For B2B, Armor-Plated Transactions

B2B has been one of the holdouts in the transition to paperless transactions. Whether offering goods or services, merchants need to be able to pay each other with trust, speed and security, and the traditional transactional model, based on cash or checks (and possibly involving a few days waiting/holding period) may no longer be enough in a fast-paced and global environment.

PYMNTS recently sat down with Scott Reynolds, who helms Armor Payments as president and co-founder; his company began operations as the brainchild of veterans from MasterCard, Visa and iContact and seeks to find how the intersection between B2B and digital payments may be finally coming together.

Last time you spoke with PYMNTS, you had mentioned that Armor’s goal was to make payments secure, reliable and cost-effective. Were you able to accomplish all three of those? How?

SR: We been really overwhelmed with the interest that we’ve received since we launched [in 2012]. It seems like every other day we are getting inquiries from marketplaces and other partners who are looking for a secure method of payments that is cost-effective for larger transactions — transactions over $1,000 — and that protects both sides of the transaction: the buyer and the seller.

Since we last spoke, we are now live with a range of marketplace partners. It’s been surprising and encouraging for us to see the range of industries and segments that we are able to support. For example: medical equipment, IT equipment, wholesale electronics. We are just about to launch with an equity crowdfunding site that will bring together investors and investment opportunities.

So we’ve seen our platform really expand to support a variety of use cases and provide that type of secure method of payment, to provide protection for both sides of the transaction.

Earlier this year you launched a new service called Armor Payments EaaS, which stands for Escrow as a Service and that’s for payment service for online B2B sales. How has it been received so far?

SR: It has been a major point of interest in many of the marketplaces and other partners we are working with.

Primarily what our Escrow as a Service solution allows is for our marketplace partners to integrate our payments service directly into their platform and really create and own the user experience.

Users don’t have to leave the partner’s site to facilitate the transaction. They can stay on the partner’s site through the life of the transaction, from initiating the purchase, through the payments, through the actual release of funds upon delivery.

Speaking of that user experience, can you speak specifically about who some of the early users are?

SR: We have a long list of partners who are in the process of integrating, but a number of partners are live today. For example, Tradeloop is focused on the IT equipment marketplace. There’s also a wholesale electronics marketplace called toadlane.com and another marketplace focused on medical equipment.

On the services side, we are working with a marketplace focused on legal services called Virtual Law Direct and on the equity crowdfunding side Selequity, which just presented recently at TechCrunch in New York last month.

I don’t think I’d be revealing any big secret here when I say that Armor has global ambitions. How will you prepare to support companies that need help working internationally?

SR: It is a critical part of our expected growth. When you look at why buyers and sellers would use a service like Armor, it’s really to address the risk in transacting with another party.

Typically as businesses move online, they may not know the other side of the transaction, so using an online escrow payment service makes significant sense in terms of mitigating the risks of those transactions. When you look internationally, that risk is all the greater.

As a result, we’ve seen significant interest in our service to help facilitate these international transactions. We’ve established a partnership and an integrated payments service from Payoneer, which provides a low-cost alternative to international wires. That’s just one area where we have focused to provide additional services to make it easier for our end buyers and sellers to transact internationally.

What is next for Armor Payments? What kind of projects can you share?

SR: Of a couple of areas we are focused on, one is to facilitate or offer additional options for buyers to submit payments to escrow. That means supporting credit card payments and ACH debit, so really making it simple and easy for buyers to submit payments as part of a transaction.