B2B FinServ, À La Carte

The Internet is, in a broad sense, an online marketplace of goods, services and information. The potential for business owners to get what they want, when they need it, is also there, but sifting through pages of offerings to find specialized products, especially in reference to payments and other technological functions, can be arduous.

Earlier this month, payments solution provider BillingTree announced the availability of its Payrazr Marketplace, which it has termed a one-stop resource for payments-related products, both under its own Payrazr suite and in tandem with other providers.

PYMNTS spoke with Dave Yohe, vice president of marketing for BillingTree, to get a sense of what is driving SMBs (and larger firms) in their technological quests and where the demand may lie behind two of the company’s newest products, the myPayrazr Gateway and the myPayrazr IVR (interactive voice response).

Though the gateway may initially be of interest to, say, a merchant service provider and not necessarily a small business per se, the ability to work across multiple channels, such as credit, debit and ACH transaction, remains important, said the executive, with an eye toward better compliance, a concern that dovetails with a recent survey conducted by the company that found that concerns have increased among SMBs in the wake of the 2015 Payment Card Industry data security standards. Firms also look toward accounts receivable management to aid in procurement activities and in making cash flow cycle management more efficient.

For SMBs, Yohe stated that the firm has seen, and anticipates continuing to see, growth in adoption across technology that, “in general, helps to make these businesses price competitive and lowers the costs of doing business.” In addition, as firms expand beyond their own regions or borders or touch diverse populations, “the ability to offer services in a multilingual way” means that IVRs, which can have prompts across a variety of functions and steps in the billing cycle, become of particular use to SMBs. Yohe mentioned small medical offices as a key beneficiary of such automation, and from a service perspective, other verticals or businesses marked by small staffing counts are still able to work efficiently. Witness, said the executive, the drive by many firms to ensure that calls are picked up by the third ring, which has been a key driver in eliminating the need for front desk reception or someone to route calls.

Another trend that has been driving SMBs in search of automated functionality is the desire to integrate payment functions in the call process, which, when tied into PDX, helps SMBs use routine calls to capture payments, a benefit to verticals, including auto financing, for example. The payments function can also be extended to “land” on a firm’s website, which allows businesses, such as an apartment management company, to cut down, as Yohe put it, “on traffic coming in and out of the office, with people bearing paper checks, which then must be deposited and which then can take days to settle … The key is to have the least number of things to do when it comes to making sure the payment gets made.”