Visa and KNEX Team to Bring Virtual Cards to Oracle’s ERP

KNEX and Visa are teaming to embed virtual card capabilities into Oracle’s ERP systems.

The collaboration “addresses a longstanding challenge for businesses: costly development of integrations and manual supplier payments that lack visibility, slow operations, and increase payment risk,” the companies said in a Monday (Oct. 13) news release.

“Supplier payments today are often manual, disconnected, expensive, and require integration with multiple systems,” the release said.

The new KNEX Visa Virtual Card Adapter, the companies said, makes Visa’s virtual card capabilities available in “a turnkey, efficient, and secure way” within Oracle’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

According to the release, benefits of the adapter include the ability to pay vendors instantly with Visa virtual cards from within Oracle Fusion Applications. It also lets users authenticate customer accounts and provide “consent and secure access” to Visa, while allowing issuing banks access to invoice and payment data, without leaving the ERP.

“Embedding Visa’s virtual card technology directly within Oracle ERP systems represents a significant advancement for businesses seeking to modernize their payment operations,” said Darren Parslow, global head of Visa Commercial Solutions.

“By making secure, automated supplier payments available natively in the platforms organizations already use, we’re helping clients accelerate their digital transformation, reduce manual effort, and unlock new efficiencies at scale.”

In related news, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster spoke last month with Abhishek, global head of B2B Acceptance at Visa Commercial Solutions, about the way virtual cards could improve operations for companies relying on ACH and bank transfers.

As Webster noted, suppliers have pushed back against fees and integration headaches, which has left acceptance lower than it could be. However, there is an urgency to rethink the ways in which virtual cards can ease some of the pain points between buyers and suppliers.

“Late payments are a universal drag on businesses of every size and sector,” with some firms seeing 3% to 5% of their working capital eroded by delayed receivables, Abhishek said.

There is some indication that executives are embracing the cards, considering the fact that, as PYMNTS Intelligence and Visa’s research has found, 53% of CFOs are using corporate and virtual cards data to reduce DSO data. However, that still leaves significant room for greater adoption of these cards.

“We need to step away from that very traditional mindset lens of looking at commercial cards as just another card,” said Abhishek. “Our value of commercial card acceptance research shows that suppliers can actually drive revenues. They can actually drive working capital benefits through DSO acceleration and process efficiencies.”