AP Innovators Increasingly Turn Attention To Supplier Friction

When it comes to strengthening the B2B payment proposition, oftentimes, tackling friction for only one side of a transaction is no longer sufficient. As solution providers position innovative commercial payment solutions in the market, they’re increasingly having to benefit both buyers and suppliers. This week’s look at the convergence between accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payable (AP) finds this tactic expanding in the corporate card arena, while another FinTech aims to boost cross-border payment traceability for both payer and payee.

Tat Capital Eases Card Acceptance For Vendors

Among the biggest challenges in commercial card adoption is that while cards can be beneficial to payers, payees in the AR department struggle with the costs of card acceptance and the burden of manual data and secure data maintenance. In a new partnership with Nium, Tat Capital has launched Tat:BizPay, a solution designed to help businesses on the AP side utilize their credit lines for a range of payments, including vendor payments, rent and payroll.

For the payer, this means interest-free cash flow for up to 55 days, the company said in its announcement. At the same time, the companies said they are mitigating friction for suppliers by allowing them to accept funds even when they do not accept cards. However, the firms did not disclose exactly how they can facilitate this.

WEX, MYOB Team Up On Virtual Cards

Also tackling the challenge of a lack of supplier card acceptance is WEX, which has just announced a partnership with accounting platform MYOB in Australia.

Through the collaboration, WEX will integrate its virtual commercial credit card technology within the MYOB platform, allowing businesses using MYOB to initiate supplier payments from directly within the portal. Data from the transaction is integrated into the accounting solution to streamline reconciliation.

In its announcement, WEX highlighted how the virtual card technology is also tackling friction in suppliers’ AR workflows by enabling them to receive funds from virtual cards even if they don’t typically receive card payments. The company noted that suppliers don’t have to alter their own AR processes in order to accept payment.

iBanFirst Boosts Payment Visibility For Buyers, Suppliers

With its new Payment Tracker offering, financial service provider iBanFirst is enabling both senders and receivers to gain greater visibility into the status of a transaction, the result of leveraging the SWIFT gpi tracking service.

In addition to connecting stakeholders to information about where a global payment is at any given time, iBanFirst will also provide insight into factors that may cause potential delays. Designed for small and medium-sized businesses, the solution aims to help SMBs in the same way that individuals can track parcels, the company said.

To date, “little had been done to provide real-time status updates on international bank transfers for both payers and payees,” said Oualid Abderrazek, iBanFirst’s chief product officer, in a statement. As the value of cross-border B2B trade increases, buyers and suppliers alike will need insight into the status of their payment for accounting, reconciliation and risk mitigation efforts.