JPMorgan Chase & Co., already a dominant provider of payment automation services for large corporate clients, is trying to extend its reach to smaller companies.
The New York financial company announced Tuesday that its JPMorgan treasury services unit was introducing a service, Order-to-Pay Rapid Deployment, designed to offer pretested and packaged products and services to midsize corporations.
David P. Peraino, a managing director in the treasury services unit and its global order-to-pay product executive, said the simplified service would be appropriate for companies with up to 25,000 annual invoices or $25 million in accounts-payable spending. Its customized services for large corporations typically handle twice those volumes.
For midsize companies, the issues are less about operational efficiency than in larger businesses and more about maximizing working capital, Peraino said.
"They may have the volumes, but they don't have the infrastructure," he said. The service "provides a viable alternative for middle-market firms that otherwise would not be in this space."
Rapid Deployment "will meet the majority of the payment needs for the majority of middle-market companies," he said. "It also reduces the price point."
The modular design means that a customer could opt for a payment-only system using checks and automated clearing house transactions. Or it could go for a range of options, including one-time-use commercial card transactions, electronic invoicing and even purchase-order push to its network of suppliers, he said.
JPMorgan Chase began testing the service in the third quarter with a small group of customers, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Peraino said.
Customers can later add modules, such as dynamic discounting or invoice imaging.
Other big banking companies have begun working with partners on their accounts-payable systems. Bank of America Corp. agreed in August to sell its PayMode corporate e-invoicing operation to Bottomline Technologies Inc. in Portsmouth, N.H., and received warrants for stock in the vendor.
U.S. Bancorp and Visa Inc. announced they had formed a joint venture, Syncada LLC, in July to extend the reach of the Minneapolis banking company's PowerTrack platform.
