Citi Expands Reach Of AR Solution Payer ID

Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions is bringing its accounts receivable (AR) Payer ID solution to more markets around the globe.

The financial institution (FI) announced news on Monday (Nov. 6) that Payer ID is now available in 44 countries, as Citi brings the B2B payments tool across North America and Western Europe.

The accounts receivable solution enables companies to gain visibility into incoming payments for greater working capital management, Citi explained. It aims to reduce Days Sales Outstanding and supports streamlined reconciliation. The FI added that AR and reconciliation can be especially challenging for companies that receive payments across borders.

Payer ID assigns account numbers to each individual payer, enabling corporate treasury departments to match payment with payer.

One existing user of the solution, Alibaba, said in a statement that the tool reduces the need for manual intervention in AR processes.

“Traditionally, we would manually reconcile transactions, a process that created significant delays in distributing funds to sellers in mainland China,” said Griffin Peng, director of B2B Payment & Financing at Alibaba, in a statement. “After exploring and evaluating different products in the industry, we chose Citi’s Payer ID solution, which enables us to assign each buyer a unique payer ID number that is linked to Alibaba’s master account. As a result, our systems can now automatically match payments with data that we have on the transaction, allowing us to fully automate this process. Citi’s coverage in over 40 countries was another key factor in our decision, as it supports Alibaba’s ambitions to rapidly offer our services worldwide.”

Last month, Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions unit said it struck a deal with FIS to collaborate and develop cash management, payments and corporate treasury solutions for Citi clients. FIS said it would integrate its Trax corporate payments solutions into Citi’s offering, linking the solutions via CitiConnect APIs.