Worldpay, Sage Team Up For Corporate Card Payments

Payment processing company Worldpay and enterprise software firm Sage Group are teaming up to expand corporate card payment capabilities for joint business clients.

In a press release on Tuesday (Feb. 12), Worldpay and Sage Pay pointed to the U.K. market’s struggles with late invoice payments, citing Sage research that found 17 percent of all invoices issued from small and medium-sized businesses in the U.K. and Ireland are paid late. Nine percent of U.K. invoices are ultimately written off by small businesses as bad debt, the companies added.

Their collaboration will enable companies to receive payment on their B2B invoices via credit card, with Worldpay processing the payment for SMBs.

“By increasing the opportunities for businesses to accept card payments, their customers can quickly pay by card (or other digital payment methods of their choice), which helps reduce the businesses’ admin burden and the time it takes to chase [invoices] up,” said Sage EVP of Global Payments and Banking Seamus Smith in a statement, adding that researchers have also found that small businesses spend between seven and 15 days a year chasing down payments on outstanding invoices.

Worldpay was acquired by Vantiv last year, a takeover that led to $10 million in “cost synergies,” the firm said last May. Worldpay also said at the time that it expected those synergies to reach $45 million in 2018.

Sage has undergone its own internal changes, refocusing away from payroll in the U.S. and selling those assets for more than $100 million in January. At the time, Sage said it would use those funds to reduce debt and refocus on small business cloud subscription services.

“Cloud and emerging technologies are moving quickly, and we need to invest to make sure we can stay ahead in terms of what we can offer our customers,” said Sage Group CEO Steve Hare during the company’s earnings call last November.