For the past 20 years, we’ve been committed to simplifying the invoice-to-cash process by replacing manual tasks with automated solutions that make it easier for businesses to focus on serving their customers and growing their businesses.
This week, while at the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) show in Chicago, we were pleased to announce an exciting evolution of this mission with the launch of the new Business Payments Network (BPN). Born out of our unique partnership with Visa, BPN is designed to streamline the delivery of electronic B2B payments to businesses in ways not possible until today.
The way in which buyers present payment to their suppliers has rapidly changed over the last several years. Accounts payable (AP) software has begun to digitize payments to the benefit of the buyer, but not necessarily for the supplier. Each AP software has their own format or approach to sending electronic payments, thereby creating friction for suppliers that attempt to support their buyers’ desire to pay electronic.
As a unique supplier-driven B2B payments network, BPN provides a transparent registry of businesses who are interested in accepting digital payments that fit their preferences and existing processes. For buyers and financial institutions, BPN provides the necessary access to automate the delivery of payments to suppliers while converting transactions to the preferred format of the recipient. In doing so, businesses participating in the BPN can accept electronic payments from all buyers without concern that the resulting transactions will cause reconciliation challenges due to unique, buyer-by-buyer formats. BPN makes it easier than ever to harness the increased efficiencies and greater security associated with processing digital payments, without buyers or suppliers needing to make significant changes to existing infrastructure.
For some time now, buyers and suppliers have recognized the advantages of digitizing payments, including less manual touch, improved fraud controls, and enhanced reconciliation. However, the current lack of connectivity between existing B2B payment platforms remains the largest barrier to adoption. Suppliers simply don’t have the systems and processes in place to accept the increasingly complex forms of payment that buyers and their financial institutions want to send.
BPN is designed to address current industry challenges by:
- Providing a connected platform for suppliers, buyers, financial institutions, and accounts payable and accounts receivable (AR) software providers
- Publishing an online directory that contains a full view of participating suppliers and their payment acceptance preferences
- Providing financial institutions and corporate buyers with ability to deliver digital payments directly to the suppliers’ acceptance platforms
- Enabling complex financial and payment data to seamlessly come together at scale while delivering streamlined reconciliation to suppliers and buyers
We are thrilled to be able to work with Visa to continue to find ways to reduce friction and streamline payment processes and reconciliation for financial institutions, corporate buyers and B2B suppliers.
For more information about BPN, please visit paywithbpn.com.
About the author:
Nick Babinsky is the VP of Payment Strategy at Billtrust. He can be reached on LinkedIn.