Today in B2B: Golf Genius, RepSpark Integrate eCommerce Platform

Today in B2B payments, Zwilling offers supply chain financing through partnership with Traxpay, and PYMNTS offers five key questions to help you asses your risk of B2B payments fraud. Plus, upSWOT and Wipro collaborate on financial tools for SMBs.

Embedded Finance Takes on Supply Chain Challenges

Anecdotal evidence is enough to show just how bad supply chains really have become. In the last few weeks, supply chain dynamics — or lack thereof — have pushed the prices of cars up double-digit percentage points. The average new car payment is now up to a record $1,000 a month.

Elsewhere, retailers are already seeing stockouts, which means that goods are late getting to shelves, if at all. It was reported last week that in the U.K., Harrods has postponed its annual sale due to the fact that the retailer’s supply chain has been delayed by weeks.

Part of the problem lies with the fact that the stubbornly entrenched COVID-19 pandemic still can wreak havoc with staffing. But payments friction can also prove a headwind to efficient handoffs of raw materials and finished goods between buyers and suppliers.

Kitchen Products Firm Zwilling Teams With Traxpay for SCF

German kitchen products maker Zwilling announced a partnership with supply chain finance platform Traxpay.

The partnership will see Zwilling use Traxpay’s Dynamic Discounting, allowing Zwilling to support “its supplier ecosystem with additional liquidity in dynamic times, and in return receives an attractive and risk-free return by investing liquidity in its supply chain,” according to a press release.

Dynamic Discounting lets Zwilling’s supplier decide what invoices to accelerate and when to do so, giving them immediate access to needed liquidity while lowering financing costs.

FinTech upSWOT, Wipro Team Up on Digital Banking Tools for SMBs

FinTech upSWOT, which offers data analysis for small businesses, will be teaming with Wipro, a tech services and consulting company, to add digital banking tools for smaller businesses, a press release said.

It will give banks access to upSWOT’s business health dashboard to address finance needs. The dashboard can gather data from over 150 common applications for small businesses, including accounting, enterprise resource planning, payroll, eCommerce, customer relationship management, marketing and point of sale.

The platform leverages the data to give businesses more functionality. The data can be used with permission from the businesses so credit bureaus can add to the businesses’ credit scores. That could lead to more loans and better interest rates. The partnership will also launch an actionable insight generator, which can use various data streams to generate insights, helping the business with the next steps to improve its operations or finances.

Golf Genius, RepSpark Officially Integrate B2B eCommerce Platform

Golf Genius and RepSpark have completed a six-month integration of Golf Genius Golf Shop and the RepSpark B2B wholesale commerce platform, allowing golf shop retailers to improve member service, cut errors and streamline ordering.

The integration includes more than 40 golf brands and manufacturers like Straight Down, New Balance & Callaway Golf Footwear, Southern Tide, johnnie-O, Holderness & Bourne, Greyson, Summit Brands and other non-golf brands.

5 Ways to Assess Vulnerability to B2B Payments Fraud

The “FinTech Risk Management Playbook,” a PYMNTS and nsKnox collaboration, outlined five questions to ask when assessing a business’s B2B payments fraud vulnerability, three key areas in which firms often miss B2B payments fraud risks and ways to mitigate data breaches and payments fraud.

One key area that is often missed is verifying credentials during onboarding or updates to banking details. Organizations should implement best-practice processes and technology to ensure payment details are verified.

Businesses should also protect data at rest, which includes all business-critical, financial and vendor or customer information stored digitally on servers or in the cloud by implementing multifactor authentication, defining devices and data storage policies and enabling user access to be granted or revoked.

A third key area is protecting payment transactions.

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