B2B payments update Visa, Mastercard & American Express

Digital B2B payments: leveraging data to create new opportunities

Giving an overview of the key trends and drivers, the specialist noted that most innovation has centred on consumer transactions. Although B2B “dwarfs” consumer in terms of market size, many of the processes are still manual and paper-based. However, “there is a flurry of investment to try to digitise those flows and, more importantly, to use the digitisation to leverage the data that’s sitting inside these flows, to monetise it in multiple different ways.”

There are differing company strategies, with Visa and Mastercard looking into providing supporting infrastructure for B2B payments, “to enable banks, issuers and other third parties to build product on top of their core rails”. Meanwhile, American Express and Discover are taking a “product-based route”.

There is “a big opportunity to further monetise client relationships beyond the pure payment transaction”. This could involve using customer data to offer pay-later services or protection against currency volatility. In addition, the regulatory changes taking place in Europe and Asia-Pacific, among other places, could drive opportunities.

Looking more towards the future, the conversation moved to whether B2B payments will be derived more from partnerships with accounting software companies or the banks themselves, as well as the merits of Visa’s B2B Connect scheme. M&A activity could still be taking place “where banks or larger application players are buying smaller application players”.

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