B-to-B payments

By aligning, the two companies hope to offer efficiencies in a fiercely competitive business payments market.

The ClearSpend app will allow businesses to see real-time updates and make changes to company card accounts instantly.

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.

Tipalti, whose platform automates domestic and international accounts payable, has raised $30 million in a Series C financing round led by Zeev Ventures, bringing its funding total to $50 million.

In a move to support its business-to-business payments platform, Visa has agreed to acquire software provider Fraedom.

JPMorgan says it will deploy Total System Services Inc. technology when issuing virtual payment cards to commercial clients.

The banks behind the Zelle network had more in mind than P-to-P payments between consumers, and BNY Mellon is beginning the network's evolution by targeting the business payments market.

Success with blockchain does not depend on new technology alone. It requires bringing together experts in people, process and technology to simplify complex processes and apply tested methods to the new technical landscape, writes Michael Goodman, senior director of data and analytics for NTT Data Services.

The fintech revolution is now touching almost every market in the payments space. Some are still further ahead than others, so expect 2018 to be a year of consolidation in more mature sectors, but one of rapid change in those with some catching up to do, writes David Yohe, vice president of marketing at BillingTree.

As organizations look to AP to take on more strategic planning, budgeting, and cash management activities, they have to use automation to get rid of the manual, repetitive, non-value-added tasks they’re doing now, writes Brent Meyers, vice president of national sales for Nvoicepay.

If e-invoicing were adopted by more organizations, many of the issues that currently cause late payments would naturally evaporate, leaving leaders more resources to seek out and identify opportunities for business improvement in this year and beyond, writes Richard Hurwitz, CEO of Tungsten Network.