Plastiq adds Quickbooks to streamline B2B payments

Payments technology provider Plastiq says it is the first company to fully integrate Intuit QuickBooks Online onto its payments platform — a move that illustrates the growing power of Plastiq's technology.

The integration automates payment processes for businesses, including reconciling payments, bills and invoices with their accounting system with no manual entry required. In that way, San Francisco-based Plastiq says businesses will have an up-to-date and accurate record of all outgoing payments.

"QuickBooks is not easy to integrate with," said Stoyan Kenderov, chief product and technology officer at Plastiq. "There are a lot of objects that exist in QuickBooks that one needs to understand, as it has a data model that is incredibly complex."

Plastiq had to update its platform to ensure it could integrate with the aspects of QuickBooks that operate in real time, while also having an understanding that businesses use the management tool in different ways.

Some QuickBooks users manually input all of the information about a payment, from when and where it will be sent to the type of payment form — and then make the payment. Others do the opposite, paying bills first and then inputting information into QuickBooks to reconcile.

Plastiq has established its platform to handle either scenario for Intuit QuickBooks Online users, providing businesses with cash-flow visibility and control.

"All businesses are managing their finances closer during the pandemic, especially about how they are making their payments," Kenderov said. "QuickBooks is where they make sense of their cash flow, about what is coming in and what is going out."

With Intuit on the platform, imported invoices move directly into QuickBooks, identifying and populating all of the essential information, including vendor, amount due, and invoice due date.

"Before the integration, Plastiq was leaving its customers to manually type up payments into QuickBooks, but now that happens in real time," Kenderov added. "What used to take hours to manually input with code payments and fees, it now all happens automated in minutes."

When the invoice has been paid through Plastiq, the platform will export the payment information back into QuickBooks, including differentiating the portion of the payment applied to the invoice from Plastiq’s transaction fee.

This separation of payments into proper classifications is important for accurate record maintenance for monthly reporting, tax returns and audits, Plastiq says.

The integration further establishes Plastiq as a growing player in the open banking landscape. The company is already integrated with thousands of banks through a partnership with data network Plaid in the U.S. that allows its users to avoid manual input of information regarding activity with business bank accounts.

Last week, Visa and Plaid agreed to terminate Visa's planned acquisition of the data network to avoid a Department of Justice anti-competition lawsuit. It was a move that could stifle some open banking advancements in the U.S., but also provides opportunities for others, Kenderov noted.

As such, Plastiq will continue to advance its technology to embrace even more digital features and small-business operation tools.

"We're really working toward creating a digital wallet for small businesses," Kenderov noted. "The wallet is the place where the money comes in and goes out, and where all smart decisions are made about what form of financing to use, what form of payment acceptance so as to stretch cash flow and dollars."

Plastiq has strategic partnerships in the U.S. with Plaid, U.S. Bank, Visa, Mastercard, Silicon Valley Bank and others, from e-commerce companies and health care facilities to construction companies and restaurants.