Societe Generale and Lemonway Team on B2B Marketplace Effort

Societe Generale has teamed with payments firm Lemonway to help European companies launch B2B marketplaces.

“Large corporates are accelerating their digital transformation, which has become vital for their clients and ensuring B2B revenue growth,” the European banking giant said in a news release Tuesday (April 11).

“In this context, launching a B2B marketplace improves the payment experience, supports internationalization, creates value, and enhances the commercialisation and distribution processes of the ecommerce chain.”

According to the release, the partnership combines Lemonway’s expertise in managing third-party payment services and Societe Generale’s cash management offering. Societe Generale said the partnership would be implemented soon in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

PYMNTS wrote last month about the way modern B2B marketplaces are helping reshape how even entrenched industry giants scale and function.

This was prompted by Kraft Heinz Co.’s announcement that it would use beverage giant Anheuser-Busch InBev’s B2B BEES eCommerce platform to strengthen its international footprint in the Mexican, Colombian and Peruvian markets.

“Emerging Markets are key to our growth strategy,” said Rafael Oliveira, executive vice president and president of international markets at Kraft Heinz.

“To be successful in countries like Mexico, we have to use technology to increase sales force impact, and we believe BEES is poised to be a game-changer for us … allowing us to customize our approach on a market-by-market basis serving the needs of regional retailers.”

“The nature of the market in LatAm is very particular in each country, and we are bringing in a partner that will help the sales team to expand its growth potential,” added Bruno Keller, president of Latin America at Kraft Heinz, when reached for comment by PYMNTS.

Meanwhile, research in the PYMNTS/Corcentric report “Digital Payments: Modernizing Procurement Processes” shows businesses increasingly leveraging digital platforms to increase B2B opportunities that can ensure their success.

And B2B payments are growing increasingly digital, following the trend of broader consumerization of the B2B marketplace, with enterprise relationships evolving as modern cross-border solutions supplant outdated error-prone methods.

PYMNTS has been following the rise of digital B2B marketplaces across various industries, and 90% of small business owners surveyed in the PYMNTS and Plastiq report “AP/AR Quick-Start Guide” said that all-in-one payment platforms for B2B transactions could save time and promote third-party convenience.

“One side effect of the ongoing rise of digital platforms is that to successfully transact across these next-generation B2B platforms, businesses need to be able to adequately interact with them — which often requires upgrading or modernizing various elements of their own systems or processes,” we wrote.

“In this way, B2B marketplaces are spurring a further acceleration of the digital journey for businesses across borders and industries, with payments at the center.”