Westpac Teams With Coupa To Revamp SMBs Spending In Australia

Australian lender Westpac is partnering with business spend management (BSM) firm Coupa to help companies improve finance management on a cloud-based platform, Westpac said on Tuesday (Aug. 20).

The collaboration will deliver cost savings while automating inefficient tasks, facilitating risk reduction and improving compliance. Coupa’s platform is used by 750 organizations, including MGM Resorts International, Salesforce and Unilever.

“Corporates have invested heavily in improving the way they receive payments from customers; however, we haven’t seen the same advancements in how payments are made to suppliers. In many cases, the payables process remains inefficient, paper-based, and prone to errors,” said Di Challenor, Westpac Institutional Bank’s general manager, global transaction services. “Our partnership with Coupa is the first major step towards frictionless supplier payments and delivering end-to-end automation across the working capital cycle.”

Organizations with large procurement spend or complex supplier relationships will get real-time visibility on budgets, increased purchasing power and more efficient processes.

“By combining the Coupa BSM Platform with Westpac’s eInvoicing, payments and reconciliation solutions, CFOs have real-time oversight into their organizations’ spending behavior, allowing them to proactively identify and address small problems before they turn into big issues,” Challenor said in the release.

Coupa is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and BSM community insights to give customers real-time insights and benchmarks for smarter spending decisions.

“We’re delighted to partner with one of Australia’s leading institutional banks. This partnership means we’re in a strong position to help CFOs and finance teams get full visibility and control to drive real value across the business and the bottom line. This will result in some exciting procurement innovations for our mutual customers,” said Roger Goulart, senior vice president of Business Development and Alliances at Coupa.

Westpac’s move with Coupa is in line with the Australian government’s increased focus on digitalization.

In June, Coupa announced partnerships with PayPal, Stripe, Citi and TransferMate to broaden the capabilities of its business spend solution. By teaming up with companies like PayPal, Coupa hopes to expand payment options, enable more seamless virtual card payment processing and address diverse payment needs.