As consumers turn increasingly to the Internet to pay their bills, Nacha, the electronic payments association, is encouraging businesses to use electronic invoicing and payment.
Nacha published a presentation last week on its Web site acknowledging that companies are having a hard time getting their accounting systems geared up for electronic payments, but arguing that the cost benefits of doing so are worthwhile.
Eventually, "business-to-business will probably be a much larger component [of the online payment market] than business-to-consumer," said Pete Lambert, a vice president at Wachovia Corp. in Atlanta and a co-chairman of Nacha's business-to-business committee.
"We're trying to get the dialogue started here," said Robert Unger, the director of electronic billing and payment at the Herndon, Va.-based Nacha. "There are a lot of opportunities here for banks."
Since 85% of business-to-business payments are still made by paper check, U.S. companies are still just starting the migration to electronic payments, Mr. Unger said.
Several companies have introduced products and services that integrate electronic invoices with corporations' accounts-payable systems.
In January, International Business Machines Corp. announced an alliance to market the electronic payment services of eOne Global LP, an affiliate of First Data Corp., to businesses and government agencies.
IBM will promote the SurePay and govOne services of eOne Global to enable corporations and government payers to view and pay invoices online, primarily using automated clearinghouse payments.
"We don't disrupt the bank relationship, we simplify the bank relationship," said Garen Staglin, the president and chief executive of eOne Global. He said he hopes to start making announcements about corporate use of the services in the second or third quarter.
Competitors with a head start are reporting some traction in the corporate market. For instance, Xign Corp. of Pleasanton, Calif., said Monday that companies processed $1.5 billion in payments through its network in its first seven months of operation.
Xign said it had managed disbursement and remittance processing of transactions ranging from $100 for simple one-item invoices up to multimillion-dollar payments applied against multiple invoices and several thousand line items.
Xign says it has more than 300 "trading partners" on its network, including Sprint, VoiceStream, and Charles Schwab & Co. Participating banks include Bank of America Corp., Bank One Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., and Silicon Valley Bank.
Meanwhile, Clareon Corp. of Portland, Maine, said last month that its PayMode remittance-processing service is now compatible with any corporate enterprise resource planning system or accounting software.
