Today in B2B: Automation Simplifies the Invoicing Process; EnKash Looking to Get Its Slice of India’s $500M Spend Management Market

Today in B2B payments, EnKash is looking to cash in on the $500 billion spend management market in India, while buy now, pay later (BNPL) gets suppliers paid faster and helps bridge the funding gap.

Plus, APIs allow businesses to make B2B payments innovations more quickly, Vintners.co debuts a global platform for B2B wine sales and the founder of Bryzos says automation can simplify the business invoicing process and build better business relationships.

APIs Enable Businesses to Tap B2B Payments Innovation Quickly

Automated programming interfaces (APIs) are a key value-added technology that banks, FinTechs and other financial institutions FIs can provide their business clients and end users. Many are already using APIs to help deliver on their business clients’ demands for digital services and capabilities.

As Shany Koubi-Malbin, general manager and head of payment strategy at Fiverr, told PYMNTS, APIs are critical to connecting eCommerce firms to market-by-market functionality quickly and efficiently because they make gateways and payments options easier to integrate. For instance, many banks’ mobile apps connect with third-party APIs to provide advanced payment services.

Banking-as-a-Service APIs provide third-party companies with direct access to banking data, and FinTechs are also developing API-based payment solutions that provide apps and services for business clients to incorporate into customer-facing platforms.

EnKash Hopes to Tap India’s $500B Spend Management Market

Spend management platform EnKash is looking to expand both in India and on a global level following its $20 million funding round.

Co-founder Hemant Vishnoi said the corporate spend management market in India is worth $500 billion, and the company said it wants to improve the experience and accessibility of financial and non-financial products for its business clients. Additionally, co-founder Naveen Bindal said EnKash has more than 70,000 business clients and partners with “three nonbank financial institutions.”

Bindal added that “small- to medium-sized businesses require better experience and accessibility of financial and non-financial products with the growing market.”

Bryzos on Simplifying the Invoice Process and Building Business Relationships With Automation

Invoicing is one of the most important and time-consuming tasks in the purchasing process, and businesses have historically employed accounting professionals who process orders and invoices manually. However, without an efficient process in place, the workload can quickly become overwhelming and lead to errors or unhappy customers.

“It’s all this back-and-forth documentation or communication that really, from an operational standpoint, creates the headache for the actual person sitting there trying to do dollars and cents,” said Shep Hickey, founder and CEO of Bryzos, an online marketplace for third-party buyers and sellers of steel products and accessories.

Hickey said companies across several industries are finding automated invoicing a helpful alternative to manual operations. Automation can help reduce errors and time-consuming tasks, but it can also benefit buyer and seller relationships through the accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) efficiencies.

BNPL for Business Fills Funding Gap, Gets Suppliers Paid Quicker

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) transaction volume is expected to reach $680 billion worldwide by 2025, indicating that consumers will continue to embrace installment payments and adopt the service at the point of sale.

However, Jamie Beaumont, CEO at U.K.-based BNPL firm Playter, said companies shouldn’t copy the business-to-consumer (B2C) BNPL model into the B2B space, as that model doesn’t meet the needs of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

It’s the reason why Playter has bucked that trend, he explained, choosing instead to create a platform that enables merchants to take ownership of BNPL and instantly spread unpaid invoices over six to 12 months installments, while their suppliers get paid within 24 hours.

Vintners.co Launches Global B2B Wine Sale Platform

Wine production and commerce company Vintners.co is launching an online B2B platform for vintners, wine importers and professional wine buyers.

The company said the platform will offer improved management of wine product information between winegrowers, wine importers and wine distributors, and the professional wine buyers who are their customers. Additionally, users will be able to locate rare and allocated products for restaurants and retailers, and make use of an online service that reportedly facilitates and streamlines ordering.

The company’s services are currently only available to early adopters, but Vintners.co said it wants to expand its reach in the near future, adding services for sales, marketing, logistics and financing.