VersaPay On How B2B Companies Want A B2C Experience

The PYMNTS team caught up with experts in the payments field to ask them their views on industry trends, predictions for the coming year and what their ideal payments system looks like.

John McLeod, VersaPay’s VP of Marketing, spoke with us about innovation in accounts receivable automation, and general trends he’s seeing across the payments in FinTech ecosystem.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE BIG TRENDS YOU’RE SEEING IN PAYMENTS IN 2015?

JM: I’d say there are lots of different things in play. First and foremost, it’s probably the fact that there’s so much focus on the importance and growth of payments. There are many different pockets of real goodness where there’s energy being put place on innovation. You’ve got organizations encouraging FinTech companies to get started, and helping their growth over time.

The fact that there’s attention on this [industry] is just great, because it’s just changing the game across the board. There’s a recognition by many of the bigger players in the financial sector that change is coming. They need to get on with understanding it, capitalizing on it, and help driving the direction of it. Or, some of the smaller players — the innovative companies — are coming in and they are going to change the game. I think that will cause some challenges for the big guys that are well-established.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS FOR PAYMENTS FOR NEXT YEAR?

JM: One of the big things will be the adoption by businesses. So in the world of B2B to look more to the consumer side. Often, though, in the business environment the same thing is not applied. There’s going to be more companies looking to have that kind of convenience in a B2B application as they do on the consumer side.

This whole notion as self service, where I — as the consumer — want to be in control, whether I’m doing work from a business perspective or operating as an individual. I don’t want to have to be reliant on some other place, I want to be able to have that facilitated for me so I can take the actions that I want, when I want, where I want and how I want. That’s one of the biggest things.

WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL PAYMENTS SYSTEM LOOK LIKE?

JM: I think it’s the ability for companies to be interconnected. The customer doesn’t want a bunch of different independent islands. I think they are open to working with different companies, but they want to know that it’s been brought together in a way of a solution — instead of a bunch of different piecemeal answers.