Payment Rail Innovators Focus On B2B Payments Data

Whether building solutions on existing rails like ACH, or developing new infrastructure to bypass legacy tools, payment rail innovators are placing a new emphasis on data.

This week’s exploration of Payment Rail Innovation finds industry players including Nacha and Boost Payment Solutions emphasizing B2B payment data visibility for transaction traceability, security and automation in the back office.

BNP Paribas Loops Into SWIFT gpi

SWIFT’s gpi initiative has added another financial institution (FI) as France’s BNP Paribas announced its participation in the service. The integration enables the bank to launch its g4c Pay and Trace service, which targets corporates with the ability to generate their own UETR, a transaction reference used to track payments as they move within the SWIFT network. Its support of gpi reflects BNP Paribas’s efforts to address a major cross-border B2B payments pain point: lack of transparency.

In its announcement, BNP Paribas said the solution will support cash flow forecasting through incoming payments tracking, with information provided in XML formatted reports that can be integrated into ERPs, treasury management systems and other back office platforms.

Nacha Names New Preferred Partner

Nacha, which facilitates ACH payments, has named a new Preferred Partner for Routing Number and Account & Ownership Verification, highlighting the growing role that data plays in the ACH landscape. This week, Nacha said Lyons Commercial Data has secured status as Preferred Partner, with Nacha President and CEO Jane Larimer noting, “verifying routing and account information is a critical component of minimizing risk and maintaining compliance in the ACH Network.” Lyons works with FIs and merchants to manage customer account data to promote compliance and mitigate risk.

Boost Enables Straight-Through Processing

In a new partnership with BMO Harris Bank, Boost Payment Solutions is introducing straight-through processing (STP) capabilities for corporate customers using virtual cards to make payments. For companies receiving those payments, STP supports accounts receivable (AR) departments’ need to seamlessly integrate transaction data into workflows without manual intervention and without compromising the security of the transaction data. The collaboration sees Boost integrating STP technology into BMO Harris Bank’s Approve2Pay Corporate Card technology, which provides automated processing and remittance reporting for B2B buyers and suppliers.

Gilded Targets Coinbase Users

B2B payments and accounting technology firm Gilded revealed an initiative that targets business users of digital currency exchange Coinbase. Its new solution supports those companies with the ability to send and receive digital currency in real time into their Coinbase account, powered by Gilded. In addition to the movement of the currency, Gilded is also enabling automated accounting to tackle a key point of friction in the digital currency arena.

“While billions of dollars have been transferred through digital currency, standard digital currency wallets are not suitable for business use,” the company said in an announcement. “A typical digital currency wallet makes it difficult to invoice and track payments with digital assets.”

The Coinbase integration enables companies to send invoices and receive payments via digital currencies, including bitcoin, while data from that transaction is reconciled within Gilded.