Feb. 19, 2019
By Jessica Moran, general manager, Paymode-X Business Solutions, Bottomline Technologies
When talking about trends in payments it's natural to look at the consumer landscape to search for clues about what could be next in the world of epayables innovation. For example, P2P payment apps like Zelle and Venmo have created a reality in which payments can be made effortlessly from wherever you are, with necessary remittance details all readily available. Advances like these have revolutionized how consumers pay and get paid, so it makes sense to think that similar innovations could have a tremendous impact on business payments.
Business payments are at the beginning of their digital transformation. Progress is being made but according to the data, it's likely to be slow-going. Far too many organizations are still using outdated payment systems that offer little to no interoperability, Strategic Treasurer's research indicates that only 30 percent or organizations make more than 70 percent of their payments electronically, and then there's the issue of complexity. Business payments are simply not as straightforward as their consumer counterparts, involving significantly greater scale, detail and risk.
However, innovation is a force, and it will come whether we're ready or not.
So what, then, will epayables innovation look like?
Without a crystal ball, attempts to predict specific innovations are generally fruitless. Think about just a few decades ago when people mused about the far away “Y2K.” They generally envisioned a world where meals came in pill format and people cruised around in flying cars. None of that ever came to pass, but the technological advances that did take place -- like the ability to carry thousands of songs in your pocket -- were ideas most people could have never even have conceived of.
Ultimately, what will revolutionize B2B payment automation is a mystery. What isn't a mystery, however, are the trends that will drive innovation.
In an age when everyone carries a powerful computer that's part personal assistant and part lifeline, there's an established expectation that technology can and will help us manage our lives more effectively. It started as a consumer trend but has grown to be an expectation in our business lives as well -- an assumption that technology will help us be effective even when we aren't at our desks, enable us to keep up with increasing competition and even assist in making better decisions by presenting us with the data we need before we even realize we need it.
In tandem with these growing expectations are the needs that drive them. Payment professionals are carrying an increasingly heavy load as payments move faster and farther than ever before. For them to operate as effectively as possible, certain requirements will need to be met. Best of breed solutions will need to be combined, providing a single source of information and eliminating the need for multiple disparate systems. Solutions should be scalable, meeting the needs of smaller or mid-size businesses but also growing over time as necessary. They should also be easy to get started with (think about the ease of buying groceries with one-click or simply taking a photo of a check to deposit it) and make sense for your business as well as your trading partners.
B2B Innovation
In order to reach the levels of technological utility delivered by companies like Amazon and Google (and there's no reason we all shouldn't aspire to that), we can't constrain ourselves by thinking “innovation” is just new functionality bolted onto existing technology. We have to think about new roles for technology that are partnership-based rather than task-based. For example, could you
Simply ask your phone how much your organization got paid last month, or how much you can expect to receive tomorrow – and actually get an answer?Expect technology to recognize that a certain financial function is performed at the same time every week and automatically gather the data necessary to complete that task, maybe even complete the task once a certain comfort level in the technology has been achieved?
The answer is a resounding yes! And not only is all of that possible, it's actually happening now.
Much like with the iPod, the innovation that's being developed and delivered in business payments today is beyond what anyone could have imagined. And yet, it's exactly what the industry needs – business payment experiences that are as simple and streamlined as the consumer experiences we encounter in our daily lives.
Topics: Mobile Payments, Trends / Statistics
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