand natural language and arrive at the intent), decisions (suggest decisions based on continuous learning), actions (understand and execute instructions), sense (sense and respond/adapt) and voice (recognize speech and voice). Using these capabilities, each banking process that involves bank staff can reviewed and re-wired to create “human ++” capabilities.

Currently, improving customer experience has been the primary focus for most banks’ AI implementation, and that is certainly an important area to address. However, expanding the focus to empower employees through AI and automation is equally important. This can help banks accrue greater benefits. Bank staff do spend considerable amount of time with the systems. The nature of task include mix of cognitive, repetitive, and trivial

Therefore, prioritising employee experience and providing them with the right tools to augment their capability is a good strategy. Tools that offer hyper automation and intervention by exception, and are flexible and user-friendly can help provide a frictionless experience of bank staff and translate into greater productivity. It can not only help improve process efficiency, but it also brings in greater effectiveness, thereby ensuring happier employees, but also happier customers. In addition, it can also support by making simple decisions independently and supporting complex decision-making.

Let’s take the example of Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait (ABK), which is among Kuwait’s leading banks. When the bank was using manual salary processing for its small business customers, the process would take up to a week. Apart from the sheer delay, the process was riddled with error and dependencies. With automation, the salary details provided by customers are digitized using a QR code and processed with the bank’s core banking platform. The solution executes 95% of requests and assigns only the remaining 5% exceptional cases to staff.

Not only has there been a 92% increase in productivity due to elimination of manual effort, but the time needed to process a request is down by an astounding 97%, allowing salaries to be credited into customer accounts within six minutes. Other gains include improvement in accuracy and high scalability to handle month end peak volumes with ease.

Augmenting employee capabilities at each stage

Irrespective of their job role, each bank employee’s tasks typically consist of a mix of some cognitive work and some trivial and repetitive tasks. Let’s break down the typical processes in banking into some generic steps and see how AI and automation can help augment each step.

Getting input

The input process – whether it is extracting information from scanned images , documents or reading emails and deciphering the intent or listening to a voice call etc., largely involves trivial work that can be performed via AI applications. For instance, AI can read documents, images, emails, voice inputs (listening to a phone call), process structured and unstructured inputs and translate them into structured inputs.

Enrichment

Before additional processing, bank staff requires a lot of augmented information to enrich the input data. Enrichment tasks, for example, include extracting profile information, gathering historical information etc. These tasks as well as others such as identifying patterns to determine Anti-Money Laundering, suggesting new products or services, and gathering market inputs relevant for decision making can be automated.

Decision making

While decision making involves cognitive skills, AI can certainly help augment the process. For simpler decisions, AI can be leveraged to make independent decisions without human intervention and approval. For more complex decisions, AI can make recommendations and leave the final review and approval to the employee. For example, AI can recommend if a certain loan application should be approved or rejected. It can suggest relevant new product or service options that can be marketed to a given customer. It can even provide cash flow projections for an organization based on historical performance and market data. In addition, AI can help highlight transactions that could be fraudulent or do not subscribe to AML requirements.

Let’s take the process of verification of documents presented under a Letter of Credit (LC) from foreign banks. When done manually, not only is there a longer transaction turnaround time, but the process suffers from high error rates, lack of standardization, and operational risk due to staff turnover. The AI solution extracts relevant information from trade documents and matches terms and conditions in the LC with actual data in the trade document. Based on the findings, discrepancy advise is triggered to the exporter’s bank if relevant. This can potentially result in 70% savings in average handling time.

Execution

Once a decision is made, execution, or the actual implementation of the decision is the last and most critical step. Digital workers, for instance, can be leveraged to execute steps such as reading inputs and decisions from various sources and capturing the request in the system, creating payments, reconciliation etc.  

By reimagining banking processes through AI and Automation, banks can benefit from a “human++” model, where employees’ can deliver greater value. AI can free up employees’ time drastically to perform more cognitive tasks and enable them to deliver greater value through cognitive tasks.

The post How a “Human++” Approach Can Empower Bank Employees and Drastically Improve Efficiency and Effectiveness appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This notification is found in businesswire and announces the release of findings from a recent survey conducted on behalf of Yooz, the Dallas-based fintech specializing in AP solutions for SMEs. As readers will mostly know by now, there has been a lot written on the pace of change in financial operations surrounding the pandemic.

Trends for digitalization in various systems and processes across the cash cycle have been steady for years but received a boost from COVID-19 as WFH took over the workplace and many adjustments had to be made on the fly. 

‘Yooz…commissioned the first edition of their global report based on the largest exclusive survey of over 1,000 Finance and Accounting decision-makers across eight countries (US, France, UK, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium). The findings will be unveiled on August 18, 2021 with a sneak peek webinar in partnership with IOFM on August 17….“The State of Automation in Finance 2021” report takes stock of Accounting and Finance practices and identifies the expectations, fears, and vision of these decision-makers for 2022, as well as the technologies that will enable them to move into automation now.’

The piece also provides a webinar registration link for those who would like to listen to a live summary of the findings, which will be fully published on August 18,  but some of them are as follows:

U.S. businesses believe it will take ~13 months to financially recover from the effects of COVID, and 43% of respondents saying COVID had an extreme impact on their ability to process an invoice on time

• Only 18% have adopted fully automated invoice processing
• 23% are fully prepared for electronic invoicing
• Companies (31%) with AP Automation solutions during the pandemic anticipated recovery more quickly, within 6 months, compared to just 23% of those without it.

Companies spend an average of 32 hours processing vendor invoices per month, and 11% of companies spend more than 100 hours per month.

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post The State of Automation in Finance: What Comes After Digitization? appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

2020 will be remembered as the year for massive digital acceleration in financial services. Even as contactless transactions soared, regulators scrambled to adjust policies for the compliance-related functions of banking to become feasible when transacted digitally, remotely.  Despite the lack of modernization in an industry riddled with legacy systems and processes, an overwhelming majority of financial services firms forged ahead, investing in digital transformation, and the result: they’ve grown their business and widened the gap between themselves and the competition.

Few would disagree that the most promising aspect of digitalization in the financial services sector is the ability to make significant decisions that are data- and AI-powered insights driven.  With this the enterprise also sets off on the path to higher-level automation, which when pursued with adequate risk controls, amplifies human decisions both in terms of speed and accuracy. In my assessment of financial service providers who have leveraged data and automation to squeeze more value for their strategic priorities, I see a clear pattern:

They deliver frictionless, highly relevant user journeys.

They use data to not just drive relevant transactions but become pervasive in customers’ lives.  They are able to anticipate and solve for emerging needs, not just when customers bank, but in adjacent areas of the experience too. They integrate highly relevant non-banking products and services, together with the core financial offering, to comprehensively address these needs. The data fabric also makes it easier for these players to share and cross-leverage their information wealth with ecosystem partners to build a more accurate, dynamic picture of customers and their fiscal positions than any traditional method might enable. This translates into a world of untapped opportunities to explore, especially in an industry that has traditionally been slow to wholly digitize. It’s not that surprising that recent research points to the fact that just 4% of the mortgage industry is fully digital.

Their core is optimized equally for speed and accuracy.

This is the same mission-focused agility and precision of purpose that characterize digital-native companies. These financial services firms use data and their ability to ‘connect the dots’ to innovate in ways that are highly market-relevant. The heart of their operations engine is setup to augment human judgment with AI-led automation producing better outcomes, faster. In fact, the research referenced earlier reveals that financial institutions are driving cloud investment primarily to revolutionize their processes through digitalization and automation. This intense focus on intelligent automation serves to redirect the saved people bandwidth towards value-amplifying activities. Another distinct advantage for financial service providers with a data-first, AI-first foundation is that this sets them up for early detection of the likelihood of fraudulent activities. Clearly, robust risk management from the core, in the world of finance, is an unmatched differentiator.

They are resilient and can change with change.

In times of turbulence and disruption, the world looks to the financial services industry to be their anchor point. And the industry looks to data and the predictability of technology and business operations for resilience. For instance, providers can lean on intelligent automation at a time when human resources may be hard to find or an overhead they can ill afford. Data can shine a light on the path forward for business, by way of borrowers’ digital footprint complementing traditional credit scores so risk assessment can be improved at a time when mistakes prove costly. Robust statistical models help predict collection trajectories and defaults more accurately. AI/ML techniques coupled with real time data can be used to predict and adapt to all manner of emerging customer behavior. Prioritizing a digital-first environment prepares financial institutions for potential surprises and positions them to out-innovate, outgrow, and outperform even in times of flux.

Many institutions, however, struggle through the move to become truly data-centric and digital. Reasons for this range from their inflexible and investment-starved technology core and fragmented data assets, to a dated approach to security and compliance. However, with big-tech companies and data-rich digital players across sectors looking to enter financial services as the next adjacency, incumbents in the space of financial services too need a new strong value proposition built on promise of all that data can do.

The post Banking on Data and Automation for the Future appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

As companies prepare their plans (and employees) for return-to-office and resumption of business travel (which we discuss in a recent blog post), two keys to good traveler experiences are stronger ‘duty of care’ infrastructure, as well as making the experience friction-free, to the extent possible. That experience is made much easier with automated expense management, tied directly to mobile phones and using virtual instead of physical cards where possible. 

This announcement in American Banker has Teampay, a 2016 New York-based startup that has a spend management platform that enables companies to request, approve, and track expenditures in real-time, collaborating with Mastercard to offer a digital-first commercial card for corporate use. 

‘The New York-based company’s newest product is inspired by Mastercard’s Digital First Card Program, developed in 2019 for the Apple Card. Teampay’s approach enables debit cards to be issued virtually without the need for a physical card (though a metal card is also included)….Teampay’s new card is the first use case of a commercial card built on Mastercard’s digital-driven platform, said Sherri Haymond, Mastercard’s executive vice president of digital partnerships….”As consumers become more and more comfortable with digital payments, we’re committed to delivering technology and infrastructure that connects all types of payments and information,” Haymond said in an emailed statement.’

As was pointed out in a recent survey of frequent business travelers, 84% are itching to get back on the road but want some specific safety measures in place beforehand.  The same survey  shows another area of employee friction needing improvement; which is the expense management process.

The survey indicates that employees spend way too much time on the expense reimbursement process and often lose money in the filing due to lost receipts. Products like the Teampay offer help to eliminate such dissatisfying travel issues, paving the way to get back to normal.

‘The digital-driven product, called Catalyst by Teampay, makes a card number immediately available within the user’s digital wallet for spending. This is meant to help with onboarding, as companies hire more remote workers who quickly rack up travel and office-equipment expenses….“Right now we’re in this strange environment where most workers are still remote but we’re beginning to see travel and other work-related expenses ramping up again,” said Andrew Hoag, Teampay’s CEO….Catalyst by Teampay also gives card users access to World Elite Mastercard benefits — concierge services, car rental and travel insurance — through the app, Hoag said.

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Startup Launches Digital-First Expense Management Mastercard appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

In this announcement at businesswire we see that Emburse, a 2014 startup out of Los Angeles that specializes in expense management and accounts payable automation, is launching new payables to be integrated with their existing Chrome River Invoice product. 

The new solution is called Emburse Pay – B2B Payments, and adds automated ACH, check, and virtual card processing through a partnership with WEX.  Readers will have read about how the pandemic has placed the automation of financial operations at the forefront of many corporates’ priority lists, but apparently, adoption has a long way to go.

“Despite the massive push toward digital transformation during the pandemic, most organizations continue to pay vendors using physical checks. In addition to it being an incredibly inefficient and error-prone process, finance teams are missing out on huge cost-saving opportunities through early payment discounts and card rebates,” said Rajeev Subramanyam, general manager of Emburse Pay. “Our Emburse Pay suite of solutions was designed to streamline what has traditionally been a time-consuming and inefficient process – manually reconciling corporate payments. In B2B Payments, we have taken what has traditionally been a very cumbersome process and integrated it into our AP solutions’ workflow.”

So the many collaborations continue as fintechs further realize the value of integrated services and corporates recognize how they can benefit through convergence and improved delivery of many existing capabilities. We have been pointing this out to members through reports for some time, and don’t expect anything but continued expansion of digital operations. 

WEX is more broadly known for fuel cards but has been expanding its footprint into payables automation for a few years now, using both direct distribution and partnerships with other service providers.  The market for electronic payables solutions remains quite large, as millions of checks will be disappearing from day-to-day operations during the next five years.

‘“Adding Emburse Pay – B2B Payments to Chrome River Invoice was a natural next step for us. After seeing the benefits of increased efficiency and error-free payment processing, we were excited to roll out B2B Payments and complete the AP lifecycle in an automated fashion,” said Marissa Navarro, controller at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP.’ 

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Emburse Pay – B2B Payments to Deliver First Fully Automated Purchase Order-to-Payment Processing appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This ominous headline is part of a posting that appears in The Fintech Times where the author references a recent payments fintech survey of US and UK SMB business decision-makers about financial process automation.  We have been advising members of the criticality in automating end-to-end payments, for which the pandemic has provided a five-alarm fire-level warning to businesses to get moving or else. 

While that may be a bit dramatic, somewhere in the piece the old inertia issue pops up again, basically restating the lingering traditional business attitude that manual processes work so are not really a problem, until they are. 

‘The last year has been tough for most UK businesses. And now more than ever, companies are streamlining operations and processes to reduce costs and improve workforce management. One key factor preventing the growth and survival of B2B firms is late payments as a result of outdated Accounts Receivables (AR) processes….According to BlueSnap’s recent payments report which surveyed 800 executives, more than 80% of UK executives say the future of their company is threatened by overdue invoices. Yet, whilst the technology is there for B2B businesses to use, modernisation isn’t translating into reality for many. Of those surveyed, 100% said that at least part of their organisation’s AR process remains manual….Reliance on manual AR processes is a significant threat to efficiency, with 31% of businesses continuing to fax paperwork and 39% posting invoices. Meanwhile, 11% of businesses surveyed said they are still accepting payments in cash and 9% continue to take paper cheques….For businesses to remain agile as we come out of lockdown, it is imperative that they modernise their outdated AR processes.’

So while this particular posting focuses on receivables, that being a key set of processes affecting DSO and cash flow, the broader issue in play is really that a failure to modernize cash cycle systems and processes across the board will eventually leave businesses in dire straits versus competitors. This effect shows up in several key areas, include hard costs associated with manual rework, ineffective working capital controls, and the insidious opportunity cost of failing to digitize and use data, given the rapid advancement of technology such as AI. 

We are a bit surprised that so many businesses are still lacking the motivation to automate, but that may be a side effect of the survey timing (late 2020) when many businesses were still knee-deep in survival tactics, so perhaps already 8 months later the message is finally getting out to laggards.

‘UK businesses need to close the gap with B2C payments, where innovation is the norm. When combined with automation, upgrading payment processors can improve a B2B firm’s accounts receivable management, reduce costs, and boost efficiency….AR solutions have begun to leverage comprehensive payment processors to provide full payment services to customers making invoice payments. This means that customers can now open an automated email, click one button to view the invoice, and then pay it off with a variety of payment methods. They can even set up automatic payment processing rules to ensure invoices are never overdue….Ultimately, in order to succeed in today’s market, B2B businesses must modernise their payment solutions to suit the needs of their company, employees, and consumers. Failure to adopt new payment and Accounts Receivable (AR) technologies will hamper business growth on a massive scale, and these firms run the risk of being left behind in the movement towards automation.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post BlueSnap: A Failure To Automate Payments Threatens B2B UK Businesses appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

As readers will know, the topic of modernizing financial operations is front and center at just about any FS vertical event (all of which to date continue to be remotely delivered).   

So this posting in Dataquest is nothing new but does serve to highlight the topic in a developing market and for a specific vertical; that is India and ‘organized retail.’ The author is an exec at the India-based fintech named PayEX, which provides solutions for companies across cash cycle operations, such as A/P, A/R and supply chain finance.

‘Even as organized retail has brought the advantage of accessibility and scalability to corporates sellers by leveraging the power of the digital marketplace to reach end-consumers, it has also manifested operational complexities, a lot of which is thanks to the traditional and manual of order to cash (O2C) cycle processes. This is a big issue when the corporates’ customers are large retail chains, e-commerce companies, Government institutions, other OEMs, etc….Can you imagine the time and effort spent by an FMCG brand just to track all of the multi-product orders from a popular eCommerce platform and corresponding account receivables? Now imagine the challenge of doing this across many ecommerce platforms and large retail chains! The work is tedious, error-prone and cumbersome. Any inefficiency impacts working capital, customer relationships, and core financial metrics. Resultant write-offs, delayed/unapplied cash etc. have deeper implications on the financial health of the company.’

The point of the posting is to remind organized retailers in India (and other markets of course) to get their financial operations organized as well, especially receivables, which is something we covered in recent member research. The problems associated with paper processes in bulk payments and disassociated remittance data are substantial and only get in the way of business growth instead of keeping the cash flowing more freely. 

The author goes on to point out some of the pitfalls of non-automation as it relates to other interconnected processes, including purchase orders, goods acceptance, and reconciliation. So an interesting theme, and one that is being repeated across the globe.

‘Smart AI/ML and deep domain reconciliation platforms can bring significant benefits to buyer and seller organizations in the AR/AP processes – they are faster, far less expensive and highly accurate. These solutions help accelerate revenue recognition, lower write-offs, provide complete audit trails and assist in dispute resolution improving stakeholder satisfaction in the ecosystem….To conclude, India’s B2B landscape is fast evolving and digital transformation in many traditional sectors has been fast-tracked by the global pandemic. Ecommerce and modern trade, in that sense, is driven largely by technology on the consumer front. However, on the B2B side, it is still shackled in manual and time-consuming processes or caught up in fragmented technology systems. Companies can reap significant benefits by unlocking their working capital if they leverage the power of intelligent automation, not just as a piecemeal solution, but across the entire O2Ccycle.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post The Great B2B Hack: Intelligent Automation to Solve AR/AP Challenges of Organized Retail Customers appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This posting is in SDC Executive and speaks to the benefits of automating payments processes.  There have been numerous postings about the subject during the past 12 months, including our own postings as well as ongoing member research. 

There are both hard cost savings and other analytical benefits with automation leading to better cash management opportunities.   Those companies working their way through this challenge should be thinking about it as an end-to-end exercise, rather than a band aid approach to patching up a part of the process along the way.

‘Automating AP began well before the pandemic, but the divide between digital and manual payment systems became even more apparent as everyone transitioned to fully distributed, remote work. As companies urgently tried to adjust, those still relying on manual AP were left behind and others worked to catch up by digitizing their invoices. But, digitization alone, often as Band-Aid solutions, doesn’t cut it anymore; true AP automation uncovers deep insights and should be reimagined as strategic and user-friendly, and, ultimately, optimizes cash flow.’

In this particular referenced article, the author provides some helpful hints around how to build a business case for this automation investment, which is where many of these potential efforts get bogged down due to lack of executive buy-in (the old inertia issue). 

While high level, readers should click in and review since it is a useful roadmap, including things like measurable impacts, quantifiable data, etc.

‘Automating AP creates efficiencies by streamlining the invoice approval process and providing transparency in the payment flow to reduce risk, obtain better payment terms with vendors and deliver projects on time….This added efficiency also gives increased visibility into end-to-end processes that affect cash flow and profitability — how quickly invoices move through, the content of them, where they’re going. The actual tasks of reading and checking invoices is perhaps the biggest bottleneck in the process; it’s the reason why technology like robotic process automation (RPA) played such an early significant role in the automation of AP, followed by sophisticated data capture because bots lacked the critical document analysis skills needed for automation. Too often, companies that make small digital changes can break processes both immediately and down the road. You need to be able to focus on both end-to-end processes and identifying cost-saving improvements.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post AP Automation: The Key to Long-Term Financial Health in the Supply Chain appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Research shows improving operational inefficiencies, eliminating paper are critical drivers for community management professionals and HOA board members

CHARLOTTE, NC (April 29, 2021) – AvidXchange, the leading provider of accounts payable (AP) and payment automation solutions for the middle market, today released a new report examining top priorities for the homeowners association (HOA) industry in 2021. According to data captured from +400 members by the Community Associations Institute (CAI), creating operational efficiencies is the foremost focus for 78 percent of respondents as they look to save money and time for their organizations. Additional priorities include making enhancements to the homeowner experience (68 percent), expanding community portfolios (56 percent), and improving the adaptability and flexibility of business continuity plans (40 percent).

As decision-makers seek out these new efficiencies, many are turning to technology to replace time consuming, paper-bound processes with automated workflows that improve critical day-to-day operations like paying bills. Among survey respondents that are passively researching or actively considering payment automation solutions, 56 percent cited overall inefficiency as their motivation for seeking out an AP solution to automate invoicing and payments, followed by 44 percent who pinpointed high paper volume and 40 percent who noted slow approvals from manual routing.

“This survey shows that community associations professionals are thinking ahead about how to achieve their 2021 goals by leveraging resources like automation,” said Tyler Gill, Vice President of Homeowner Associations at AvidXchange. “Not only will an automated solution help solve back-office inefficiencies for community managers, but it will also alleviate the 73 percent of survey respondents who have someone working in the office regularly just to check physical mail for invoices and payments.”

Optimizing AP processes through automation helps HOAs pay bills more efficiently by reducing the time and costs associated with manual data entry and paper-based processing. Automated invoicing and payments also enables enhanced security, remote access for approvals and real-time visibility for board members.

Read the full report to learn more about 2021 priorities and challenges for community management professionals and HOA board members. And to learn more about the benefits of AP automation, visit www.avidxchange.com/industries/community-association-management/.

The post AvidXchange Surveys Community Associations Institute Members on Top Industry Priorities for 2021 appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This brief release can be found at The Fintech Times and is announcing the expansion of the Mastercard Track Business Payment Service into the UAE.  Readers of these pages may recall previous postings on these pages about the service, which was originally announced back in Q3 2018 as a trade platform built on Microsoft Azure. 

There have been gradual additions to the platform to include the execution of various payment types. This UAE implementation is being done initially through HSBC.

‘The latest collaboration will result in the launch of Mastercard Track Business Payment Service in the UAE. With partnerships across all regions around the world, Mastercard Track Business Payment Service helps companies simplify and optimise how they pay and get paid through a global open-loop network. Businesses have greater control of their payments with rich data exchanges and the ability to automate payments across multiple payment rails. Among the benefits for businesses are the ability to scale, improved security and control, cash flow efficiency and digitisation of existing manual processes’

As we have reported before, Mastercard’s solution provides a business directory, parameter-driven preference settings, and richer data for reconciliation.  There is also now access to card, ACH, real-time and cross-border payments. 

This is one of the ways that the payments technology company is executing its strategic move to further provide B2B payments modernization, which has been a priority for Mastercard and other networks now for several years given the size of the value flows in global wholesale goods and services as compared to consumer spend. 

‘ “The launch of Mastercard Track Business Payment Service is a game-changer for the Middle East and Africa region. We are seeing a structural need to digitise and automate B2B payments across all our markets, accelerated by the global pandemic, and Mastercard Track allows us to fully take advantage of this opportunity. We are thrilled to have partnered with HSBC to further deliver on modernising the business payment ecosystem by delivering a better payment reconciliation experience for HSBC business customers in the UAE,” “said Girish Nanda, Country Manager, UAE & Pakistan, Mastercard…In November 2020, Mastercard announced the addition of global Card payment capabilities to Track Business Payment Service and Account-to-Account functionality in the United States, with plans to scale globally.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Mastercard Partners with HSBC in UAE to Help Modernise MEA’s B2B Payment Ecosystem appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Payments Orchestration Used to Process Over 172 Million Transactions

DURHAM, NC — April 21, 2021 — Spreedly, the provider of a secure, agnostic, and flexible platform that welcomes all payments participants, today announced that its Payments Orchestration platform was used for over 172 million revenue transactions in the first quarter of 2021 — growth of over 100 percent compared to Q1 2020. 

“While we’ve always been proud of our role in enabling an open, agnostic payment ecosystem that results in more inclusive and fairer outcomes, this last year has felt different. We know that Spreedly is helping make a difference day-to-day and week-to-week across the globe,” said Justin Benson, CEO at Spreedly. “To be growing at 100% at this stage of our evolution further highlights all the hard work our teams do every day and the need to continually invest and scale to support the industry’s increasing need for Payments Orchestration.” 

Spreedly’s customers, direct merchants and vertical software platforms designed to help businesses accept digital payments online, have moved quickly to adapt to the new reality of payments post-COVID. Volumes for online ordering skyrocketed throughout 2020 and has continued to grow in early 2021. Industries like order ahead, digital goods, and health and fitness have experienced massive expansion throughout the pandemic as customers demanded online access and top notch experiences. This same growth trend has started to emerge in the last quarter with industries like travel and hospitality and ticketing.   

With continued focus on delivering value to merchants and merchant aggregators, Spreedly grew its new customer base by more than 35% in the past year. Benson explained, “Spreedly’s continued growth, combined with our independence, helps to strengthen our relationship with the leading PSPs as well as fuel our ability to bring a superior payments orchestration offering to market.” 

For more information about Spreedly’s Payments Orchestration platform and the business challenges it addresses, contact us https://www.spreedly.com/contact-us. 

About Spreedly

We orchestrate payments for the world’s most innovative businesses. Global enterprises and hyper-growth companies grow their digital business faster by relying on our payments platform. Hundreds of customers worldwide secure card data in our PCI-compliant vault and use tokenized card data to enable and optimize over $20 billion of annual transaction volumes with any payment service. Spreedly is headquartered in downtown Durham, NC. 

The post Spreedly Grows Transaction Volume By 100% YoY In Q1 appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Customers have needed a lot of help from their banks over the past year. From managing the financial impact of the economic downturn, to the massive shift in online banking and other retail activities, recent trends have provided a stress test for customer service. As financial service organizations have experimented with digital assistance technologies, the heavy demand has also provided useful data on exactly where customers are comfortable with an automated approach, where they prefer the human touch, and what types of best practices should guide the human/digital balance moving forward.

Here are a few of the important lessons we have learned.

Digital Assistance: Simple tasks aren’t always so simple

Banks have been driving digital innovation for years, from digital account transfers, to automatic bill paying, to the ability to deposit a check using a smartphone. These services promise greater convenience for customers—but if banks really want to deliver a great experience, they need to focus on doing digital things better, not just doing more digital things. In a recent survey of 1,000 banking customers, goMoxie discovered that a majority—55 percent—are still struggling with service issues including as login, transfer or payments, updating personal information, account balance checks, opening a new account, or adding a new product or service.

The frustration customers are feeling is often compounded by their experience accessing help. The survey also revealed that 32 percent of respondents have experienced long wait times since the pandemic began. Being able to meet customer expectations and preferences for assistance will be key for competing effectively and earning loyalty moving forward, including digital assistance.

Automation isn’t always the answer—but when it is, do it better

Companies of all kinds can tend to conflate innovation with automation. While it’s true that people generally like self-service and prefer to be able to do many things on their own, it’s not always the case—and banks in particular need to pay attention to those exceptions. Clearing up a login issue is clearly an automation-friendly use case, but when people are dealing with more sensitive areas of personal finance, they like the clarity, guidance, and empathy of being able to speak with a real person.

For banks, the challenge is to find a way to ensure that live representatives have the time and capacity to handle these more high-touch interactions, instead of being tied up with lower-level details. As it is, many incoming calls result not from an initial preference for live assistance, but out of frustration with the inadequacy of the automated version. In our survey, endless automation loops led 61 percent of respondents to say they would rather speak to a representative. Providing a better self-service experience, complemented with proactive digital guidance, can help divert many incoming calls, lower wait times, and improve customer satisfaction across both channels.

Chatbots aren’t winning many friends

Chatbots can seem like a great way to give customers the information they need without tying up a live representative. Customers ask a question and a chatbot respond with an answer pulled from a knowledge base – what could go wrong? As it turns out—customers just don’t like it. After asking how they feel about chatbots, 60 percent of those surveyed acknowledged that they didn’t trust chatbots to communicate their issues effectively, 57 percent said they’d prefer to interact with people, and one-third said that chatbots weren’t helpful in answering their questions. Less than a quarter of respondents—22 percent—had a positive impression. Digital innovation can improve efficiency, but if it’s frustrating customers and jeopardizing their loyalty, the ultimate costs can outweigh the benefits.

Social media is for kid photos and cat memes, not banking

Businesses in all industries are exploring ways to engage with customers on social platforms. For some kinds of brands, it can be a natural fit—but banking may not be one of them. After being asked if they wanted to interact with their bank over social media, 48 percent of respondents said they prefer to stick to personal interactions with friends and family. A quarter found the idea too intrusive. It’s probably nothing personal; you might welcome a brewer or pizza-maker at your social gathering, but having a banker turn up might be a matter of wrong-time, wrong-place.

Digital Assistance is here to stay—because physical is here to stay

For all the digital innovation and momentum we’ve seen in recent decades, customers express a clear desire for in-person banking to remain available. In our survey, 62 percent of customers said they want their bank to have a physical presence; of these respondents, 57 percent wanted to have the option of speaking to a banker in person for major issues, and 10 percent said they would like to establish a relationship with a personal banker. Banks can—and must—offer that kind of high-touch experience, but to do so effectively, they need to make the most efficient possible use of digital channels. The more customers you can satisfy through self-guided tools, the better you’ll be able to serve the remaining customers who do need escalation to live assistance.

The post Balancing Human and Digital Assistance in Banking: A Year of Lessons Learned appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Paris and Milford, CT, March 22, 2021

Quadient (Euronext Paris: QDT), a leader in helping businesses create meaningful customer connections through digital and physical channels, announces today the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Beanworks, a fast-growing market leader specializing in Software as a Service (SaaS) Accounts Payable Automation solutions.

Beanworks was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. A highly performing FinTech with an attractive SaaS recurring revenue model and a track record of high double-digit annual revenue growth, Beanworks supports the accounts payable processes of nearly 800 customers that, combined, currently process more than €11.9 billion a year through the platform. The global market for accounts payable (AP) automation is growing rapidly, accelerated by the global pandemic and the increasing number of teams working from home, driving businesses of all sizes to reflect on the benefits of digitalizing their financial processes and shifting to electronic payments. Adroit Market Research anticipates the AP automation market will reach $4 billion by 2025.

Beanworks’ state-of-the-art cloud platform continues to collect industry and user awards for its completeness and ease of use. Featuring native integration with today’s most popular accounting software, including Intuit QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, Oracle NetSuite, Xero and Microsoft Dynamics, the platform enables accounting teams by automating error-prone manual processes like data entry and approval follow-ups, reducing risks and cutting invoice processing costs by more than 80%.

As part of its Back to Growth strategy, Quadient has been actively strengthening its portfolio of smart hardware and software solutions in the past two years, combining organic growth initiatives with targeted bolt-on acquisitions. Quadient’s software portfolio already represents more than €250 million revenue in 2019, elevating Quadient to third place among French horizontal software publishers last year. Following the acquisition of Accounts Receivable (AR) automation market leader YayPay in 2020, the acquisition of Beanworks brings advanced cloud-based Accounts Payable (AP) automation capabilities to Quadient’s best-of-breed business communications management suite featuring Quadient Inspire and Quadient Impress. With a comprehensive SaaS AP/AR automation offer, Quadient is now uniquely positioned to address the emerging e-invoicing regulations in Europe and the growing demand for cashflow management solutions, bringing greater control and better visibility to accounting teams around the world.

“The acquisition of Beanworks completes Quadient’s software vision communicated in early 2019 to create a true end-to-end cloud-based global business communications platform,” said Geoffrey Godet, chief executive officer of Quadient. “The combined strengths of Beanworks, YayPay and Quadient’s software portfolio set Quadient apart as a software leader and give us the perfect cloud-based solutions combination to further our mission of helping companies of all sizes to digitalize and automate critical business operations. It is with great pleasure that we welcome the Beanworks team and customers to Quadient. Under Catherine Dahl’s leadership, they grew as a passionate community, dedicated to driving change through innovation, making it a great fit for Quadient‘s company culture.”

Additionally, leveraging its customer base, as well as the strong synergies with its mail and software activities, Quadient can actively and efficiently accelerate the expansion of Beanworks’ and YayPay’s best-in-class SaaS solutions cross-selling them to its nearly 500,000 customers worldwide.

“We are excited to join the Quadient team. Empowering accounting teams to succeed is what we do at Beanworks, and now with Quadient we will continue to bring our passion for all things AP globally making Beanworks the essential tool for the world’s accounting teams,” says Catherine Dahl, CEO of Beanworks. “I could not be prouder of the team’s success in being a market leader in AP automation. Our customers have come to rely on us as an indispensable part of their accounting workflow. By combining our expertise with Quadient’s global reach, R&D firepower and investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, we will continue to live out our mission to support accounting teams everywhere.”

At the closing of the transaction, which is anticipated to occur on March 23, 2021, Quadient will own a majority stake of c.96% in Beanworks, with two key leaders retaining a minority equity stake. Quadient has a mechanism to increase its ownership up to 100% in the coming years. The purchase price, excluding transaction-related costs, amounts slightly above 70 million euros1. The acquisition will be financed entirely in cash, without recourse to additional debt. Despite the global pandemic, Beanworks saw c. 70% year-over-year revenue growth in 2020 and is expected to achieve revenue of roughly 7 million euros at the end of 2021. The company has approximately 90 employees.

About Quadient®

Quadient is the driving force behind the world’s most meaningful customer experiences. By focusing on four key solution areas including Customer Experience Management, Business Process Automation, Mail-Related Solutions, and Parcel Locker Solutions, Quadient helps simplify the connection between people and what matters. Quadient supports hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide in their quest to create relevant, personalized connections and achieve customer experience excellence. Quadient is listed in compartment B of Euronext Paris (QDT) and is part of the CAC® Mid & Small and EnterNext® Tech 40 indices. For more information about Quadient, visit quadient.com.

About Beanworks

Beanworks is an essential all-in-one cloud-based accounts payable automation solution for the world’s accounting teams. Beanworks helps companies transform their AP workflows from end to end and empowers accounting teams to succeed by giving them complete control over their AP processes remotely, from anywhere in the world. Learn more https://www.beanworks.com.

1 Based on ECB’s €/$ exchange reference rate on 19 March 2021.

The post Quadient Announces the Acquisition of Beanworks, a Leading FinTech in SaaS Accounts Payable Automation Solutions appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This posting is found in ValueWalk and written by an exec at a payments automation fintech.  The headline can be interpreted another way, but is really about suggestions for things to stop doing if your company remains stuck in analog financial operations and needs to modernize.

We have covered this most recently in member research on digitizing the cash cycle.  So the author goes through the problem, then offers up some of the fundamental changes required to improve.

‘We can point to several reasons leaders may hesitate to implement new technology — whether they fear disruption to the status quo, worry that people will reject new tools, believe that change management efforts will be overwhelming, or struggle to grasp the value of something that seems so unnecessary. On the one hand, it is challenging to comprehend value for something you haven’t experienced. It’s not uncommon for B2B companies to resist a high price tag for a piece of technology they don’t think they need. But often, that’s because B2B leaders don’t fully understand the technological capabilities. For example, they may think that accounts payable automation is a simple process that’s been around for decades. But that’s not true.  Sure, something like invoice processing, which allows supplier invoices to be captured digitally, has existed for a while. But if that’s all a B2B leader thinks payment automation is, they’re missing out on myriad solutions available to them. Modern payment automation and accounts payable solutions not only digitize invoices — they also streamline and manage internal processes and procedures along the way.’

So the point is that inertia has been a long standing issue (‘if it ain’t broke….etc) in these types of modernization processes, but as we know the pandemic caused a major call to action in many cases given the WFH circumstances and follow-on adjustments.  So financial operations modernization projects have become much more of a priority, especially as it pertains to sending and receiving payments.  So the author points out some of the things to dump overboard, and each one has a summary. Worth a quick look.

‘To survive and succeed, your organization must transform its underlying accounts payable solution and cost structure. Now is the time to strategically rethink how to operate and make a commitment to lasting gains….Ready to learn how to implement the right technology for your business? Below are the top four processes that hinder B2B growth and how you can flip the script.

Operating With Manual Processes And Approvals

Relying On Inefficient B2B Payment Methods Like Paper Checks

Slacking On Implementing Financial And Compliance Controls

Failing To Optimize For A Multi-Entity Structure

Finally, remember that you’re not starting from scratch. The great thing about embracing technology is that it allows you to determine the highest and best use of your human capital — and then automate the rest. Maybe you have a rock star teammate who’s bogged down in accounts payable management when they could’ve been managing a team and leaving old tasks to a computer. Start by assessing your current talent — human, machine, and otherwise — and putting together a game plan for how you can build on all those components using technology. Ultimately, technical solutions should augment your human talent, not detract from it.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post 4 B2B Payments Practices to Retire in 2021 appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

In line with the ever-expanding move away from manually organized corporate payment processes, this announcement in CPA Practice Advisor reviews an expanded partnership between Sage and CSI for delivering automated payables. The offering embeds the CSI payments platform capabilities into Sage Intacct, a cloud-based financial management system.  

The growing use of APIs makes these types of integrations more commonplace, improving the end-user experience into a single environment, allowing the best features of each system to interact in a seamless manner. 

‘From processing automated clearing house (ACH) batches to printing and mailing checks, the accounts payable (AP) process is often time-consuming and costly. Finance teams end up jumping between multiple systems or getting bogged down in manual processes to deliver and reconcile vendor payments. With the new Sage Intacct Vendor Payments powered by CSI, businesses can streamline and automate their payments process. This solution brings together Sage Intacct’s best-in-class cloud financials and the trusted payments platform from Corporate Spending Innovations to deliver a seamless payments experience. The new offering enables customers to pay vendors quickly, speed up reconciliations, and offer more ways to pay – all while reducing payment transaction costs.’

We recently released some member research on the topic of cash cycle digital convergence, of which this partnership is a good example. Across the spectrum of financial operations, more and more is being provided through combining separate solutions into a more integrated experience. Benefits to automation include cost efficiencies and improved flexibility around working capital, among other things, including generally happier suppliers. Another reminder that things are rapidly changing and laggards should pay attention.

‘Vendor Payments powered by CSI streamlines existing workflows, so customers can process everything from bills through reconciliation without leaving the Sage Intacct experience. Automating payments and eliminating manual processes, as well as the opportunities for errors, frees up significant time to focus on more strategic activities. Users submit their payments in Sage Intacct and Vendor Payments handles the rest.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Sage Expands Partnership with CSI for Automated Vendor Payments appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Announces an integration that will enable businesses to make Direct Tax payments as well using Visa commercial cards by end of March 2021.

Mumbai, March 9, 2021: PayMate, the market leader in B2B payments, today announced that its full-stack payment automation platform has processed over $130 million GST payments monthly during the pandemic year through bank-issued Visa commercial cards. These transactions are projected to grow over $250 million being processed every month in the upcoming fiscal year ending March 2022. 

PayMate’s GST payment automation feature allows businesses to make bulk payments towards challans generated on the GST portal across multiple GSTINs. The challans are fetched onto the PayMate platform in a single step, followed by a digital approval process on the platform; thereby eliminating manual efforts and saving considerable time. 

During the pandemic, over 80% of businesses have faced difficulty in managing their cashflows , as they were delayed and unpredictable; in turn making it difficult for them to make their statutory payments such as GST on time. In such a scenario, the availability of funds on credit via a commercial card proved to be a boon. 

Additionally, by end of March 2021; businesses will be able to make their Direct Tax payments such as TDS, Advance Tax, Self-Assessment Tax among others on the PayMate platform. To do so, businesses have to select the challans, enter the amount to be paid and proceed to pay in bulk or adhoc. Moreover, large enterprises can choose to make all their Direct Tax payments using a single login for their subsidiary companies instead of multiple logins; making this enablement one of its kind.

Tax payments can also be made along with other supplier payables in bulk using commercial credit cards, thereby giving a single-window with automated payment and reconciliation, detailed reports, and clear visibility into cash-flows. Further, using the PayMate platform to the best of its abilities eliminates the need for using multiple software tools and traditional book-keeping records; thereby making businesses more efficient, and gain greater control and transparency over their finances. 

Speaking on this announcement, Ajay Adiseshann, Founder & CEO, PayMate says, “Usually, statutory payments such as GST and Direct Taxes are paid using EFT. However, the exceptional capability of enabling businesses to use commercial cards for these payments has proved to be extremely fruitful as we are providing additional avenues to businesses for using their commercial credit cards on our platform. And we are sure that this will attract more small, medium, and large businesses to adopt PayMate.”

Large conglomerates such as Marico and Redington India have been using the PayMate platform extensively for GST payments. Pawan Agrawal, CFO, Marico Limited says, “In addition to our vendor payments, we have now started making GST payment via PayMate’s automated and API-based GST payment feature which comes with Bank issued VISA commercial card enablement. It has been a seamless experience for our team to execute pan-India GST transactions in a hassle-free and timely manner”.

Varun Varada, Treasury Head, Redington India further adds, “PayMate has eased up the process of GST approvals and payment for all REDIL branches located across India (28 states) by integrating their portal with GST website, thereby with single click we were able to approve all the GST payments of 28 states in single shot. Time and energy were saved.”

PayMate enhanced its platform during the COVID-19 year and introduced a unique invoice discounting marketplace that allows suppliers to get working capital funds simply by offering a discount on unpaid invoices. This new addition has already won the Business Today – Money Today Award 2021 for ‘Best Fintech in Payments’, making it our second successive win. Sharing his thoughts on the win, Ajay further adds, “We are thrilled to have won the award for the second consecutive time and are determined to continue enhancing our holistic, full-stack platform to large, medium, and small businesses for end-to-end payables and receivables automation. We’ve already geared up to double our overall customer count from the existing 58,000 and achieve a run rate of USD 10-15B on gross processing volumes on the card rail by March 2022.”

PayMate is also gearing up to offer its B2B payments platform into Central Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA) region in partnership with Visa, starting with the GCC region. The platform is already live in the UAE and is in process of going live soon in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and targeted to go live in Oman by end of 2021. 

PayMate works closely with Visa and leading local banks to enable businesses with digital payments, faster access to credit, and more efficient ways to manage cash-flow. 

The post PayMate Automates and Achieves an Annualized Run-Rate of $1.3 Billion in GST Payments through Its B2B Payments Platform appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Featurespace claims to have implemented a breakthrough on its ARIC Risk Hub platform.  By automating the identification of feature selection the platform can monitor and learn fraud patterns faster and apply the solution to a broader set of fraud related problems:

“Deep learning technology has various applications, such as in natural language processing for the prediction of the next word in a sentence, however its use in preventing fraud in card and payments fraud detection has not been optimised to protect companies and consumers from card and payments fraud. With this invention, that challenge is solved.

Transactions are intermittent, making contextual understanding of time critical to predicting behaviour. Previously, building effective machine-learning models for fraud prevention required data scientists to have deep domain expertise to identify and select appropriate data features – a laborious, yet vital step.

Featurespace research developed Automated Deep Behavioural Networks to automate feature discovery and introduce memory cells with native understanding of the significance of time in transaction flows, improving upon the market-leading performance of the company’s Adaptive Behavioural Analytics. Detecting fraud before the victim’s money leaves the account is the best line of defence against scams, account takeover, card and payment fraud attacks.”

Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Automating Feature Selection Speeds the Application of Deep Learning to New Fraud Use Cases appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

COVID-19 has created profound changes in the accounting industry. With teams no longer able to work together at the office—and no return date in sight—the need for automation has never been more pressing. Clients want quick, efficient solutions that enable them to do more with less. From lending decisions to payments risk management, only technology can provide the necessary support that businesses need.

Entering 2021, financial leaders will need to manage increased uncertainty caused by the pandemic. To quickly respond to changing environments, agility and flexibility will be necessary for business planning and modeling. The accounting function will need to consolidate to create synergies and efficiencies wherever possible. Additionally, the entire industry will need to remain future-focused to ensure survival during these challenging times.

Finance Trends to Watch

We’ve just experienced an unprecedented year, and in 2021 significant industry changes will begin to emerge.

First, we’ll see a rapid acceleration of the eCommerce, cloud, and digital industries. During COVID-19, retail juggernaut Walmart reported a 79% increase in eCommerce sales, with overall revenue improving by 5.2 percent. Entertainment industries like gaming also saw an increase in engagement. According to NewZoo, the gaming market is expected to have grown by 20% from 2019 to 2020.

Second, key fintech players, like banks and firms, will be investing in modernizing their processes and payment methods. In 2019, the Association for Financial Professionals noted that 70% of organizations were still experiencing check fraud and that manual processes were a core operational problem. At the forefront of this shift is the Bank of New Zealand, which has already informed its customer base that in 2021 they will stop supporting the use of paper checks altogether.

Third, automation will become even more of a priority as accounting teams lean into optimized solutions for a remote environment. According to McKinsey & Company, finance departments have reduced operational costs by 30 percent over the past decade, and the next ten years will focus on building even more efficiency.

The Pandemic Impact in Year Two

Technology will be a crucial player in all three 2021 finance trends, and we’ll see fintech automation become a strategic imperative in year two.

Travel, retail, hospitality, and fitness were some of the industries hit hardest by the pandemic. The spread of COVID-19 also hindered public entertainment venues, such as concert halls, sports arenas, conference centers, and casinos. But like eCommerce and gaming, many industries are thriving and creating new opportunities for payments and fintech providers alike.

In this new landscape, accounting teams realize that they can no longer operate in physical groups and within offices. As a result, all paper-based operations—such as invoice collection, processing, and check writing—creates unnecessary inefficiencies. Because of remote work, the need for digital governance, controls, and audit capability has never been higher. This fact forces firms to look to technology for a quicker, more productive solution to enable the business long-term. Now, we can no longer ignore financial best practices—automation is an operational necessity.

How We Move Forward

For accounting, uncertainty can lead to changes in the regulatory environment, compliance requirements, and currency fluctuations. It is essential to work with solutions that can help navigate increased market changes. When choosing the right technology, the system must have optimum functionality and a high level of sophistication. Accounting professionals and the high-velocity businesses they serve will be looking at robust platforms backed with cloud-based architectures that can adapt quickly. By adopting these types of solutions now, they’ll optimize efficiencies that will make it easier to scale.

In the next two to three years, finance leaders will be rapidly adopting flexible, responsive technology that can adjust to changing business environments. COVID-19 has taught us the importance of planning, and new business models and trends will continue to emerge from this transformative time.

The post Fintech Automation Will Only Increase in 2021 appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

OMAHA, Neb. – Dec. 3, 2020, In response to an increasingly complex payment processing environment – both in terms of volume and payment type — BHMI, a leading provider of payments software, confirmed its Concourse Financial Software Suite^® supports all payment types, including traditional, card-based and non-card transactions as well as alternative payments options such as digital wallets and open banking payments.

Payment volumes are beginning to rebound from the pandemic’s initial impact, and digital transactions fueled by card-not-present (CNP) debit and other non-card payments are becoming more prevalent. A recent study commissioned by PULSE showed CNP debit transactions had increased by 21% in 2019, with account-to-account (A2A) transfers being the fastest growing category of debit, doubling over the same period. The study suggests this growth is likely related to both increased online shopping and use of P2P transfers through apps such as PayPal, Venmo and Zelle.

This underscores the need for solutions that can easily handle account-based transactions and suggests the industry could benefit from a richer, more detailed approach to ISO 20022 protocols. In response, many companies now recognize the need to “future-proof” their infrastructure to ensure it can handle more varied payments types as we head into 2021. BHMI’s Concourse allows them to leverage improved payments logic, interface easily with all payments and transaction types, and transfer between each quickly and seamlessly. Additionally, this integration allows card-only consumers to easily add payments to their portfolio, providing greater flexibility.

BHMI is constantly updating its Concourse Financial Software Suite to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving payments ecosystem. In 2019, the company announced Concourse’s support for ISO 20022 payment format standards, allowing financial institutions to overcome semantic and syntax barriers often associated with cross-border payments. The software’s most recent enhancements allow financial institutions to better support current and future infrastructure changes as the payments industry continues to evolve.

“As alternative payment options become increasingly popular, it is vital that companies not only adapt to meet the current market, but also consider how future changes – and challenges – of the payments landscape will impact their infrastructure,” said Dr. Lynne Baldwin, President of BHMI. “Concourse has been designed with this in mind, ensuring our clients can solve the issues of today while having the capability and flexibility to adapt to what may come next.”

About BHMI

BHMI is a leading provider of product-based software solutions focused on the back office processing of electronic payment transactions. The company is best known as the creator of the Concourse Financial Software Suite^® – a unique integrated collection of back office products allowing companies to quickly and easily adapt to the rapidly changing world of payments. Concourse is a cohesive and integrated package, including settlement, reconciliation, fees processing, and disputes workflow management, that reduces the cost and complexity of back office processing. Concourse’s continuous processing, near real‑time architecture and powerful rules engine is ideally suited for new payment initiatives like P2P and enables companies to perform back office processing for any type of payment transaction. To learn how your company can benefit from the power and flexibility of Concourse, please visit www.bhmi.com.

The post BHMI’s Concourse Financial Software Suite “Future Proofs” Payment Processing With Equal Level Support of Card-Based, Non-Card and Alternative Payments appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, employees are working remotely in record numbers. Meanwhile, companies are recognizing that they need to put processes in place that sustain business operations from anywhere. More specifically, financial services organizations are seizing opportunities to improve their processes for making and receiving payments. Will automating AP processes help?

Accounts payable (AP) teams have historically invested a substantial amount of their time and resources into performing manual tasks like mailing checks, chasing invoices, and improving profits. This is no longer just inefficient; in the new workplace normal, it’s completely unsustainable. 

Knowing this, AvidXchange teamed up with the Institute of Finance & Management (IOFM) to produce a report, titled Finance Leaders Adjust Strategies to Come Out Stronger in Extraordinary Economic Times. The report explores how companies are rethinking the way they handle AP functions and investing in technologies to improve processes. Here are some of its key findings.

Remote work is here to stay…

When the pandemic emerged in the United States, state officials quickly mandated social distancing and stay-at-home orders in an attempt to prevent the spread of the disease. This forced entire workforces to shift remote with little to no notice.

While traditional employers were largely wary of the change, their opinions toward remote work are shifting as they realize how effective it can really be. As a result, many are now reconsidering their traditional in-office work requirements.

In fact, a recent Gartner report found that 82% of companies plan to allow employees to work remotely at least some of the time after COVID-19 ends; 47% will allow their employees to work remotely full-time.

…Which has underscored the need to upgrade manual AP processes

While inefficient manual processes have long needed fine-tuning, the unprecedented and likely permanent shift of the workforce has made the need to upgrade even more urgent.

In addition to needing tools and technologies that enable them to do all functions of their job no matter where they are, workers need better protection from the cybersecurity threats that come with working on insecure personal devices and unprotected home networks.

Payment fraud is up 20% and credit fraud has increased by more than one-third since COVID-19 began.

These lapses in security caused by the pandemic are already taking a toll on AP teams. AvidXchange found that two-thirds of AP employees are more stressed than usual, with most reporting working longer hours, losing sleep, or being woken up for work communications.

Many AP workers in organizations unprepared to meet stay-at-home orders had to drive into the office to collect invoices and print checks, take them to the home of whoever had signature authority, and drive to the post office to mail payments.

Simply put, this isn’t working. IOFM’s recent study of more than 400 AP departments found that a mere 40% of all AP groups are paying their invoices on time in 2020. The good news is that there are better options out there for companies looking to automate.

Electronic payments solve the challenges that arise from manual AP processes

Companies looking to embrace AP automation and improve cybersecurity are increasingly turning to electronic payments. Unlike paper checks, electronic payments enable same-day funds transfers, give teams more security and control over cash flow, and streamline processes by removing unnecessary steps like having an employee drive into the office.

Automated electronic payments are also cheaper than paper checks. Goldman Sachs has estimated that businesses in North America spend an average of $22 to pay a single invoice with a paper check, adding up to a staggering $187 billion per year on payment processing costs.

In other words, automated invoice processing is more economical, convenient, and effective than manual processing. To make this shift—and to be successful in the new world—organizations must make investments in automated AP technology.

AvidXchange and the IOFM’s report goes into significantly more depth about how finance professionals are seizing COVID-19 to make improvements, rebuild, and come out stronger than before.

Fill out the form below to access the report: Finance Leaders Adjust Strategies to Come Out Stronger in Extraordinary Economic Times.

The post Automating AP Processes Enables Companies to Succeed in the New Workplace Normal appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

We saw this release at the Wells website announcing the launch of what the bank is calling the WellsOne Virtual Card Payments Service. Most readers who follow the space will know that virtual cards have been growing at a rapid pace for the payables use case during the past five years given their relative safety and utility within A/P flows.

Since the pandemic began the demand for electronic payments has accelerated and with that market demand the acceptance of virtual cards by suppliers has also increased. Wells has been issuing virtual cards for more than ten years so we contacted them to learn about more about what the new offering provides.

We spoke with Mary Mazzochi, Wells’ Head of Global Commercial Card Payments, who elaborated a bit on the new platform. The solution includes a new user interface (UI) which provides easy navigation, integration with the user ERP and dashboards for instant analytics. In addition, suppliers can access the platform and choose how to get paid given the push, pull and API-based card options.

“With this new platform we focused on streamlining and simplifying the workflow experience for both buyers and suppliers.  Focusing on both surfacing actionable items to the buyers and facilitating options for suppliers on how they want to receive virtual card payments, enabled the platform to deliver a more frictionless payment experience and improve the value of the card payments process” explained Mazzochi.

We had provided member research earlier this year about the trajectory of commercial card spending for 2020, which of course was not a pretty picture. However, despite the policy driven recession and disappearance of business travel, we still expected virtual cards use to maintain a level of growth over 2019 spend. We have just completed the series of Q4 virtual industry events (that typically occur on-site) and the overwhelming consensus is that the digital shift in financial operations will be a permanent trend, therefore good timing for Wells.

‘Wells Fargo also offers an automated, straight-through processing option, in which customers send virtual card payments directly to their suppliers’ banks. This process bypasses the need for any manual entry or interaction with suppliers, and gives customers control over payment timing as they are not dependent on suppliers to process the payments….The WellsOne Virtual Card Payments service helps make it easier to track, reconcile, and remit payments. Its intuitive dashboard with responsive design quickly surfaces items needing action while enhanced reporting identifies exceptions, monitors credit balances, and flags items that require repair. Other features include a robust audit trail, expanded search options, and access to 24 months of reporting data. Additionally, the WellsOne Commercial Card Supplier Analysis and Onboarding service helps customers engage suppliers and determine the best accounts to pay by card…TheWellsOne Commercial Card is a purchasing tool used by businesses of all sizes for procurement, travel and entertainment, account payable invoices, and transportation expenses.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Wells Fargo Launches WellsOne Virtual Card Payments Service appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This piece shows up in Digital Commerce 360 and is penned by a senior at a Fintech, specializing in payments and receivables. One of the many things that the pandemic has highlighted (highly reinforced might be more accurate) is that ‘cash is king’ (in the working capital sense of course, since all cash payments have declined quite a bit during the past eight months). So this article focuses on the importance of timely payments and collections strategy/effectiveness. We recently covered this in a webinar on cash cycle automation, which is directly related to improving a company’s working capital management capabilities.

‘As many organizations battle against a backdrop where sales have slowed, they’ve had to adapt to a blazing change in where and how they work. Companies find themselves at an inflection point where embracing digitization has become mission-critical—especially when it comes to the order-to-cash process….But the truth is, a reluctance to abandon traditional payment methods still exists in the B2B industry, as evidenced by the fact that 42% of B2B payments (which account for $25 trillion annually in the U.S.) are still made by paper check. But the winds of change are beginning to blow: a recent study of small to large businesses found that 64% of firms say they are shifting away from physical invoices, and 70% say they’re planning to automate their accounts/receivable process.’

Two of the key components of the cash conversion cycle are DPO (more controllable) and DSO (less controllable), and the author points out that pre-pandemic, payers were extending DPO through delayed payments. This of course puts pressure on suppliers who need to fund operations. Borrowing money to fund short term liabilities is not a good way to manage a business, which is exacerbated as one moves down the size scale of businesses. Smaller businesses have a tougher time raising money to begin with. Automation helps solve this by digitalizing processes and placing more decision intelligence in the hands of the trading partners.

‘There’s no denying that the pandemic and its ensuing economic downturn have created a list of challenges for businesses that are unlike anything they’ve experienced before. Besides the obvious—that COVID-19 has forced most businesses to develop survival-first responses that include reduced spending—several other factors have contributed to a landscape that’s strapped for cash and, as a result, has placed many businesses on the brink of collapse….For one, supply chain disruptions have caused many businesses to go under and others to rethink the entirety of their global supply chains, meaning churn rates are higher. Second, accounts-receivable and accounts-payable teams who’ve been tasked with maintaining the financial health of their organizations have had to adapt to remote configurations almost overnight. With B2B payments historically lagging when it comes to technology adoption, this only compounds the complexity and inefficiency inherent in highly manual tasks and outdated processes….And third, with studies finding that one-third of businesses say the biggest impact on cash flow is getting paid by clients on time, delays in receiving payments are proving to have significant negative consequences as organizations take hits to their days sales outstanding (DSO), the average number of days it takes a company to collect payment after a completing a sale.’

Worth a quick read to understand some of the pressure being placed on businesses and why the rush to automation is occurring as we speak (or read, I suppose).

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Late Payments and Low Cash Flow: 2 Big Reasons to Go Digital appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Ready or not, the financial industry is entering a new era of digitalization and automation — and A/R teams are no exception. In fact, according to a recent report from MSTS, reducing manual processes is a top priority for just under a third of B2B finance departments.

However, accounts receivables (A/R) teams still rely on a startling amount of manual processes — tasks essential to extending terms, like sending and receiving invoices, collections and even onboarding. In fact, our report found that nearly allof the A/R managers surveyed (94%) admit to manually inputting at least some invoice, bill or statement information into their A/R systems.

Manual processes are putting customer loyalty and capital — both human and financial — at risk. Without adequate capital, organizations are limited in their ability to further invest in the future of the business, i.e., prioritizing innovation and the customer experience. Perhaps more pressing, A/R teams forced to rely on outdated manual processes are often inefficient, overworked and incapable of reaching departmental goals.

The bottom line: Manual processes are preventing your organization from reaching its full potential.

Key findings from the report: Manual processes affect capital and the customer experience

A reliance on outdated back-office processes restricts capital, access to which can be life or death for businesses, especially in a challenging economy. Even more, manual invoice data entry processes lead to invoicing mistakes and further payment delays, which create an increase in days sales outstanding (DSO). Lengthy DSO restricts available working capital, but bad debt from late or unpaid invoices reduces the A/R businesses can use for alternative lending solutions — further restraining capital on hand and preventing growth.

Findings also revealed that collections are consuming a large portion of A/R human capital: 51% of A/R managers have six to 10 employees working on collections each week. Of those respondents, three-quarters say each full-time employee spends 18 or more hours each week working collections. When outdated A/R processes prevent teams from completing core tasks (like collections), teams feel overworked and unsupported — and may look elsewhere in the organization for assistance, further burdening your organization’s human capital.

Outside of internal impacts, the customer experience suffers without back-office innovation. Take, for example, the 27% of respondents who use an in-house credit assessment to screen for creditworthiness when extending payments terms. When compared to the efficiency and reliability of third-party credit screening services (i.e., Experian, TransUnion, CreditWise and others), in-house assessments can significantly delay onboarding. Add these onboarding delays to already inefficient back-office A/R processes, and the entire customer experience begins to deteriorate.

Organizations must leverage innovation in the back office

Today’s B2B organizations are ill-equipped to tackle the future of payments. Only by applying strategic digital transformation to manual A/R processes can they hope to keep pace with customer purchasing expectations and support the growing demand for online sales. Whether through the automation of manual A/R tasks, outsourcing A/R processes or taking a hybrid approach, finding the most effective, long-term solution for future-proofing the payments experience is critical to maintaining access to capital and your organization’s long-term success.

The post Without Back-Office A/R Innovation, the Payments Experience and Working Capital Are at Risk appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Investors have ponied up more money for AiFi and its autonomous store shopping technology. The Bay Area developer already has its grab-and-go system in 14 stores across the world, with an aggressive plan to install over 300 more in 2021.

AiFi is not alone in rolling out autonomous checkout, but the timing could not be better, as socially distancing consumers are looking for contactless payments and no checkout lines. Key factors for retailers are the installation costs, re-aligned store layout, and staff training. Store managers will benefit from enhanced customer intelligence data and inventory management. Time will tell more about how the ultimate return on investment (ROI) shakes out.

The following excerpt from a Crunchbase article reports more on the topic:

AiFi, a San Francisco-based startup that develops autonomous retail technologies, raised $14.5 million to significantly expand the number of stores that use its technology.

The new investment is considered a “pre-Series B” round, Steve Gu, co-founder and CEO of AiFi, told Crunchbase News. Investors involved include Qualcomm Ventures, existing investors Cervin Ventures and TransLink Capital, as well as new investor Plum Alley. AiFi has raised a total of $30 million since the company’s inception in 2016, Gu said.

AiFi’s Orchestrated Autonomous Store Infrastructure and Services system, aka OASIS, offers a checkout-free experience for consumers, while also enabling retailers to build and operate autonomous stores by providing customization and operational tools.

The company is also working with 5G and edge computing, which was one of the drivers for AiFi to partner with Qualcomm, based on its leadership position in those industries, Gu said.

Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group

The post AiFi Continues Autonomous Store Checkout Momentum appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

The three most common reasons payments solutions providers are adopting DevOps is for security, efficiency, and application reliability.

DevSecOps

The responsibility and even accountability for security is rapidly shifting in the direction of DevOps engineers, as they have a view into the broad architecture of the processes and systems used to deploy microservices. Going forward, DevOps engineers and DevSecOps processes are going to be even more accountable for security. This trend should be a strong consideration, as good DevSecOps also makes application deployments, operations, and service monitoring easier, and more secure.

When designing a new distributed system or refactoring/enhancing a monolithic application into microservices, one thinks about the business app and processes by which each microservice communicates with other microservices. With that picture in mind, it makes more sense to provision the identities at that microservice level. The benefits are that: 

• This makes it easier to understand the distributed application process, as it typically does not change as frequently.
• It makes the most out of container orchestration agility because we don’t need to restrict certain microservices to offer certain nodes. 
• It enables platforming, as the identities abstract the host identity that they are running on – whether a container, virtual machine, etc. 

Integrate Security Using Automation

The need to respond to security attacks manually is daunting. Using Red Hat Ansible or Hashi Terraform you can automate and integrate different security solutions that can investigate and respond to threats across the enterprise in a coordinated, unified way using a curated collection of modules, roles and playbooks.

Collect logs across firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS) and other security systems programmatically, enabling on-demand enrichment of triage activities performed through security information and event management systems (SIEMs).

Using these tools in a DevSecOps process can automatically tune the level of logging, create new intrusion detection system (IDS) rules and new firewall policies facilitating the detection of more threats in less time.

You can also remediate faster-automating actions like blacklisting attacking IP addresses or domains, whitelisting non-threatening traffic or isolating suspicious workloads for further investigation.

Ansible Automation is the common language to use between security tools. Security encompasses a broad variety of products and services designed to protect individuals and organizations from the loss or damage to their data, applications, IT systems, networks and devices from malicious or unintended activities.

Managed Services

For payment platforms, the most common driver we are seeing now is that a cornerstone application will get moved to a cloud environment. In the Digital Revolution, timelines for product delivery and information analysis are slim. Customers set the pace by consuming products and information on-demand — their way. This places immense pressure on payment solutions providers to deliver continuously and reliably to satisfy the rapidly escalating demand for all types of services. Software is the center of the business universe, vital to all aspects of operations. Building and reliably delivering software is now vital to short and long-term success.

As payments processors continue to maintain and modernize older applications, they are also creating and delivering new applications that in the sum total, can wear out their staff and budgets while increasing technical and process complexities between organizations.

In the digital economy, failure to deliver, delivering the wrong solutions, or delayed delivery greatly affects organizations’ ability to satisfy required business outcomes. Forrester tells us that a significant portion of technology spend is devoted to software engineering infrastructure. The blend of workloads, applications and broad access to the resources paired with consistent delivery methods to support software development is vital. How technology is used is as equally important as to the methods and processes for creating and delivering software code.   

Most development teams have limited visibility across and within their software “production” — the coding and delivery processes. Visibility is paramount and getting the process data into the hands of key stakeholders is critical. Lead-time, deployment frequency, MTTR, and change failure data enabled with a complete and automated delivery and a mapping of the value-stream can provide great value to the enterprise.

A very powerful and proven method for companies to access and wrap their arms around the data and constraint resolution is through DevOps managed services. These services provide real-time visibility into the integrated technical-development operations processes. Data is generated from the use of hardware and software systems in response to the actions of the contributors in the value-stream from code design to release and into production.  

DevOps managed services help organizations identify vulnerable process areas to remedy and improve suspect code and provide feedback for continuous improvement. Code scanning detection also helps identify code weak points and anomalies and improvement, providing improvement assurance. When there are fewer issues, the value-stream operates more efficiently, placing less stress on the contributors, including testing processes and the infrastructure they leverage to produce and reliably deliver.

Eliminating Alert Fatigue

Anyone who’s been in the devops space is probably familiar with alert fatigue. At the beginning of a devops transformation, engineers set up as many monitors as they can to catch issues before they happen or to understand when things are happening. The next thing that happens is that their inbox is getting flooded with all these alerts and, suddenly, everything becomes less meaningful and no one is reacting to anything, which is essentially the same as not having any monitoring in the first place.

It’s a big problem and finding the balance between making sure everything is captured and not overloading everybody that’s responding to these issues is a key devops transformational issue. Managers quickly have to fix the problem of engineers being woken up at three o’clock in the morning and then looking into something that’s actually a false positive. Managers need the right tools and processes to efficiently catch meaningful events and only alerting people when it’s absolutely necessary.

One way to clearly quantify alert fatigue is to look at the number of alerts per person, and the frequency and timing of the alerts. Devops leaders can use a kanban to measure green and red zones.

Every time you have an alert, there are three possible outcomes. It’s either an actual problem and we fix it, it was alerted but it was either a premature alert or we should have waited some amount of time before we actually should have acted on it. In the latter two cases we just adjust the threshold or decide that it is really doing nothing for us and we turn it off. It’s a process of continuous improvements and ultimately, we wind up with meaningful alerts.

The post DevSecOps and Automation for Payments Processors appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Here is another example of how the commercial card industry is further attempting to gain additional share of payables volumes. This release in Finextra announces a deal between Stripe and Visa that, in effect, allows buyers using Visa’s automation platform to initiate invoice payments via a virtual card account, including in cases where suppliers are not set up to accept credit cards. This is especially key in times of a policy-driven recessionary economy where cash management has become priority number one, two, and three with many buyers and suppliers.

‘Visa has struck a deal with Stripe to enable buyers on Visa Payables Automation to pay suppliers who are unable to accept digital payments through the use of a virtual Visa card….Visa’s B2B Payables Automation platform allows buyers to enrol(sic), manage and pay suppliers digitally with a Visa commercial card. By plugging in to Stripe Connect, the new feature brings on board suppliers who are not connected to the traditional banking infrastructure.’

We have not received a briefing but assume the Stripe setup is as an acquirer and merchant of record that settles with the issuer while completing a separate local payment with the downstream supplier. This is not unique, with the model having been adopted by other vendors specializing in commercial credit cards.

So a supplier connects with Stripe and this removes the supplier enablement friction that often prevents the card option, opening up the long tail of spend for buyers.

‘The new service is now available in 30 markets around the world and can be activated by member banks that use Visa’s commercial card portfolio….Tarun Minglani, Asia Pacific head of commercial cards, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi, says: “Citi is committed to offering our clients innovative B2B payment solutions, enabling them to operate more efficiently in an increasingly digitised business environment. The Visa Payables Automation platform optimises the payments process while reducing points of friction that are traditionally associated with B2B payments.”  ‘

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Visa Links up with Stripe for B2B Payments appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This release, posted in Cision PR Newswire, announces a seed round funding for AeroPay, a payments platform targeted at small businesses and specialty segments. AeroPay is a 2017 startup based in Chicago. 

One would guess that the pandemic has raised the company’s profile a bit since it highlights e-payments, fast settlement, and non-card payments. These would all appeal to smaller businesses with cash flow, cash management, and margin issues.

‘The round was led by Continental Investors, also located in Chicago, a direct private investment firm leveraging more than 70 years of investing expertise in financial services and commerce. Continental’s portfolio includes e-commerce marketplace Drizly, publicly-traded financial technology company Sezzle, online payments provider WePay, acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2017, and mobile payments platform LevelUp, acquired by GrubHub in 2018. Other investors in the round include previous angel investors and new strategic investors from the Chicago tech community and financial services industry….”We built our platform to simplify the payments process for owners and operators in all industries and verticals,” said Daniel Muller, CEO & Founder of AeroPay. “We’re extremely excited about the group of investors we’ve brought on, specifically the team at Continental Investors, as their expertise aligns perfectly with the type of company we’ve set out to create.” ‘

While we have not received a briefing, a quick look at the website reveals QR Code acceptance and bank account balance checking to reduce NSF situations. That would indicate some sort of open banking, API-based process. The settlement timing (same or next day) also suggests Same Day ACH and possibly Zelle are preferred payment rails.

The company also appeals to the legal cannabis industry due to that sector’s apparent reliance upon cash payments. But the main target is small business B2B and retail and e-commerce payments.This would suggest that ‘Request for Pay’ through RTP might be in the future as well.

‘ ‘”We have a guiding conviction that payments remains an underinvested and under-innovated category in C2B and B2B commerce,” said Paul M. Purcell, (Partner) of Continental Investors. “For nearly 15 years, Continental has successfully invested and partnered with entrepreneurs pushing innovation in and around financial services and commerce.  We are thrilled to welcome Dan Muller and his team at AeroPay to our portfolio.” ‘

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Alternative Payments Platform Startup AeroPay Raises Seed Round Funding appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

In this release, we are informed of an additional $50 million in funding for MineralTree, the Cambridge, MA-based payments automation fintech. The company apparently used some of this funding to acquire a couple of other fintech startups (although we don’t know if it directly tied to the funding), one in a competing role and another in an adjacent space.

The first is Inspyrus, a SaaS provider of payables automation, while the other is Regal Software (out of the Atlanta area), which specializes in disbursements and ERP integration. We expect that the acquisitions, in addition to gaining some scale with the additional clients, provide access to some valuable patented capabilities as well.

‘The investment round and acquisitions come at a time when MineralTree is seeing increasing demand for its solutions as businesses of all sizes are becoming focused on addressing both pandemic-related work-from-home mandates and rising costs associated with manually processing invoices and B2B payments. $27 Trillion in B2B payments are made in North America every year and businesses spend an estimated $510B on direct and indirect manual AP costs making those payments. By automating AP, businesses can save as much as 80% of these costs and allow their AP process to function seamlessly while working fully remote.’

So this is just another in the ongoing expansion of digital payments. As we know, the pandemic has increased corporate interest in modernizing financial processes, especially across North America, where paper remains an obstruction to safer and more efficient financial operations. Some of the funding had dried up so this deal might be a further indication that consolidation will be happening to gain profitability through scale. The mid-market continues to be a valuable target since larger firms have moved further down the road towards digitization.

‘  “Mid-market companies of all sizes continue to show strong interest in automating their AP and payments processes, but as a market segment have been overlooked and underserved,” said MineralTree Chief Executive Officer, Micah Remley. “Our vision to revolutionize B2B commerce starts with making the invoice to payment processes simple, speedy, and secure for mid-market customers and our Bank partners. This new funding, combined with expanded product capabilities and scale that come as a result of acquiring Inspyrus and Regal Software, uniquely positions MineralTree to do just that.”  ‘

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post MineralTree Secures More Funding & Acquires Inspyrus & Regal Software appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

It is getting a bit repetitive with all the various postings about the pandemic’s effect on accelerated digital financial processes—most directly being AP and AR operations—but this brief article considers an interesting dynamic that adds to the volatile circumstances.

While most of the recent discussion (if you want to call it that) surrounding the U.S. Postal Service has been political conspiracy theory in nature, there is no doubt that the independent agency is in dire financial straits. The business model is outdated, and personnel costs have for many years exceeded the revenue generating capacity of the agency during a societal paradigm shift away from paper. 

The agency had about 600,000 employees in 2019 and generated roughly $18 billion in revenue. FedEx had 400,000 employees in 2019 and about $70 billion in revenue. You get the picture.

‘The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has issued a stark warning to its staff and customers as it continues to look for ways to cut costs and ultimately claw its way out of the financial crisis. Candidly admitting that significant delivery delays should be expected in the future — and some mail even left behind in mailrooms and processing and distribution centers — implies this warning will be felt by almost every person and every business across the country. And, as annual B2B payments account for $25 trillion in the United States, roughly 42% of which are still made by paper check, this includes the businesses that still rely on its services for cash flow in the form of paper checks sent by mail.’

We can go back to several of Mercator Advisory Group’s member research pieces to illustrate the power of effective working capital management. Two of the keys are DPO and DSO, which directly tie into scalable and efficient cash cycle systems and processes. Late payments can kill a business, especially smaller ones who are the most vulnerable to unpredictable and extended cash flows. 

One only has to look at the number of already closed and looming closures of small businesses in the U.S. to see this. So the service cutbacks add to the challenges for companies reliant upon manual financial operations.

‘With studies showing that one-third of businesses say the biggest impact on cash flow is getting paid by clients on time, news of USPS’ cutbacks present a far greater challenge to B2B. Organizations that already struggling to get paid during these uncertain times could experience significant hits to their days sales outstanding (DSO) if they continue to rely so heavily on the USPS. In ordinary times, lagging DSO may be less of an imminent threat. But, in today’s landscape, predictable and timely cash flow is more imperative than ever. Businesses face another risk in seeing mail get left behind in workrooms or stuck in processing and distribution centers as USPS continues to cut costs. But, what’s also compounding these challenges is the additional costs businesses incur because of delayed mail. Since March, businesses accepting paper checks have seen a 34% increase in float cost because of USPS mail delays, according to Billtrust data.’

The article goes on the discuss various things around digital payments and customer experience (CX) that can and should be priorities for SMEs, especially going forward.

‘In light of this, how businesses embrace technology and prioritize the customer experience is more important than ever before. From offering customers more ways to pay invoices electronically and turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning to make less risky credit decisions, each step of the order-to-cash journey is relying on technology with an increased sense of urgency …So, while postal workers continue to navigate their own uncertain futures through snow, rain or sleet, now is the time to prepare for a future that relies less on analog transactions and more on digital transformation that will far outlast a global pandemic.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post U.S. Postal Service’s Financial Problems Underscore the Importance of Digital Payments for B2Bs appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This piece is posted in PaymentsSource and written by the CEO of Paya, a payments integration firm that just went public and is now listed on NASDAQ. As readers will know, the pandemic and lockdown policies have had a terrible effect on the U.S. (and world) economy, with large production gaps and a number of permanent casualties among small businesses and specific verticals. 

Mercator Advisory Group has been providing our thoughts through blogs and other channels. Companies have had to quickly shift processes and adapt to new systems to properly handle financial operations, most specifically in AP and AR. The author of the PaymentsSource piece points out some of the ways this has been happening, not only with industrials but also municipalities and NPOs:

‘Through the pandemic, a number of industries experienced firsthand the value of integrated payments. For instance, when the pandemic first hit, cities and municipalities scrambled to move all of their typical operations – from managing utilities payments to the processing of local licenses – to a remote format….They also found themselves facing potential cash flow issues and in need of new communications channels to keep citizens updated on civic issues and the local pandemic response. Municipalities were able to solve these issues by partnering with integrated payments providers to manage live customer service call centers, secure contactless kiosks, and quickly collect and reconcile utility payments all in one place….Nonprofits faced similar issues with donation continuity, compounded by an overwhelming increase in demand for food pantry services and financial assistance during this time. In response to these new constraints, we have seen nonprofits and faith-based organizations rapidly adopt and increase their usage of integrated payments.’

Starting in March, we have had a number of conversations across various parts of the financial services and fintech industry and heard similar stories. In effect, the previous cash cycle digitization trend, which had been gaining momentum during the past several years, has essentially accelerated out of necessity. The previous inertia has been replaced by a sense of survival mode among the most vulnerable entities, and a recognition of competitive disadvantages among others. So the tide has turned and the days of checks and analog processes are numbered.

‘The landscape for integrated payments has shifted dramatically as a result of COVID-19. While before the pandemic, adoption of these platforms was a valuable investment for the future. In the six months since its onset, integrated payments have proven absolutely essential to organizations’ ability to seamlessly conduct day-to-day operations, and to maintain their growth trajectory long after the pandemic subsides.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post With the Pandemic Raging, Integrated Payments Are More Important Than Ever appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This announcement is posted in Cision and discusses a new program launched by AvidXchange, the Charlotte-based payments automation company that targets primarily middle market companies that need digital financial processes. The new initiative is called Boost your Business Program and appears to be an accelerated onboarding process for the invoice-to-pay cycle. 

The pandemic has been motivating many corporates to review their analog processes and systems for a more modern approach given the work at home scenarios and inefficiencies of manual work. So the heretofore tepid adoption of digital financial operations among smaller firms has been given a kick in the pants due to cash flow issues for the most part.

“Three out of four businesses have adopted new technologies during the pandemic because they know investing wisely in core operations is key to creating new growth in 2021,” said Michael Praeger, CEO and Co-Founder of AvidXchange. “We conceptualized this new program specifically for companies that are still burdened by antiquated back office processes. By helping them shift to e-invoicing and e-payments, we’re pivoting their entire finance team to focus on what really matters right now – bolstering the balance sheet for the year ahead.” 

We started hearing about this sea change as early as April, but the pace of change has been even more accelerated than we would have thought. In effect, smaller firms have fewer barriers to adoption and now a higher motivation to modernize the cash cycle given the working capital implications. Firms like AvidXchange are in position to capitalize on this wave utilizing APIs for faster implementation.

‘After automating with AvidXchange, customers continue to receive support from dedicated services teams, including a 400-person supplier services team that alleviates the burden of fielding payment inquiries and maintaining supplier payment preferences so AP managers can focus on more value-add tasks. AvidXchange offers multiple e-payment options through the AvidPay Network of more than 680,000 suppliers, helping customers minimize the need to send paper checks by paying via virtual card or AvidPay Direct (APD), AvidXchange’s enhanced ACH option.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post AvidXchange Launches AP and Payments Automation Program to Help Middle Market Companies appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

The out-the-door morning sprint for coffee and a donut will become even faster. That’s due to a pilot in the works at a California location for Dunkin’ in partnership with Mastercard’s Shop Anywhere solution.

C-stores have been the sweet spot for autonomous checkout that was pioneered in 2018 when Amazon Go opened its first store to the public in Seattle. Now other merchants and retail verticals are getting in on the act.

Mercator Advisory Group has been covering this topic for a few years, including an April 2020 report (Autonomous Checkout: Brick-and-Mortar Retail Goes Full Digital) about the market opportunities for both merchants and consumers alike. Re-aligned fast food and coffee shops can provide another opportunity for customers looking to avoid checkout lines, as well as to stay socially distanced with a contactless payment.

Last week, tech developer Grabango launched autonomous checkout with Pittsburgh-based grocery and C-store operator Giant Eagle. Watch for more in-store, self-checkout options as merchants take to the technology while stop-and-go consumers enjoy the time savings benefits.

The following excerpt from a Fox Business article reports more on the topic:

Americans running on Dunkin‘ can soon get their coffee and breakfast even faster. The Massachusetts-based coffee and doughnut chain is testing out an Amazon Go-style shop in California in October that lets customers walk in, grab coffee and donuts themselves without ordering or waiting in line to pay, according to a press release. 

Dunkin’ is the latest in a number of fast-food chains, grocers and tech companies implementing contactless retail and drive-in only business models in the age of the coronavirus pandemic.

Customers will reportedly be able to shop at the contactless checkout location by downloading the Dunkin’ app and using a QR code displayed on phones to enter the test store location and access self-service areas for doughnuts and coffee.

Shoppers will get a notification with their digital receipt that can be viewed on the Dunkin’ app once they exit the store, similar to Amazon Go, where shoppers can browse for groceries and be charged on their phone via Amazon Prime. The automated self-service platform is called Shop Anywhere by Mastercard. Foodservice management company Delaware North and Circle K are also testing out the system.

Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Dunkin’ and Mastercard Brew Up Autonomous Checkout appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This posting is in SDC Executive and discusses one of the many areas that we have been pointing out as an opportunity for banks to capitalize and corporates to improve financial operations.  The author is a CEO for a payments company specializing in card-based payments.  The overall point is that incorporating cards into the procure-to-pay cycle can be a key to automating supply chain operations.  Firms that live and die on tight margins and just-in-time inventory processes can inject electronic payments at the front end, something that card rails easily enhance, especially commercial credit cards with the additional working capital feature.

‘The supply chain that supports just-in-time (JiT) manufacturing is beginning to reap the benefits of the digital payments revolution. By replacing accounts payable processes with automated digital alternatives, JiT manufacturers are realising that by overhauling how they transact they can save both time and money. Plugging into a modernised payments system which offers new, automated ways both to pay and accept payments, JiT transactions can be performed quickly, automatically and without human interference….So-called “push payments,” where remittances are sent to the supplier at the point of order using a commercial card as the funding mechanism, means the payments process can be managed hands-free. By marrying this concept with the Internet of Things (IoT) stock management systems that monitor stock levels and provide alerts and reorder triggers, the whole stock reordering and payment process can flow automatically.’

Members of the CEP service at Mercator will know that cards represent a tiny fraction of the B2B commercial payment flows, mostly because suppliers resist accepting cards, especially for larger value payments.  However, this model is being re-evaluated during the aftershocks of pandemic-driven policies creating a recessionary world economic impact. Cards have become more popular given the payment and settlement speed, safety, and straight-through capabilities of virtual card accounts. This is especially true for the long tail of suppliers, who are most sensitive to cash flow variances. The author goes on to point out the specific benefits and examples of supply chain automation and augmentation of just-in-time processes.

‘The push payments revolution has the potential to set a new standard in manufacturing agility and B2B commercial card payments. It provides new levels of control, visibility and efficiency that haven’t historically been available either to buyers or suppliers. The days of manual transactions and paper-based invoicing systems are numbered and, while JiT manufacturing is showing the way, it won’t be long before all supply chain finance departments can stand back and let the machines take the strain.’ 

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Incorporating Cards into the Procure-To-Pay Cycle Can be Key to Automating Supply Chain Operations appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This particular article is an opinion piece posted in Bloomberg and discusses the use and relative risk of certain types of supply chain finance (SCF). As one may surmise from the results of an artificial economic slowdown, the need for cash is an existential concern for many suppliers, especially as you move towards the long tail of spend. 

The author suggests that there is a recent demand for certain types, but SCF has been gaining in popularity now for a long time. There is also a definitional nuance since just about all techniques can be called a variation of SCF, but often segmented into different types.

‘As is so often the case, those creative types in the finance industry have come up with a smorgasbord of ways to help firms increase their cash holdings. The oldest and most common is called “factoring.” Essentially, if you’re a cash-strapped company whose customers are dragging their feet on paying their bills, no problem: A bank will give you an advance on those invoices, for a fee. Another increasingly fashionable technique is a more complicated service known as “reverse factoring” or “supply-chain finance.” This allows a company’s suppliers to get paid what they’re owed quickly. The company then refunds the finance provider at a later date.’

Mercator Advisory Group covers the space frequently, most recently in a member Report on trade finance. Today’s most commonly used SCF tool is reverse factoring, which relies upon the buyers’ credit worthiness to finance early supplier payments at a discount. 

The author goes on to explain the pitfalls of these type of financing arrangements, which are based on a free flowing and somewhat predictable ongoing sales pattern. So what happens when sales drop off and existing assets can’t be paid by buyers and sellers have few invoices to sell? The author provides a few example of these situations so the article is a good read for those looking to get more familiar with the topic.

‘Taken together, these four cases show the pitfalls of this technique. If invoice-financing can cease just when it is needed most, that’s all the more reason for investors to treat it as quasi-debt. And it’s imperative that disclosures, particularly around reverse factoring, are improved. Ultimately investors need to understand exactly how a company is generating cash.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Certain Types of Supply Chain Financing Come with Risks appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This release discusses a new service from Barclaycard that provides some additional capabilities around supply chain data. The service is called Barclaycard Payment Intelligence (BPI).  As readers will know, supply chain management, working capital, cash cycle automation and other forms of digitalization have gained a high degree of corporate re-focus due to the pandemic. 

In the case of AI, the prerequisite is capturing useful data, so without modernizing financial operations, using AI is a limited success proposition (or a non-starter).  The cash cycle runs from procurement to reconciliation. In this case, Barclaycard is providing improved visibility and analytics into supply chains. Here’s more from the press release:

‘Barclaycard has launched Barclaycard Payment Intelligence (BPI), a new service which uses in-depth data analytics to provide procurement departments with the most comprehensive picture of their supply chain – driving cost efficiencies as result….The service combines hundreds of accounts payable data points with internal and third-party data. This helps customers develop the right payment solutions for their various suppliers in a fraction of the time it would take to do manually….The technology helps businesses catalogue their suppliers based on the number and value of transactions as well as their size, location, industry and whether early payment is likely to generate savings, to create a comprehensive overview of the entire supplier framework. For companies with thousands of suppliers – big and small – on their books, the new product can offer a significant time and cost saving for key decision makers.’

As Mercator Advisory Group has been saying for quite some time now, the procure-to-pay space has been undergoing a gradual convergence during the past several years, as former point solutions across the cycle are becoming more integrated through acquisitions, partnerships, and APIs. So as solidifying supply chains and creating more flexible and effective payment options is under critical review, the service should meet with some eager companies’ needs. 

We have not yet received a briefing, but by its description, it would seem that Barclaycard uses machine learning and combines both client transactional data with 3^rd party information to create best choice scenarios. In effect, it is least cost routing on steroids, with situational analytics to create intelligent choices.

‘Anna Porra, Commercial Strategy Director for Barclaycard, said: “Clunky and complex supplier payments processes mean that businesses of all sizes are losing out on time and money….“Barclaycard has looked to make use payments data to identify opportunities for improvements across the procure to pay process and drive actionable insights for both buyers and suppliers. Barclaycard Payment Intelligence is a new suite of tools that harness state-of-the-art data analytics and financial modelling to devise tailored, actionable solutions for our customers.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Barclaycard Releases Supply Chain Management Solution appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

One of the ongoing manifestations of the pandemic is the digitalization recognition factor, which has kicked in big time during the past few months. Companies that were experiencing inertia around modernizing analog systems and processes in the cash cycle have a new motivational force. Just like with online supermarkets and e-commerce, if you happen to be in that technology lane where demand has shifted due to exogenous reasons, there are clear benefits outside the lines of the broader recessionary effects that our self-imposed business shutdowns have wrought.

In this posting at Cision PR Newswire, we have an example of this digital shift in financial operations which has been underway for several years but is now accelerating given the pandemic’s kick in the pants around benefits available from modernizing systems and processes. Billtrust is a payments automation provider that specializes in making suppliers’ lives easier. 

The company partnered with Visa awhile back on the Business Payments Network (BPN), improving the acceptance of virtual cards by making it a straight-through experience. With a new release of BPN, Billtrtust is expanding payment tools and also seeing the pandemic digital effect.

‘…its Business Payments Network (BPN) has seen a 118% increase in payments volume in the first half of 2020 compared to H1 2019, surpassing expectations and indicating strong supplier adoption bolstered by significant new financial institution and fintech partnerships. Carrying strong momentum into the second half of 2020, Billtrust also announces that BPN 3.0 now offers support for ACH and wire, giving network participants the flexibility to automatically transact through the modalities they prefer….Visa Clients and Partners Fuel BPN Adoption…Since the beginning of 2020, the number of accounts payable providers and issuers processing payments through BPN has doubled, expanding its reach to suppliers wishing to receive touchless electronic payments while programmatically enforcing their payment policies. Visa clients including Heartland Financial USA, Inc., M&T Bank and Regions Bank have begun participating in BPN in the first half of 2020….In addition, Commerce Bank, which consistently ranks among the top commercial card issuers, is announcing expanded participation in BPN. Having previously enabled commercial card customers to achieve greater levels of electronic spend as payers into the network, Commerce Bank now enables its merchants to accept automated payments as suppliers in BPN. This marks the first time a financial institution will enable both its issuing and acquiring customers the ability to participate in BPN and benefit from the digital transactions offered through the network.’

The piece goes on to discuss the BPN and its attendant benefits, but the addition of ACH and wire expands the effectiveness of the network since most value in B2B e-payments is through these two payment types; combining remittance data with the payment allows for cleaner reconciliation. We expect that real-time payments would be next in line as the B2B use cases expand, especially ‘Request For Pay’, something suppliers should be excited about.

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Billtrust Announces Improvements to Its Business Payment Network appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

COVID-19 has disrupted lives and markets around the world over the past several months. Surviving the challenges ahead as we enter a new era will not be easy for many business owners—but it can be done.

New Research shows that over 60% of companies have business continuity plans in place, while 85% said that automation technology will be helpful for their business continuity needs. It has become even more clear that businesses of all sizes must use technology to automate their day-to-day operations. And what’s more critical is streamlining financial operations. This includes driving more efficient ways of facilitating cross-border payments—increasing overall business efficiency, consistency, and risk management compared to manual payment processes.

So why are APIs and open banking beneficial in times of COVID-19?

Currently, 2.4 billion consumers use digital banking services, according to a recent study published by Juniper research. This number is expected to reach 3.6 billion by 2024, which would be a significant 54% increase from the current market scenario. The need for automation, especially while making cross-border and high volume payments, has increased considerably for businesses who are now struggling to offer a host of services to their customers. Working remotely has been a growing trend for gig economy and tech-driven companies for many years now. Due to the ongoing pandemic, many businesses have been hit with no other option but to manage finances and transactions online and remotely.

Here’s where APIs and open banking come into play. Transparent foreign exchange rates, risk management tools, and easy and secure transactions offered by this technology add certainty to planning, reporting, and overall analysis for businesses. APIs and open banking also help businesses offer a value proposition to their clients that is unique and competitive in today’s business landscape. One must remember that there is more to offer to clients than just processing transactions. Identifying the strength of your business value proposition compared to your competition should be top of mind–now more than ever.

How is automation of financial operations going to help businesses?

There is no doubt that technology adds efficiency and effectiveness to businesses. Automating manual financial processes can add operational efficiency and help boost your team’s productivity—and as a result, your revenues. Here are top 3 reasons why businesses must streamline their financial operations, especially during this challenging time:

1. Customized reporting and automated reconciliation can simplify your bookkeeping, freeing you and your team for more high-value client work.
2. Global payments solution partners can offer encryption and security techniques to ensure all internal and online systems are impenetrable, thereby reducing risk of sensitive information being leaked.
3. Offering overseas customers a facility for paying in their local currency can open opportunities for your business and allow entry to new markets.

Businesses today, especially in industries such as travel, real-estate, education, insurance, and others , both domestic and international, are aiming to become a “one-stop-shop” partner for their customers. Therefore, it is vital for businesses to choose a solution that fits seamlessly into their existing business model and adds merit to the existing value proposition. A potential client or customer may be looking for help in one specific area, but with a diverse toolkit, the overall value proposition of a particular business becomes much larger than what the partner initially imagined, creating a better end result than a simple one-sided solution.

What is the ‘new normal’ for businesses streamlining their financial operations?

Businesses are already seeking solutions that can help them maximize their wealth creation opportunities. As the veil starts to lift, the new ‘normal’ for businesses would be to analyze any existing cost disadvantage which impacts their bottom line and can lead to potential security risks. More and more business owners will now prioritize the ‘Financial Health’ of the organization and seek to capture pockets of profitable growth. Digital transformation–especially in financial operations–will be the core as businesses gear up to re-invest in recovery.

Challenging times have often proven to be the greatest growth opportunity and time for innovation. In a globalized economy, where borders dissolve and even a micro-business can build an international footprint, a global payments offering is the magical key. With competition from digital-first challengers, businesses must enhance their product offerings to flourish in today’s growing marketplace. Automating financial operations with advanced technology solution can help to not just differentiate your business, but also capture market share in today’s economy.

The post APIs and Open Banking—Unlocking Opportunities for the New Economy appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you? Most online consumer shoppers will not get home delivery via Amazon’s new Scout robot just yet. But initial testing seems to be going well enough to expand to two test market cities, Atlanta and Franklin, TN.

Amazon’s delivery network has long aimed to provide a wide variety of distribution channels and collection points, including lockers in its Whole Foods grocery stores. Now its robot-on-wheels will be another way to get goods to Amazon shoppers, especially needed as e-commerce sales have surged and home delivery trucks seem to be everywhere in residential neighborhoods. One advantage for Amazon that the robot has over your favorite delivery service driver—it doesn’t stop for lunch or coffee breaks.

The following excerpt from a TechCrunch article reports more on the topic:

One thing’s for certain about Amazon’s Scout robot: It’s as much of a brand ambassador as it is an experiment in the future of last-mile delivery. After debuting early last year, the company has limited Scout to select markets — namely Irvine, California and Snohomish County, which neighbors King County, home of Amazon’s corporate HQ. Among other things, the robot is a kind of six-wheeled rolling billboard for Amazon’s services.

It also, according to Amazon, has been a useful tool as the company’s essential worker status has allowed it to maintain operations during the COVID-19 shutdown. Accompanied by human “Scout Ambassadors,” the cooler-sized robots have also continued to work throughout the pandemic.

And starting this week, Scout will expand operations to two cities in the American Southeast: Atlanta, Georgia and Franklin, Tennessee. The first you no doubt know. The second is significantly smaller, with a population of around 80,000, situated directly south of Nashville. In both cases, Scout’s deliveries will continue to be fairly modest, targeting “select customers” in those cities.

Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Amazon Rolls Out Expansion of Contactless Delivery Robot appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Amazon is extending Alexa’s capabilities to enable app activation for iOS and Android devices, so now developers have another voice activation platform to worry about. Existing voice services are almost equal in understanding, so now the battle will shift to expanding the context of what can be understood based on capturing and evaluating the widest possible range of consumer activities. So as it stands today, we either trust that these services operate in our best interests or we refuse to activate them.

Here’s more from an article from The Verge:

“In the near future, you’ll be able to launch and navigate Android and iOS apps using Alexa voice commands. Today, Amazon released a bunch of new developer tools. The most interesting might be Alexa for Apps, which allows developers to add Alexa functions to their Android and iOS apps.

Amazon has tested the tool with companies like TikTok, Uber, Yellow Pages and Sonic. So already, you can ask Alexa to start your TikTok recording or open the Sonic app so you can check the menu. If you book an Uber ride through Alexa, the voice assistant will ask if you want to see the driver’s location on a map in the app.

As more developers use the tool, you’ll be able to ask Alexa to open apps, run quick searches, view more info and access key functions. This will work through the Alexa app, Alexa built-in phones or mobile accessories like Echo Buds.”

Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Alexa Voice App Activation Adds Convenience, but at What Cost? appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

So as readers know by now, the pandemic policy moves have changed the way many companies do business, and how their employees interact between both themselves and clients. Some of this is temporary (how temporary remains in question since the lockdown policies have been partially reinstituted) but some of the changes will be permanent given individual and business recognition that things can be done differently. 

This posting in The Hour discusses why this is a good time for businesses to launch a true digital transformation.

‘The current health crisis has changed the business community with guidelines and mandates on remote work and social distancing. Even if you’re fortunate enough to continue operating, this radical change may mean it’s time to take a deep dive into a digital transformation, rather than just baby steps. Here’s why you need to change now, and how to do so on a lean budget.’

The author goes on to make some good points as to what’s been happening and why it should change. An example of this is the level of processing heft required to handle the increased loan requests and other demands being placed on healthcare systems, and legacy systems get totally strained, especially with people working in remote locations.

Another example is the tendency for smaller businesses to use manual accounting systems, which end up with check processing and the ensuing issues where normal paradigms are interrupted (i.e.; mailing and cashing a check). Another example of the in-store payments capability (proximity payments), where preferences are quickly shifting to ‘no-touch’, something expected to become a permanent trend. The author goes on to point out many technology options are now available at lower prices, not to mention the cultural shift among employees to use modern tech in a remote working environment. The article is worth a quick read.

‘Cost may have been a factor in your earlier decision to delay a digital transformation. However, many companies see the current health crisis as an opportunity to help out potential customers and simultaneously attract a wider audience for their digital solutions. Many companies are offering their digital tools, apps and platforms for free or at a vastly reduced price.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Now Is a Good Time to Embark on a Digital Transformation appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

It’s always interesting to watch the faces of millennials when I explain the old 20^th century bill pay routine (which frankly remains unchanged for some of the older boomers), whereby one’s bills arrive via snail mail and once per month the designated spouse would handle the chore. That involved getting out the checkbook and going through the bills one by one, writing a check, placing the vouchers and check in the envelope, putting a stamp on the envelope, and then, at some point, putting the stuff in the mailbox. Those really meticulous bill payers would also log the payments into the paper ledger in order to balance the account. 

This was pre-Check 21, so all canceled paper checks would also be returned with the monthly checking account statement. These would be stored in a shoe box for seven years, just in case the IRS wanted you to come in for a cup of coffee and talk things over a few years after filing a tax return. 

Then online banking came by with the bill pay functionality, which alleviated the envelope stuffing and stamp licking, but even though one would click on ‘pay’ through the interface, most of the payments continued to be executed by the bank via checks on the back end. Those that were last minute mortgage payers might soon find out that the bank did not actually get the electronic payment the next day, since it was sent out by check and the actual receipt and posting happened a week later.

So this posting in PaymentsSource, written by an AP automation exec, provides an interesting corollary since even though there are more e-payments solutions than ever before, there remains a potpourri of manual and hybrid processes in accounts payable departments across U.S. industry. 

‘Paying all your suppliers electronically makes sense—in theory. At a high level, doing so is a simple enough task—you enable your AP team to make all their payments through electronic means. Then you have yourself a cost-generating solution…But to your AP team—the people at ground level—there’s much more behind the process than sending payments. They also must track sent payments, follow up on uncashed checks, handle fraudulent cases, and work with suppliers who are missing payments for one reason or another.’

The author gives an on-the-ground look at AP personnel pain points that keep full automation at bay. Things like supplier enablement become headaches for the folks who are rather busy paying the invoices and tracking for mistakes etc. Tracking payments and handling errors tend to dominate daily workloads, leaving little time for filling out ACH forms or getting suppliers to accept card. 

The point of the posting is that the cavalry has arrived—something Mercator Advisory Group has been advising folks for years—and AP departments can offload the awful stuff and find new ways to contribute to a company’s bottom line. Making things more electronic does not mean that checks immediately go away, since just like in the consumer hybrid, checks will still go out, but someone else can manage them. Like we always say, time to automate.

‘AP teams have been laboring under manual work and partially automated processes for so long; it’s hard to imagine someone taking all that work off their plate. And sometimes, it’s hard to imagine what AP jobs will look like when the payment process becomes automated. We don’t often see companies cut staff. Instead, we have found that companies reduce their staff growth rate, and that existing staff moves onto higher-value work.’

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Even as AP Automation Ramps Up, Manual and Hybrid Processes Remain appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Autonomous store checkout developers were already working with merchants to install their systems. Now the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced consumers to try contactless ways to shop and pay, which is exactly the strong value prop that autonomous checkout offers. Developer AiFi announced a major growth plan to over 300 stores by the end of 2021. Amazon pioneered the walk-in, walk-out store shopping model with Amazon Go C-stores, and has recently opened a Go Grocery version. Meanwhile other developers including Grabango, Standard Cognition, and Zippin have stores in play. Expect to see more of these autonomous checkout stores, including in venues such as airports and malls. Contactless shop and pay is here to stay.

The following Vending Market Watch article reports more on the topic:

 AiFi, the technology company creating the world’s most advanced store automation system, is on track to deploy 330 new and retrofitted autonomous stores by the end of 2021. Today, AiFi’s OASIS, the Orchestrated Autonomous Store Infrastructure and Services, is already powering 10 futuristic stores in a variety of sizes in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, and San Antonio in the U.S., in Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, Paris, and Poznan in Europe and in the city of Shanghai in Asia.

In addition to the publicly known partnerships with Albert Heijn, Carrefour, Żabka, and Loop Neighborhood, AiFi is also actively deploying autonomous stores with several prominent companies listed among the top 10 grocery retailers–both nationally and internationally. The 330 AiFi OASIS-based autonomous stores range from 800-square-foot convenience stores and travel shops to 10,000-square-foot grocery stores. They are located primarily in the U.S. and Europe, with additional stores coming to Australia, Asia, and South America.

“We are going to see explosive growth in autonomous stores. With the onset of COVID-19, the need is even more urgent for a contactless and autonomous retail store where you can shop and feel safe in a physical environment,” said Steve Gu, CEO and Co-founder, AiFi. “The 10 deployed stores are operational or in advanced stages of testing. These stores have proven to be stable, accurate, and popular among shoppers who love the lightning speed and fluid retail experience.”

Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Autonomous Store Checkout Systems On Fast Track appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This posting in CPA Practice Advisor covers some points about which Mercator Advisory Group has been advising our members for some time; that is, there are more and better cash cycle solutions than ever before, so what are you waiting for?  The onset of the pandemic has been a wake-up call for many companies who suffer from inertia around modernizing financial operations. 

The posting author is the CEO of a payments automation company, Nvoicepay, which was acquired by Fleetcor in 2019. We have also been expecting an acceleration of digital payments (in effect, a massive shift from paper checks, etc), which we started to see happen more substantially last year. Based on many discussions since March, supplier interest in getting paid faster has become a critical need, for obvious reasons, so this digital shift to accept e-payments (virtual cards, for example) is happening.

‘Business payments are far more complex, and we’re still not at mass adoption, but the market is picking up steam. There are now several strong suppliers in the market, and investment continues to flow into B2B payments tech. As a result, the move off of check payments is accelerating. According to the 2019 AFP JP Morgan Electronic Payments Survey Report, organizations on average make 42 percent of their supplier payments by check, down from 50 percent in the prior year. This is the biggest drop we’ve seen in several years.’

The author goes on to make some important points about automating financial processes, which includes efficiencies associated with reducing the amount of errors, a huge drain on resources in many payables departments. A recent increase in ACH fraud activity (as evidenced in the recent AFP fraud survey) calls for better controls, which can be packaged into vendor solutions.

There is also the work-at-home issue, which reinforces automation benefits. We might also add the overall benefit from digitalization in terms of data, which allows for greater use of machine learning to further improve transaction processing. 

‘Now we’re heading into a severe global economic downturn. Businesses are pivoting to reducing costs, and checks cost a lot—around ten times more than electronic payments. So, in the near term, reducing costs is going to become a driver that accelerates payment automation adoption…I think this driver will remain over the long term as well, and could very well change our payment behaviors forever. Short term imperatives will drive greater adoption, but as more organizations get a taste of automated payments, it will change the way they think about payments. They will realize there is a far better way to pay than writing checks, and I can’t see anyone who’s adopted payment automation going back to the old way.’

The article makes additional points and recommendations so readers should take a few minutes and have a look.

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Now Is Time to Consider Powerful Payment Solutions appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

This referenced posting is from Bloomberg and provides an overview of what is expected to be the emerging use of ‘new’ technologies in payroll processing, which includes robotic process automation (RPA), AI and blockchain (BCT).  We tend to use AI as an umbrella term but many categorize RPA separately since it is a rules-based software for automating repetitive tasks whereas AI, in a broader sense, mimics human intelligence using large data sets that can be continuously refreshed. The piece simply provides reinforcement that digital is the wave of the present.

‘The growth of new technologies, such as robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain, are expected to redefine and innovate payroll processes by reducing the need for routine tasks, said Martin Armstrong, vice president of payroll shared services at Charter Communications Inc…“We need to change our mindset from a payroll practitioner’s standpoint,” Armstrong said. New technologies are expected to become common, so payroll teams should embrace automation “because technology is going to propel us” to the future, he said at the annual American Payroll Association Congress, which was held online because of the coronavirus crisis.’

Those not familiar with payroll processing may tend to think it is limited to getting employees paid, either directly into an account, by card, check or even cash.  But there are a number of steps in the process, including the onboarding tasks (e.g.; W4) as well as ongoing personal liabilities (e.g.; garnishment), not to mention status changes (e.g.; termination).  Although the piece doesn’t mention it, we might also mention that on-demand wage access services are also on the rise. So there can be a whole host of more complex interactions that currently require manual intervention whereby intelligent automation can help reduce the effort.

‘Another complex event is the death of an employee, which requires a different process and special forms, depending on the circumstances, Armstrong said. RPAs can recognize state and federal requirements to ensure the distribution of funds and notifications to keep the employer in compliance, he said.’

We have often covered blockchain as one of the technologies that has utility in the corporate banking space, most specifically for trade and payments.  The author points out how BCT can also provide benefit to the payroll function. 

‘Through blockchain, data can be stored quickly and securely because the process is decentralized, Armstrong said. Payroll records, such as Forms W-2, Wage and Tax Statement, benefit from having accompanying information attached to the data chain and stored in multiple locations…Additionally, blockchain can help lower the costs of international payments by eliminating the problem of fluctuating exchange rates through almost-instant processing, Armstrong said.’

Overview provided by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group.

For the original article quoted in this coverage, please click here.

The post New Technologies to Redefine Payroll Profession appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Providers have many options when it comes to selecting an EHR Practice Management Software system. There are budget considerations, practice type, and patient population to consider. Practices must also consider IT requirements and how solutions and vendors are positioned to either help or hurt the practice. Customer satisfaction must remain a priority and also balance with business objectives. As practice managers consider how to enhance value-based care initiatives, they must also ensure that back- and front-office tasks can be completed with ease.

Choosing the right electronic health record (EHR) system that best meets these wide and varying needs can be complex. In a rapidly shifting healthcare landscape, nearly every practice must find ways to improve healthcare while also managing billing, patient records, HIPAA-compliance, and cash flow.

Unique Complexities of Medical Billing & Payments

Medical practices face a complicated and winding billing process, which can often lead to unnecessary rebilling or duplication. Without near-perfect back office reporting, practices find they spend a bulk of their time reconciling bills. On the flip side of the coin, patients are confused about bills, too. Endless chains of bills and explanations of benefits (EOBs) can create misunderstandings between patients and practices about what has been paid and what is still owed.

While 2020 has played a large role in rapidly transitioning healthcare to its place in the digital world, many of the back office processes are still living in a paper-driven reality. Manual processes, disparate data, and technological solutions that hurt more than they help have further complicated this transition. Medical practices are drowning in paperwork and duplicated digital data.

When EHRs are not integrated with payment processing technology, the disconnect has a ripple effect all throughout the practice. Staff must manually enter payment data into a merchant services portal. They must also maintain paper files on the payments and key the data once more into the EHR system. Depending on who is entering the information, staff may also require a manager to reconcile this data on a daily basis to make sure all duplicate data sources balance out. This type of manual process is ripe for human error.

Mismatches between patient payments and EHR records can be headache-inducing, creating additional time-intensive tasks to support billing and customer service. These mismatches lead to customer confusion as they continue to get rebilled for something they’ve already paid, but they also lead to money landing in a suspense account while the back office untangles the issue.

Customer confusion may trigger angry calls to the front office that must address customer issues over the phone. Add to that the fact that siloed payment capture processes do not automatically communicate with EHR information, and you have the perfect storm. Incomplete or incorrect EHR information means additional time must be spent reconciling billing and payments, and inaccuracies can cost practices additional time and money.  

Integrated Payments as a Differentiator

The fix to this slew of inefficiencies lies in integrated payments. For independent software vendors (ISVs) looking to enhance EHR practice management software and systems, integrated payments must be a key consideration. When EHR practice management systems are built to accept payments and handle the back office processes tied to them, staff can spend less time on paperwork and manual processes and more time on helping patients. Integrated payments can significantly cut down on rebilling, duplication, and customer confusion. This ultimately leads to better customer experience and high-value healthcare.

First and foremost, integrating payments into an EHR enables automation and enhances the billing process, reducing the amount of data entry required and freeing up staff to focus on more high-value tasks This, in turn,  elevates the customer experience.

On the customer experience front, streamlining payments means patients will no longer receive confusing double bills. More importantly, they will be empowered to make payments in the way that best suits them — whether in-person, online, by credit and debit (via swipe or chip), SMS, mobile pay, or over the phone. Providing patients with a broad array of convenient options spurs faster bill payment and leads to happier, more satisfied customers.

The post ISVs Can Help Medical Practices Improve the Healthcare Experience With Integrated Payments appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

With coronavirus, everyone is now aware of the contact transmission danger and businesses are challenged to operate processes that involve multiple people working in close proximity. So it’s no surprise that businesses are stepping up their focus on automation, which includes robots and Robotic Process Automation:

“ ’Pre-pandemic, people might have thought we were automating too much,’ said Richard Pak, a professor at Clemson University who researches the psychological factors around automation. ‘This event is going to push people to think what more should be automated.’

The grocery industry is leaning more on automation to free up employees to deal with the crush of demand during the pandemic.

Brain Corp, a San Diego company that makes software used in automated floor cleaners, said retailers were using the cleaners 13% more than they were just two months ago. The “autonomous floor care robots” are doing about 8,000 hours of daily work “that otherwise would have been done by an essential worker,” the company said.

At supermarkets like Giant Eagle, robots are freeing up employees who previously spent time taking inventory to focus on disinfecting and sanitizing surfaces and processing deliveries to keep shelves stocked.

Retailers insist the robots are augmenting the work of employees, not replacing them. But as the panic buying ebbs and sales decline in the recession that is expected to follow, companies that reassigned workers during the crisis may no longer have a need for them.

The role of a cashier is also changing. For many years, retailers have provided self-checkout kiosks. But those machines often require intervention by workers to help shoppers navigate the often fickle and frustrating technology.

The pandemic is prompting some stores to adopt even more aggressive “contactless” options. From farm stands to butchers, merchants are asking customers whenever possible to use mobile payment services like PayPal or Venmo. Banking regulators in Europe last week increased the amount of money that shoppers can pay through their mobile devices, while reducing some authentication requirements.

While fully automated stores, such as Amazon Go, might have seemed like a technological curiosity a few months ago, they are likely to become a more viable option for retailers.

“No one would probably have thought of a cashier’s job as being dangerous until now,” Pak said.

Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies labor markets, said that with companies hurting for cash, the pressure to replace humans with machines becomes even more intense.”

Overview provided by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group.

For the original article quoted in this coverage, please click here.

The post COVID-19 Jump Starts the Robot Invasion (Or at Least It Should) appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Let’s face it, uncertainty makes you want to run to your comfort zone, but it’s also an opportunity to embrace it and find creative ways to adapt.  With COVID-19 turning the world upside down for who knows how long and a recession looming right behind it, companies are under pressure to cut expenses and find new revenue. To tackle these challenges, there’s a resource you should consider: your payables department. Using an electronic payments solution, not only can you streamline processes and cut costs, it can reduce payments and add revenue to your bottom line. Here are three reasons why virtual payments can help your business adapt during uncertain times.

Ensure Business Continuity

Consider for a moment what your current accounts payable workflows involve. At best, it is a time- and labor-intensive process. At worst, it is a dilemma of bottlenecked and paper based processes. Now imagine those processes being carried out by an AP department working from home? A digital AP solution provides the flexibility to run efficient processes from anywhere. 

Generate New Revenue

Electronic payments, specifically virtual payments, generate revenue. It’s the competitive advantage no business likes to share. Companies smart enough to integrate a virtual payments solution into their ERP receive a rebate on the payments made.  As the old adage says, turn your cost center into a revenue center and there is no better time!

Plus, when an electronic payments partner has supplier enablement resources to maximize payment terms and optimize discounts for early payment, the benefits to your bottom line can be even greater. 

Enhance Security

Like everyone else, AP departments are shifting rapidly to a work-from-home scenario; sometimes without the necessary security or equipment. Checks still make up more than seven trillion dollars in B2B payments every year, indicating many companies are shifting to work-from-home with antiquated processes. Imagine employees risking their own well-being to access printers at the office or opting to take a printer and box of checks home to their makeshift office. Beyond the inherent mitigation of fraud risk achieved with electronic payables, there is the added benefit of everything being handled securely online, with no paper and no virus exposure.

Bottom Line

Businesses looking to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace must assess their current operational strategies, including their accounts payable processes. Embracing electronic payments can add revenue, save time and money, reduce both the incidence and effects of human data entry error, improve cash flow management and contribute to the overall success of your organization — in this crisis and the next. 

About Greg Sassone:  

Greg Sassone is a results-driven banking and payments executive with a strong background in the areas of product management, product development, marketing, P&L management and strategic planning. As vice president, WEX Corporate Payment Solutions, Greg is focusing on serving the unique payments needs of financial institutions, technology partners, corporate accounts payable and corporate customers.

A seasoned leader within the corporate payments business, Greg worked for Mastercard and Citibank in a variety of product and marketing management roles prior to joining WEX. A project-oriented professional with global business management experience, Greg has the proven ability to develop innovative concepts, establish cutting-edge business proposals and successfully connect with the implementation process.

The post Three Ways Virtual Payments Help Businesses during Challenging Times appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

How many of you think about sterilizing your credit cards?

That would have been a weird question to ask a month ago. After all, you protect them from theft. You likely have credit fraud monitoring services. But, sterilize them? Not a preventative measure that likely crossed your mind as you went about your weekly grocery shopping, bought popcorn at the movies, or grabbed your prescription at the pharmacy.

A lot has changed in a month. We’re now more aware then ever of the number of touchpoints we come across all day long.

As COVID-19 has made its way across the globe, people’s daily routines have been upended. With the implementation of social distancing, businesses asking their employees to stay home, and people self-quarantining to reduce their risk of exposure, there’s been a spike in how consumers are buying and consuming all they need to keep themselves going through a global pandemic.

Naturally, there’s been a spike in online shopping as people scramble to get necessities, which apparently in some instances, is a year’s worth of toilet paper and rubbing alcohol.

What other areas will see more card-not-present (CNP) and digital wallet payments? Newspapers and digital media will definitely see a rise in readership and subscriptions as people hit their paywalls. As more and more people return to established publications to get the most up-to-date and accurate information, they’re greeted with some very clear messages: if you’re looking for COVID-19 information, we’ve lowered our paywall and while you’re here, consider a digital subscription and support journalism. It’s a compelling case to whip out your newly cleaned credit card and subscribe.

Some companies that have always taken CNP payments are likely to see more sign-ups and therefore more transactions. These include service delivery companies that cater to food (Home Fresh, Fresh Direct, Peapod), personal care (Dollar Shave Club), pet care (Chewy.com, Barkbox), medication delivery (CVS, Walgreens), and so on.

With colleges and schools closing and more and more states implementing restrictions on public gatherings, streaming services will be essential distractions. Hulu, Disney, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon and Apple will see more subscriptions, certainly. Amazon and Apple are going to see an increase in their digital wallet usage. It’s a wait-and-see on whether Apple will see a bump in AppleCard applications, as those same people willing to take on more monthly fees to satiate their self-quarantined boredom may not be willing to risk their credit score. 

Digital wallet payments and stored credit card information are the norm for food delivery companies and services such as Door Dash and GrubHub. Buyers aren’t going to want to spend more than a second on the payment page, pandemic or not, so a seamless purchasing experience is critical. If any of these types of companies experience any lag due to sudden surge in volume, their customers may not be patient.

Many other types of organizations and services will also see a surge in subscriptions services, and as a result, a surge in CNP and digital wallet transactions. However, these same companies will also see a surge in costs associated with processing the transactions, one that isn’t going to go away unless they’re willing to forego their recurring revenue model. Consumers aren’t keen to take on those costs, be it housed as a surcharge or convenience fee.

One way to take on more payments but pay less in fees is to talk with your provider about their pricing model. If the word “bundle” comes up at all, ask for a cost-plus model. This will benefit your bottom line – and since you don’t have to pass on those costs, you’re more likely to keep the customers you provided value to during a time of need and necessity.

As more and more people sign-up for subscriptions, frictionless payments become a bigger factor in how that economy will grow and expand. In the most normal of times, CNP, digital wallets and contactless payments provide much-appreciated convenience. In a time of social distancing and self-isolation, they provide much needed peace of mind, and require fewer washings.  

Kimberly Miller is a technology industry veteran with a not-quite mundane past and a storied future. She is Vice President, Business Development for Payway, an integrated payment processing solution.

The post CNP Payments are Prescription for Success During COVID-19 appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

Integral announced today that it has partnered with Western Union, a leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, to employ eFX risk management technology across its Western Union Business Solutions platform. Western Union Business Solutions will deploy Integral BankFX™ across its risk management workflow. The feature-rich platform offers Western Union Business Solutions full automation and customization, including a high level of control of the more than 10,000 currency pairs available on its system, delivering a tailored eFX service to its clients. 

“We placed a premium on finding a trusted partner that could deliver reliable and leading-edge technology to support our requirements for risk management,” said Scott Johnson, Head of Product at Western Union Business Solutions. “Because BankFX is a cloud-based solution, we are able to easily integrate it with our proprietary systems to help us effectively manage payments across our network, which covers over 200 countries and territories and more than 130 currencies. Ultimately, this helps our clients efficiently manage international payments, 24/7.”

“BankFX is a highly configurable platform, so it is ideal for the bespoke solution Western Union Business Solutions requires,” said Harpal Sandhu, CEO of Integral. “BankFX allows Western Union to further enhance their risk management operations with the support of reliable and state-of-the-art technology. Integral and Western Union share the mission to help customers grow their business. We anticipate a very successful long-term partnership and are honored to work with such experienced industry leaders.”

The post Integral Partners with Western Union to Provide FX Technology Solutions appeared first on PaymentsJournal.

In a Viewpoint that Mercator Advisory Group released back in 2018 after the annual AFP conference, we made the point that things are changing, and financial professionals (FPs) are expected to do more with less. That realization filled the conference, as did the many new products and services centered on BCT, AI, APIs and so forth. In this article appearing in Forbes, the author makes the point that these expectations are requiring adaptation in real-time.

“Automation holds the key to success in this new cut role. For finance teams to make the leap from bean counters to strategists, the approach to working with data and reporting processes also needs to change. This means a shift from static to real-time data, and from manual to instant and repeatable reporting processes that are less prone to errors introduced by human manipulation. Only then can finance teams deliver real value to their organizations. For example, offering guidance to the C-suite on an ongoing basis, not just at end of month or end of quarter. Or creating reports for an impromptu board of directors meeting and deeper drill-down reporting in the middle of those meetings — all based on data that is live, not days or even weeks old.“

The author discusses things that can be expected to exist as BAU in 2025. In our opinion, some of these are already in play and could actually be normalized in a shorter time frame. Likely the most difficult to execute will be the data scientist part, which is sort of a degree specialty unto itself, so we will see if this is a bridge too far for most FPs.

1. Finance professionals will become data scientists.

2. RPA will gain ground as a key automation technology on the road to AI.

3. Reliance on predictive analytics will grow.

“There’s no question that the future of finance will involve sophisticated technologies that deliver higher levels of intelligent automation. This is good news for finance teams, who can focus on bringing more strategic value to their organizations as data scientists and analysts. Is your team ready?“

Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

The post Financial Teams Must Adapt in Real-time to Meet Expectations for Payments Automation appeared first on PaymentsJournal.