Today in B2B Payments: Back-Office Operations Deserve More CFO Attention; RocketFuel Blockchain Debuts B2B Cross-Border Settlement Solution

Today in B2B payments, how to consumerize B2B payments in five easy steps, while Grovara expands its B2B online marketplace into more global markets. Plus, FaceCake works with Company.com on self-serve, augmented reality commerce program, and Unilever benefiting from upward pricing strategy and increased B2B focus.

Grovara Broadens Global Reach of B2B Online Marketplace

B2B marketplace Grovara is expanding its global footprint to increase its number of users and orders, according to a company press release Wednesday (July 27).

Grovara uses automation to streamline wholesale exports and imports online, the release stated. The company has increased its number of registered users year over year, including international buyers, by six times and American food and beverage brands by three times, while total orders on the marketplace have also increased by fourfold.

Earlier this year, Grovara opened offices in Mexico and Dubai and made its first sale to mainland China. The company said in the release that it expects to continue its growth in Latin America and the Middle East and increase its growth in the Asia-Pacific area. Grovara offers more than 1,000 products.

Voices of the CFO: Giving Back-Office Operations the Attention They Deserve

When companies suddenly had to adapt to remote-first work policies early in the pandemic, chief financial officers (CFOs) not only positioned them to weather the storm but also modernized back-office operations by leaps and bounds. Now that COVID-19 pandemic fears have subsided, the pressure is still on to monitor the new digital workflows it bequeathed — and update them continuously to keep pace with the competition.

During interviews for the PYMNTS series “A Day in the Life of a Digital-First CFO,” finance chiefs shared how their teams are rising to the challenge. The CFO is uniquely positioned to take a more introspective role within the enterprise, Fortis CFO Dennis McLaughlin told PYMNTS in August 2021.

While other business leaders are peering outward toward customers, investments and business partners, the CFO must focus internally on enhancing operations and driving growth. As such, McLaughlin said, finance leaders are well-positioned to take on the challenging task of digital transformation.

FaceCake, Company.Com Collaborate on ‘Self-Serve’ AR Commerce

FaceCake is working with a financial services platform Company.com to give small and medium-sized businesses, influencers and content creators access to FaceCake’s artificial intelligence (AI) driven, augmented reality (AR) visual commerce platform.

The platform is expected to launch worldwide in the fourth quarter of this year. The companies say the project combines FaceCake’s AI/AR shopping platform and AR product creation and Company.com’s Digital Experience Platform (DXP), which includes client onboarding, automated marketing and billing, and identity and access management.

The companies say their offering includes FaceCake’s AR Virtual Try-On for products such as glasses, cosmetics, jewelry, clothing, accessories and shoes.

RocketFuel Blockchain Launches B2B Cross-Border Settlements Solution

RocketFuel Blockchain, which provides payment solutions using cryptocurrencies, announced Tuesday (July 26) that it has debuted a new B2B cross-border settlements solution.

The solution will facilitate settlements for B2B entities with stablecoins. This will be done through a combination of digital and fiat currencies, per the release, allowing for fast, reliable, compliant and automated cross-border settlements.

The release noted that RocketFuel’s virtual currency platform makes use of numerous digital pay options for both crypto or fiat currencies. They can be used for things like metaverse or non-fungible token (NFT) platforms to allow payments for in-game tokens, cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and stablecoins.

Upward Pricing Strategy, Doubling Down on B2B eCommerce Pay Off for Unilever

European supermarkets’ own-brand labels have increased their market share compared to more expensive branded goods, triggering a drop in consumer-packaged goods (CPGs) sales, a recent PYMNTS report shows.

Despite this, one of the continent’s largest producers of CPGs, British multinational Unilever, has reported an H1 operating profit of €4.5 billion, showcasing a modest 1.7% year-over-year growth that is nonetheless likely to satisfy shareholders, considering the challenging market conditions.

As group CEO Alan Jope told investors during the earnings call Tuesday (July 26), growth has been sustained thanks to upward pricing, while “the pricing momentum established during the second half of 2021 and early 2022 has continued and we have landed increases across all geographies and divisions.” The company’s pricing strategy, which contributed to an underlying price growth (UPG) of 11.2% in the previous four quarters, has also helped to mitigate negative growth in underlying volume, which declined by 2.1% in the same period.

5 Features That Will Help Consumerize B2B Payments

Like consumers, businesses require fast, secure payment methods tailored to their in-the-moment needs. This means financial institutions must be able to customize the range of payment processes they offer as client businesses grow, according to “The New User Experience,” a PYMNTS and FIS collaboration based on a survey of 311 financial institution executives.

Without these functionalities, businesses that depend on rapid payments could see delays that grind their supply chains to a halt. To fill in the gaps, financial institutions are adding the same digital features consumers have become accustomed to — such as instant payments and refunds and embedded finance — to their toolkits.

PYMNTS’ research found that payments consumerization translates into a wish list of five key digital payments features that match financial institutions’ identification of their B2B clients’ pain points: supplier portals, instant data visibility, enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration, real-time cash flow management and simple accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) integration. PYMNTS’ research revealed that although two-thirds of financial institutions recognize the need for new digital B2B payment solutions, only 3 out of 10 say their current tools sufficiently reduce friction for their clients.