Fast, Easy and Familiar: Suppliers and Buyers Want Consumerized B2B Payments

Because business owners are also consumers, they’ve known for a long time that B2B payments aren’t as convenient and instantaneous as the payments they use in their personal lives.

“I think there’s opportunities here in the very near future, and especially with the push of the pandemic, that we’ll see a massive push to continue to consumerize the B2B payment space,” Norm Marraccini, senior vice president and head of commercial and retail solutions at FIS, told PYMNTS.

Noting that people are still writing checks for B2B transactions, he said they have opportunities to pay bills with and review invoices with a click — all on their phones.

Helping People Pay Faster, Collect Faster

When business owners can send a request for payment, enable payment with a few clicks, and clear payments in real time or even the next day, that’s a better option for the business owner than writing checks, starting an automated clearinghouse request or waiting days to get invoices.

“Not only thinking about using the time better and growing your business, getting paid faster,” Marraccini said.

Real-time payments also reduce costs. The current process is highly manual and costs companies time and effort.

See also: FIS Predicts 30-50% of B2B Payments Will Ride Real-Time Rails by 2025

“If we look at the thousands of payments that come across the business space, and I can get that

done in a real-time or near real-time manner, my cost and my lead time for myself as a business owner and for my employees is a tremendous opportunity to take some friction out of the businesses,” Marraccini said.

Speedier payment also improves a company’s working capital opportunity. Today, with a single-use payment tool or a virtual card, businesses can collect their funds faster if suppliers offer a 5% discount to buyers who pay the invoice quickly, both parties benefit.

“With what FIS is building and what we have today, we can jump right in and do that from a payable side or even from a receivable side to help people collect faster as well,” Marraccini said.

Building a Closed-Loop Payment Network

This approach can also be taken to the world of person-to-person (P2P) payments with disbursement options that allow a business to pay a consumer or another business in real time.

Looking ahead, Marraccini said he expects to see an end to the current bifurcation between payables and receivables. The solution would include a one-stop shop for businesses that features payables and receivables in the same portal, the same user experience, the same look and feel, and the same ability to drive efficiency. It would also include the ability to move payments without leaving the infrastructure of FIS.

“The next 24 to 36 months for me is, ‘How do I build that closed-loop payment network?’” Marraccini said. “We have the world’s largest payment infrastructure, and looking at the ability for us to be able to connect here in the States to someone in Singapore and make a real-time transaction without having to leave the FIS network is the ultimate goal.”

See also: Consumerized Digital Business Payments Enrich the Customer Experience