With Mobile, Fostering Cross-Border In B2B Transactions

The growth of cross-border commerce is also giving rise to integrated payments via electronic means. And as that trend continues, payments made by paper check — hardly the most efficient of conduits — will start to come down from present levels, where some estimates have pegged the contribution of paper payments to a bit more than 50 percent of transactions.

In an interview with PYMNTS, Corinne MacMillan, chief technology officer at Cambridge Global Payments, which provides cross-border and risk management solutions, said that, when it comes to SMBs (typically, firms with $2 million to $5 million in cross border volume annually) embracing electronic payments across regions, those firms “may not have the same level of complexity” that can be found in larger enterprises, but smaller firms also benefit from consulting services “as they may have uncertainty over entering a new global market.”

The ultimate goal with mobile payments in B2B “is to make an experience for enterprises that is not too far from what the consumer may experience” in terms of ease of use and “where it has become the norm” to use mobile across several different functions.

The key issues to navigate, at least initially, said MacMillan, include the fact that new jurisdictions require working with banks in the region, and in some cases, entirely new banking relationships must be forged.

Mobile devices and digital wallets remain payment choices that are useful in B2B, said MacMillan, especially with lengthening supply chains and also with operations and workers that may be in far-off regions. The mobile wallet solution offers new ways to pay vendors, said MacMilan, and such initiatives are gaining interest in verticals such as companies that are in the relocation space (or are transitioning operations or workers to other, cross-border locales) or in manufacturing and health care.