Bookipi Teams With Fat Zebra On SMB Invoice Payments

Bookipi, a company that generates invoices for small companies and freelancers, is poised to roll out its new BookiPay invoice payments system in Australia through a new collaboration with the financial technology firm Fat Zebra, according to an announcement.

“We look forward to partnering with Fat Zebra to launch our invoice payments platform. Australian small businesses rely on their invoices getting paid and getting paid on time to run their businesses,” Bookipi Chief Executive Officer Tim Lee said about the partnership.

Bookipi will harness Fat Zebra’s technology to support its new invoice payments system, in an effort to combat the payment challenges negatively impacting small companies in Australia, according to the announcement.

Bookipi, which says that it has “freed over 600,000 freelancers and small businesses from tedious bookkeeping,” is available on macOS, Windows, Android and iOS, among other platforms. Fat Zebra is an expandable and international payment system that is geared toward providing local market access to partners via one international payments network.

As previously reported, getting paid quickly is a challenge for suppliers in many instances. Too many delays could lead to cash flow interruptions and potentially put smaller operations out of business. Freelancers can encounter similar hurdles, with a number of them stringing together ad-hoc jobs to make ends meet and mandate prompt payments to settle their bills.

Companies and freelancing professionals might not be able to fully manage their customers’ payment behaviors, but they can take measures to encourage swifter delivery of funds by carefully choosing which payment methods to accept. Payees that rely on getting paper checks have to spend days waiting for them to arrive, then wait even longer for the funds to settle.

In a deep dive, PYMNTS explored the problems that can stem from late payments, and how real-time rails with request-for-payment functions can remove frictions for firms and freelancers looking to obtain quick compensation.