B-to-B payments

The Fed's catalog lays the foundations for an invoice standard to accelerate the adoption of electronic invoicing by U.S. businesses, and boosts interoperability by avoiding the myriad standards found in Europe, writes Roger Hatfield, vice president of North America for CloudTrade.

Payment data can also reveal insights for companies to foster better relationships with customers and vendors or suppliers, writes Matt Clark, president and COO of Corcentric.

Global payments processor Payscout has launched a self-service payment portal to process transactions between a business and its debtors, in effect linking businesses to back-end processing facilities without involving bill-collection agents.

Small-business payments are an inefficient mess of unpaid invoices and paper processes that are causing substantial funds to languish and companies to stagnate. One possible solution is to address the cash flow, not the payment mechanism itself.

Business payments are among the last major transaction types to cling to paper checks, an automation gap that's both an annoyance and an opportunity for Nicole Tackett.

Comdata, a major issuer of fuel cards in North America, has established a partnership with payments processor Noventis to expand the range of Comdata’s suppliers that can accept payments through virtual cards to further reduce reliance on paper checks.

Eyeing sectors with increased independent work forces and growing tourism, cross-border payments provider Transpay says it is making its business-to-business mass payout platform available in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

R&D capabilities at Interac got a boost last month when Interac Corp. was created by merging Interac Association and Acxys Corp. It brought together a payments network handling nearly 5.7 billion debit transactions annually with a company specializing in payments development, management and consultation.

The investment continues a trend of banks focusing on commercial payments technology.

CFOs can give their accounts receivable valuable time back during the workweek when switching to an automated B-to-B payments solution, writes Ed Jordan, CFO of Billtrust.