Unimarket Introduces ‘AP Payments as a Service’ for US Customers

Unimarket has introduced its fully managed accounts payable (AP) payments service, Unimarket Payments, to the United States.

This service, which optimizes, monetizes and secures the entire payment life cycle, is now available to Unimarket customers with national or regional offices in the U.S., the company said in a Monday (April 29) press release.

Unimarket’s spend management and eProcurement solutions are used by customers in higher education, healthcare, government, research, financial services and other industries, according to the release.

“The benefits of AP Payments as a Service translate into greater efficiency and revenue opportunities for our U.S. customers, leading to significant financial gains,” Phillip Kenney, CEO of Unimarket, said in the release. “Eliminating the time-consuming, antiquated practice of issuing paper checks is essential to our customers’ successful transition to digital payments and, for many colleges and universities, enables them to achieve their sustainability initiatives.”

Unimarket Payments includes both service and technology to help AP teams implement electronic payments, according to the release. The payment types and channels it covers include ACH, wire, virtual card and paper checks.

The solution also offers supplier enablement, fraud and risk detection, strategic account relationship management, payment operations and settlement support, and payments and banking data security capabilities, the release said.

Unimarket Payments is powered by embedded payments infrastructure and service provider Finexio, per the release.

“Our strong partnership with Unimarket Payments helps Unimarket customers experience significant improvements in efficiency, cost savings and fraud prevention related to their AP payments,” Ernest Rolfson, founder and CEO of Finexio, said in the release.

The business-to-business (B2B) space traditionally has lagged consumer-facing innovations, but the gap is narrowing, Finexio Chief Strategy and Product Officer Chris Wyatt told PYMNTS in an interview posted in October 2023.

Faster payments and improved communications between buyers and suppliers will do much to reduce the reliance on paper-based payments, Wyatt said.

In another recent development at Unimarket, the company said in February that it launched a Virtual Mailroom product that automates and simplifies the processing of invoices, whether they are electronic, PDF or paper.

This product digitizes supplier invoices of all formats and enables customers to process them at a low fixed cost within 48 hours.