亚洲色吧

E-commerce is now a quotidian thread in the fabric of our lives. The great majority of objects and services we buy can be found online, from appliances at Lowes.com to the work of artisans and craftspeople on sites like Etsy, it鈥檚 all there for the taking. In a recent Forbes article, Ilker Koksal shared that in a one-year period, the global population increased spending on e-commerce by $610 billion, rising from $2.92 trillion in sales in 2018 to close to $3.53 trillion in 2019. Koksal writes that 鈥済lobal e-commerce is expected to rise to $5.69 trillion鈥� by 2022. In other words, over the course of three years, we can expect a tremendous growth of around 61%. To meet the demands of these rapid changes to the structure of the world economy, companies must adapt in order to succeed. One essential way to evolve in the coming months and years will be to pay close attention to the digital transformation of the B2B marketplace.

History of Payments: shift in focus from Consumer payments to B2B

亚洲色吧鈥檚 Jay Dearborn, President of Corporate Payments, provided a little history lesson in payments when he spoke with Oliver Renick as a recent guest on TD Ameritrade鈥檚 network. He described the recent shift in priorities in the payments industry, away from what had been a period of consumer-focused change, and towards a period of development in  B2B payments. 鈥淚n payments, consumer payments have been the name of the game for 70 years with Visa and Mastercard. And what really has happened over the past 20 years is in the B2B segment: businesses paying businesses and that鈥檚 the business of AP, it could be cross-border, it could be a T&E card, it could be a PCard: that is kind of the hot place in the payments market today. And we at 亚洲色吧 are right on the leading edge of that with our fleet products, our health products, our travel products, and our corporate payments products.鈥� 

Dearborn describes how 亚洲色吧 is embracing the wave of digital transformation and providing a one-stop shop for all payments needs for businesses all around the world. The size of the business doesn鈥檛 matter–亚洲色吧 products and services are flexible enough to be the solution for small businesses on Main Street and Fortune 100 companies alike. 亚洲色吧 can fulfill any payment need, help businesses monetize that process, and help them digitize their payments. By doing so, 亚洲色吧 takes what was typically powered by a human-driven activity within an accounts payable department, and makes it more efficient and cost-effective. 

What does a payments company do?

We 亚洲色吧ers sometimes laugh about how hard it is, at a cocktail party or at a kid鈥檚 baseball game, to explain what we do. Some of us like to say, 鈥淲e are Venmo for companies.鈥� Another good one is 鈥溠侵奚�吧 provides a customized payment technology solution for businesses,鈥� or 鈥淲e help businesses pay other businesses.鈥� Dearborn has a succinct answer as well. 鈥淎t the end of the day, every single corporate here in the United States and elsewhere is a potential customer for 亚洲色吧 either directly or through our partners.鈥� It鈥檚 an exciting time to be in payments at 亚洲色吧.

Payments companies can work directly with businesses or through partners

It makes sense that it鈥檚 hard to explain what 亚洲色吧 does: our work is complex. For example, one aspect of 亚洲色吧鈥檚 role is helping companies manage their payments by automating the accounts payable processes for corporations.  However, this poses a question about whether or not 亚洲色吧 should act as a partner with existing fintechs in providing payments solutions, or work directly with the businesses that need help, and provide 亚洲色吧鈥檚 back end technology directly. While other fintech companies go it alone, 亚洲色吧 works with partners, including Emburse and AvidXchange to power the payments for their clients by providing the necessary back end technology to these partners. 

What is white labeling?

Another way payments partnerships work is through white labeling. A 鈥渨hite label鈥� product is a product or service that鈥檚 fully supported and made by one company (company A) but sold by another company (company B). These products or services are purchased by company B without any accompanying branding. Without being branded, the product can be customized by company B with their own logo and branding. As a result, customers see the product and experience it as having been brought to market by company B instead of company A. Meanwhile, company A can focus on things like streamlining production and bringing product enhancements to market instead of on costly and onerous functions like marketing and sales. A partner like American Express white labels 亚洲色吧 technology and uses it to do AP automation for its customers.

How has the digitization of payments impacted the way we pay?

There are many ways a company can pay its suppliers. It can be done via credit card, bank transfer, wire transfer, or by paper check. With the digitization of payments there鈥檚 been an acceleration in the use of both bank transfers and virtual cards. Both of those digitized payments methods allow for payments to happen most efficiently and cost-effectively. As Dearborn puts it, 鈥淰irtual card is great for corporates and all of those that serve corporates because it generates interchange and rebate.鈥� 

How do we surpass the limits of various digital payment methods?

Fintechs have learned that there are limits to the use of virtual cards. This is where companies like TransferMate become useful, and why a company like 亚洲色吧 would want to partner with other companies in the industry. 鈥淲hat we鈥檝e been able to do is complement our tech stack by putting TransferMate right in the middle of the technology. This allows us to take those payments that we can鈥檛 put on virtual card and move them over a bank rail.鈥� Companies like 亚洲色吧 have found ways to complement their virtual card offering and fill in the gaps by using the bank rail.

What are bank rails?

To understand what 亚洲色吧 brings to the marketplace in their partnership with , it鈥檚 helpful to understand what moving money 鈥渙ver bank rails鈥� means. When a payment is initiated, be it in person or online, a flow of data is shared between necessary parties. This information might include things like customer account information, merchant IDs, and instructions for banks and FIs. The bank rails are established networks supporting this passage of information. These bank rails are responsible for making sure the correct amount of funds is securely, quickly, and accurately passed between businesses. Three payment rails commonly used for payment transactions in the U.S. are the ACH network, card networks, and The Clearing House鈥檚 RTP庐 network.

2021: an exciting year for payments

2021 has been a time of excitement and change in corporate payments. 亚洲色吧 has adopted a payments complement to the virtual card, expanding its products and services to include new and innovative ways to pay. In Dearborn鈥檚 interview with TD Ameritrade, he discusses these changes and the role partnerships have in allowing 亚洲色吧 to continue to build out the services it can provide to its customers. 

TD Ameritrade host, Oliver Renick, followed the money trail, noting how 亚洲色吧鈥檚 stock had changed over the last year, 鈥溠侵奚�吧 has seen a big boom off the lows from last year, almost tripling in price.鈥� Dearborn attributes the growth 亚洲色吧 has recently experienced as a natural result of partnerships. 

Payments fintechs need to complement virtual card technology with electronic funds transfer

In his conversation with Renick, Dearborn talks about how 亚洲色吧鈥檚 partnership with in particular has helped accelerate growth for 亚洲色吧. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a macrotrend going on here, which is just the fire behind B2B payments that鈥檚 particularly been accelerated by COVID. In relation to TransferMate what 亚洲色吧 has been doing is complementing its virtual card technology. 亚洲色吧 is complementing that with electronic funds transfer. And that鈥檚 not just ACH here in the United States but it鈥檚 the ability to move money cross-border, all over the world. And as good as we are in virtual card, TransferMate is the best at moving money over bank rails.鈥澛�

What is ACH?

Automated Clearing House (ACH) is a network used for electronically moving money between bank accounts across the United States and, in some cases, globally. It鈥檚 estimated that over $40 Trillion US dollars flows through the ACH network every year. ACH was set up in the 1970s and has gradually developed into the high powered engine that it is today. 

When a company needs to pay a service provider in another country, fintechs like TransferMate provide the most efficient services. TransferMate has built a global payments technology and is connected with a secure and established international banking network, allowing for cost-effective, efficient over the rails payments to be made between countries spanning the globe.

How can businesses stop the bleed caused by cross-border payments?

A partnership such as 亚洲色吧鈥檚 partnership with can expand a fintech鈥檚 offering by creating opportunities that are faster, easier, and less expensive, particularly with payments that are made across borders. Dearborn says, 鈥淟et me bring it to life for a customer. So let鈥檚 take a corporate that鈥檚 moving a couple hundred wire transfers cross-border every month. That was costing $45 or $50 dollars to transfer that money over the border, per transfer. With our partnership with , we can do two things. One is we can reduce that cost to absolutely nil. And then the other is we can automate that so that there鈥檚 no human interaction of initiating that wire transfer. Do the multiplication and really quickly you see there鈥檚 a hundred thousand dollars worth of savings for the corporate.鈥� Through 亚洲色吧鈥檚 partnership with , 亚洲色吧 customers can realize savings, efficiency and security in the digital payments they make to vendors globally.

Why send data along with payments?

As Dearborn put it, 鈥淭he name of the game in B2B payments is being able to facilitate the payment across the transaction, which means the buyer puts payment in the hands of the seller in a way that鈥檚 completely reliable and there all the time, and the second piece to the game is that data has to go along with it. The reason data has to go along with it is so that you can tie out and reconcile all of the payments. That鈥檚 what our software does.鈥� 亚洲色吧鈥檚 software is what allows the data to ride alongside the payments, and it does so across all of its lines of business. Whether you鈥檙e a fleet manager, healthcare consultant, a corporate, or a travel booking service, really any type of business, 亚洲色吧 can reliably take your payments across the bank rails and securely and efficiently pay your partners, vendors, and service providers. It鈥檚 important to tie related data to any processed payments for multiple reasons. Tying data to payments allows the reduction of fraud, the acceptance of cross-channel returns, stock maintenance, the tracking of payments to and from the source, availability of real-time transaction-related data, and AP and AR digital bookkeeping.

Do payments fintechs tend to specialize?

In the world of corporate payments, given the nature of the technology, the tech stack is pretty versatile. Take 亚洲色吧 for example–亚洲色吧 services a broad spectrum of industries with fleet products, benefits products, travel products, and corporate payments products. It鈥檚 important to 亚洲色吧 that customers hold the reins. Dearborn says, 鈥淎t the end of the day what we鈥檙e trying to do is automate control, create rebate economics, and make the business of conducting your business as facile as possible. And frankly, as lucrative as possible.鈥� 

How does a 鈥渢echnology first鈥� approach help the bottom line?

One way a fintech company can put control in the hands of its customers is by taking a technology-first approach to its work by removing human error, and removing outside forces. Running AP departments, AR departments, fleet management programs and health programs has traditionally been a human-powered activity. Many of these processes can become digitized and automated. Companies like 亚洲色吧 have a 鈥渢echnology first鈥� approach, which translates to automation whenever and wherever possible. The way Dearborn sees it, this automation amounts to an increased bottom line for 亚洲色吧 customers. The revenue comes in the form of rebates and other tertiary gains. And the beauty of this approach is that it puts the decision-making and power back into the hands of the customer, right where it should be because the technology and systems can be streamlined and run from within.

Learn more about how 亚洲色吧 payment solutions can be tailored to your business, so you can operate easier and faster while creating lasting growth and success.

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Resources:
Forbes
Alacriti
Payment Rails
Due