Visa Commercial Pay Launches For Virtual Cards, Digitized B2B Payments

Visa and Conferma Pay said Monday (Nov. 23) that they have entered a strategic partnership to launch Visa Commercial Pay, billed as a suite of B2B payment solutions for enterprises making the shift to digital transactions, and, specifically, virtual cards — and away from paper-based manual processes.

The result, according to the firms: simplified money movement between buyers and suppliers and automated payment processing and expense reconciliation.

The new offering enables Visa’s commercial clients to embrace comprehensive card program management capabilities — including on-demand virtual card issuance to employees’ mobile devices via app.

Three Components 

Visa Commercial Pay has three components, as detailed on Monday, and which are also available on an a la carte basis:

Visa Commercial Pay Mobile is a Visa-branded app developed by Conferma Pay that hosts digitally-issued Visa commercial cards on employees’ and contractors’ mobile devices.  The app will help users track and manage spend, and the cards integrate directly into mobile wallets.

Commercial Pay Travel helps companies manage business travel spend by integrating with business travel reservation processes and reconciliation.

Visa Commercial Pay B2B gives buyers and payers more flexibility as they transact with one another across program management platforms or third-party procurement platforms.

In statements that accompanied the release, Simon Barker, CEO of Conferma Pay, stated that “with a new economic environment, the controls to decentralize payments have to be put in place — and with employees working from home, the ability to monitor, reconcile and approve spend becomes far more difficult.”

Separately, Kevin Phalen, global head of Visa Business Solutions, stated that the launch of Visa Commercial Pay “allows us to accelerate B2B money movement away from slow, outdated methods to fast, data-rich, secure digital payments and give businesses better control over their finances.”

The shift to digital payments has been gaining momentum.  As noted in a recent B2B Global Payments Playbook and in an interview between PYMNTS and Maria Prados, vice president of global eCommerce at Worldpay, as she put it: “B2B sellers have historically been slower than other businesses to embrace digital evolution [and are] still using a lot of paper-based and manual processes, especially for payments.” She said 89 percent of B2B buyers are making more online purchases than last year.

In another deep dive into B2B payments modernization, Darren Blair, head of B2B at Conferma Pay, told PYMNTS that “electronic payment methods allow organizations to retain the controls they require within procurement and finance teams … organizations have an opportunity to be tactful and thoughtful in terms of how they look to deploy these solutions.”

Consumerized Experience 

And, as is germane to virtual cards, those offerings can help provide what he termed a “consumerized experience to employees at work,” as virtual cards streamline transactions while ensuring that data are kept safe and internal spend controls remain in place.

Visa’s Phalen, during PYMNTS’ month-long virtual confab delving into the future of B2B payments and how the landscape of $20 trillion in commercial payments is changing, told Karen Webster that at a high level, the collaborative approach involves buyers and suppliers using tech and payment tools — and a range of choices — to make commerce and payments more bilateral.

Collaborative commerce is in its infancy, he said, but will move quickly toward maturity as we head into 2021.  Connectivity is key, he said, in removing the frictions inherent in paper checks and where “even though big check disbursers are saying they’re growing, I fundamentally believe that in two years, we’re going to look back and we’re going to see that pivot down,” he told Webster.

Visa’s own volumes, he added, have shown that checks are being displaced with Visa Direct and other transactions.