HighRadius, AmEx Team Up For Digital Transitions

American Express is teaming up with HighRadius, a FinTech Software-as-a-Service company, to help companies transition away from manual accounts receivable (AR) processes into new digital ones, a press release says.

The partnership allows American Express merchants access to the HighRadius integrated platform, which can help them move their processes to digital means as the COVID-19 crisis necessitates. The move to digital can also save time and cut costs overall, the release says. HighRadius is used by hundreds of companies to help optimize working capital through an artificial intelligence (AI)-based system.

The partnership will afford AmEx merchants a way to get paid quickly with numerous payment methods including credit cards, ACH, automated reminders, AutoPay and others. It will allow them to automate collections through email, mail, text or phone, and will add a more modern digital payment system and portal for users to help streamline things.

Invoices can be standardized, workflows customized and merchants will be able to match payments to open invoices or statements.

In May, HighRadius debuted its RadiusOne A/R Suite, intended to boost options for AR automation, PYMNTS reported.

HighRadius intended the app to help businesses around the globe connect and make payments in an easier fashion, and to help businesses keep expanding their services. The company also debuted other services for cash reconciliation, eInvoicing and collections, PYMNTS reported.

A funding round from the company raised $125 million in January, giving it the status of unicorn.

The use of automated technologies to accelerate AR isn’t new — companies have been engaging in those practices for years now as they look for ways to circumvent their issues. For instance, a PYMNTS report from November of last year shows that $3 trillion is tangled in various businesses’ outstanding AR, and the average company has 24 percent of its revenue tied up in AR, terms or trade credit. That’s often because manual checks continue to be the main source of payments.

The use of AI can help sort payments and reconciliations, and proactively show companies better which ones run the risk of being late, through patterns of the customer’s previous payments.