B2B Vendors Want Payments to Disappear

Like the consumers who buy from merchants’ websites or eCommerce platforms, corporate clients making purchases from business-to-business (B2B) vendors value straightforward, streamlined transactions.

Traditional procurement flows in which corporate buyers place orders with suppliers, wait for invoices in the mail and use paper checks or online payment portals to finish their transactions can be burdensome and overly complex.

That’s especially true as more companies explore digital purchasing options and begin to appreciate their convenience, as reported in “Next-Gen Digital Payments,” a PYMNTS and Transcard collaboration.

Get the report: Next-Gen Digital Payments

Sellers looking to serve B2B customers will need to pay attention to the digital checkout experiences as more of their sales are taking place via digital channels.

Creating Appealing Checkout Experiences

The worldwide digital commerce applications revenue, by business model, is growing by 18% for B2B, vs. 10% for B2C, as measured by the compound annual growth rate, BigCommerce recently estimated in supplemental materials released alongside earnings.

Read more: BigCommerce Sees B2B at 40% of Platform Spend, Growth Outpaces B2C

Companies seeking to get more B2B online sales must ensure that they have appealing checkout experiences to help them keep business clients satisfied.

Clients may ultimately favor suppliers that offer embedded payments options, which allow them to pay via suppliers’ websites or B2B marketplaces and can deliver more satisfying experiences.

Because every corporate buyer is also a consumer, they have become accustomed to browsing eCommerce marketplaces and tapping embedded payment options at checkout for seamless purchasing experiences.

A PYMNTS study found that click-to-purchase buy buttons can significantly reduce checkout times. It found that consumers spent an average of 99 seconds on checkout when leveraging a buy button compared to 176 seconds when not using one.

Taking a Page from the Consumer Playbook

B2B sellers could be wise to take a page from the consumer-to-business (C2B) payments playbook by bringing similar payment features to their B2B eCommerce platforms.

Many eTailers believe that this kind of embedded payment option can encourage sales and reduce checkout frictions. Additional buy button capabilities could provide greater streamlining and security globally.

For example, the Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) offered by major card brands allows shoppers to click a “universal” buy button to pay online or in-app using the preferred cards they hold with any participating brands. This function spares shoppers from having to enter card details each time they make a purchase, making payments more convenient and secure while helping merchants reduce cart abandonment risks.

Catering to Digital Purchasing Demands

B2B sellers have not traditionally paid much attention to streamlining their eCommerce experiences because most corporate buyers seemed comfortable with traditional — albeit lengthier processes in which they placed orders, waited for invoices in the mail and then wrote and mailed back paper checks or logged on to digital payment portals to complete transactions.

However, these methods no longer satisfy many business clients today, and B2B transactions are increasingly occurring over digital platforms.

This shift could prove lucrative for well-positioned vendors to cater to digital purchasing demands.

B2B vendors seeking to cater to the rising demand for digital purchasing options may therefore wish to examine the tools and solutions that remove frictions from consumers’ online shopping experiences and apply them to their B2B platforms.