89% of Financial Institutions Offer Corporate Clients Account Validation

Financial institutions (FIs) are working to help their corporate clients address their B2B payment challenges.

Some of the most common challenges that businesses face when making supplier payments are reconciling invoices, inability to offer supplier portals, working capital management and slow underwriting.

These problems are cited by 42%, 42%, 34% and 33%, respectively, of businesses, according to “Meeting the Challenge of Payments Modernization,” a PYMNTS and FIS collaboration based on a survey of 311 executives from leading FIs that manage assets in excess of $500 million.

Get the report: Meeting the Challenge of Payments Modernization

Other common challenges include lack of payment choice, spend management, real-time cash flow management and data not provided across all areas of the organization. These issues are cited by 31%, 29%, 26% and 26%, respectively.

Some of the most common services that FIs provide for their corporate clients to help alleviate these pain points are account validation, digital lockboxes and immediate transaction confirmation. These digital solutions are offered by 89%, 82% and 76%, respectively, of FIs.

Other services offered to corporate clients by about half of FIs are instant credit underwriting and credit access and automatic matching of payments and invoices, which are offered by 51% and 48%, respectively.

The number of digital solutions offered by FIs varies by the size of their clients or the markets those clients serve.

PYMNTS found that FIs serving cross-border payments customers offer 7.1 digital solutions on average, those serving large enterprises provide an average of 6.8 solutions, those serving middle-market companies provide an average of 5.5 solutions, and those serving small businesses offer an average of 3.9 solutions.

Understanding what drives different corporate markets can guide FIs as they further modernize and streamline their B2B payments and cash management offerings.