Transcard: Rethinking B2B Commerce In The New Reality

Greg Bloh, CEO of Transcard, shares how his firm uses advanced technologies to help businesses overcome COVID-triggered challenges by digitally connecting buyers and suppliers. “Any business can benefit from less friction in its business payments. But the biggest need for frictionless payments is in industries where working capital costs and invoice complexities are high,” said Bloh. “Banks can leverage this approach to help their clients radically transform B2B commerce.”

The following is an excerpt from What Did You Change?, contributed by Transcard CEO Greg Bloh.

Outdated approaches to business-to-business (B2B) commerce have become a big liability in the new reality. Friction in the way that businesses pay one another and get paid were exposed and amplified overnight. In the current economy, there is more pressure on businesses to eliminate inefficiencies, accelerate cash flows, tightly control spending and mitigate risk. To accomplish this, we believe businesses need a way to buy and sell goods faster, more efficiently and with transparency.

Businesses of all sizes use cash and checks to pay for goods, rely on back-and-forth emails to resolve disputes, and use spreadsheets to manage payment terms and manually reconcile invoices.

These inefficient processes, combined with inadequate systems and a lack of standards, create major operational and financial challenges for businesses, at a time when they can least afford them. Some of these challenges include:

Lack of efficiency

High costs

Onerous reconciliation

Strained trading partner relationships

Cash flow disruptions

Inadequate visibility

Risk

Additional manpower cannot solve these issues. The problem lies in the way business is done.

Technology providers are partly to blame. The B2B payments infrastructure at most businesses is littered with closed-loop systems and networks that only address a certain point of the supply chain, line-of-business application (such as accounts payable or accounts receivable) or payment type — and require unique logins and passwords, account requirements, file formats and integrations.

Making matters worse, these systems are often poorly integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. As a result, information about B2B transactions is often inaccurate or incomplete, not timely, not well-organized and not readily accessible by decision-makers.

Businesses deserve better — and successfully navigating the post-pandemic economy will require it.

In response, Transcard brought together advanced technologies to digitally connect buyers and suppliers through their ERPs and banks, and to eliminate friction in the way businesses pay and get paid. This approach to paying and getting paid turns B2B commerce on its head.

Any business can benefit from less friction in its business payments. But the biggest need for frictionless payments is in industries where working capital costs and invoice complexities are high. Banks can leverage this approach to help their clients radically transform B2B commerce.

The best part: Advanced technologies make all of this possible today.