We’re all thankful for something this holiday season, but for those in the world of B2B payments, giving thanks isn’t your typical turkey-and-stuffing event. PYMNTS asked Bob Solomon, CEO of Software Platform Consulting and B2B payments guru, to tell us what he’s thankful for this season when it comes to business-to-business finance and technology; it may be the only Thanksgiving list to include paper checks and machine learning. Read the rest of what Solomon gave thanks for.
As a B2B Payments practitioner, I’m thankful for all the things that make the B2B opportunity as plump as a Thanksgiving turkey:
- Paper Checks
- Interchange
- The odd fact that most “procure-to-pay” vendors do not actually do the “pay” part!
- Venture capitalists willing to invest in the 155th alt-finance startup
- Buyers who extend their payment terms for high cost of capital suppliers (as long as I am not one of their suppliers!)
- Cross-border payments that continually grow at rates faster than global GDP
- The correspondent banking system
- Foreign currencies
- Banking regulations (since I’m not a bank!)
- The Internet (Al Gore), blockchain, big data, APIs and machine learning
- Summary billing, partial shipments, rejections, VAT, duties, customs and other juicy “complications”
- Global marketplaces
- A government that tolerates relatively high levels of industry concentration
- The beautiful math of multiplying almost any number by $20 trillion
- Network effects
- Being in the right country at the right time in history
On a more serious note, if you are able to read and appreciate this list, I’m guessing you have much, much more to be thankful for, as I surely do!
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!
Bear down, Chicago Bears!
