The growth of new cross-border businesses has made it more critical than ever for financial institutions (FIs) and businesses to streamline business-to-business (B2B) payments. As digital technology makes it easier to start and run global businesses, FIs are beginning to recognize the urgency of offering corporate clients more mobile and digital ways to pay their business partners.
Many financial institutions and enterprises are in a rush to meet this growing demand – especially among middle-market and enterprise customers – and they are aware that the payments ecosystem is in dire need of modernization. Despite their best efforts to limit customer payments and cash management frictions, only 30% of FIs say they have been very successful in doing so.
This is just one of the discoveries discovered in The Innovation Gap: Meeting the Challenge of Enterprise Payments Modernizationa PYMNTS collaboration with FIS. This report examines the biggest challenges FIs and businesses face in facilitating frictionless B2B payments. It also provides actionable insights on how FIs and businesses could identify innovation gaps in their modernization strategies and whether partnering with appropriate technology solution partners could help.
Other key findings from the report include:
• FIs have made efforts to meet the ever-increasing needs of their corporate clients for fast, secure and transparent B2B transactions over the past year. Sixty percent of FIs think B2B digital payments solutions are “very” or “extremely” important, 90% of those serving large enterprises and 83% of mid-market businesses say so. As a result, 64% of FIs say they are “very” or “extremely” ready to adopt new technologies to facilitate the consumerization of B2B payments, while 88% of those serving large enterprises and 78% of midsize companies say the same. . .
• Businesses are like consumers in that they are increasingly demanding simplified and secure payment methods better suited to their needs. Seventy-nine percent of FIs are currently working to find solutions that will provide their clients with a single view of cash for real-time cash flow management. As the lack of dedicated supplier portals is another major payment issue for corporate customers, 65% of FIs are actively seeking solutions for this or planning to do so.
• Willingness to partner with FinTechs on payment digitization is seen by FIs as a key feature needed to address B2B payment friction issues. Thirty-one percent of FIs say this feature is very useful, while 14% think it’s the most useful. Knowing about new B2B payment solutions and having an up-to-date technology infrastructure are also considered useful characteristics for 32% and 28% of FIs, respectively.
To learn more about how FIs are working to streamline B2B payments for their corporate clients, To download The report.
