Harbor Freight Tools Teams With TreviPay on New Business Buyer Payment Option

Harbor Freight Tools

Retailer Harbor Freight Tools has partnered with TreviPay, a global B2B payments and invoicing network, to offer a new payment option for business and institutional buyers.

The partnership provides a Harbor Freight Commercial Credit Card to give customers instant B2B credit with invoicing and commercial payment terms, according to a Tuesday (Nov. 7) press release.

Designed to meet the needs of B2B and institutional customers, the new Harbor Freight Tools Commercial Account offers features such as net terms invoicing, expense and purchase tracking and authorized purchaser controls.

“By understanding Harbor Freight’s B2B customer profile and shopping habits, we developed a custom, branded, end-to-end purchasing experience to increase customer loyalty and support faster business payments,” TreviPay CEO Brandon Spear said in the release.

Harbor Freight plans to roll out the Commercial Account program for in-store purchases across its 1,400 stores in 48 states, and then also set up eCommerce capabilities. TreviPay will enable Harbor Freight to offer branded, closed loop cards to its business customers, so that multiple buyers can make purchases under a single account.

Alex Aguila, senior director of customer growth at Harbor Freight Tools, cited TreviPay’s “vast industry expertise and flexibility” as key in the company’s decision to partner with TreviPay. The collaboration will provide “all the benefits of real-time credit decisioning, stellar fraud mitigation and a seamless checkout experience,” Aguila said.

Harbor Freight Tools is a family-owned company that began as a mail order business in Southern California in 1977 and has since grown to over 1,400 stores across the country.

TreviPay is a B2B payments and invoicing network that serves industries with large distribution networks such as manufacturing, retail and transportation, per the release.

Last month, TreviPay introduced its new Financial Partner Gateway, a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that lets financial institutions expand their commercial offerings, providing automated accounts receivable, underwriting and trade credit management solutions to their large commercial clients.

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Upwork: Demand for AI Talent Drove Record Revenue in 2024

Work marketplace Upwork earned record revenue in 2024 and attributed its gains in part to artificial intelligence (AI).

In an earnings release and other materials issued Wednesday (Feb. 12), the company highlighted AI innovations it added to its marketplace platform and AI talent the platform connects with its clients.

“We’ve rapidly unlocked demand for AI-related work on our platform,” Upwork President and CEO Hayden Brown said in prepared remarks for the company’s quarterly earnings call.

Upwork reported full-year revenue of $769.3 million, which marked a 12% year-over-year gain and an all-time high, according to the earnings release.

The company achieved this gain during a year in which the broader staffing industry saw a 9% decline in revenue, Brown said in her prepared remarks.

During the year, the gross services volume (GSV) from AI-related work grew 60% and the number of clients engaging in AI-related projects grew 42%.

In addition, in 2024, the hourly earnings of freelancers engaged in AI-related work were 44% higher than those of other freelancers, per the release.

AI has been the fastest growing major category on the Upwork platform for several quarters, with clients seeking talent in prompt engineering, AI integration, generative AI modeling, and data labeling and annotation, according to an investor presentation released Wednesday.

During the Q&A portion of the earnings call, Brown said Upwork has grown and “shape-shifted” to meet the emerging demand for AI talent just as it did in the past, when there was newly created demand for social media managers and mobile developers.

“We are also leveraging AI on our platform to underpin the evolution of predictive and delightful conversational customer experiences,” Brown said in her prepared remarks.

Upwork enhanced its platform in April by adding an AI assistant called Uma that performs tasks like creating tailored proposal drafts for freelancers, evaluating candidates for clients, and scoping projects and designing optimal teams of experts for larger clients, according to the earnings release and the presentation.

The firm also acquired AI-native search-as-a-service company Objective, a move it said allowed Upwork to enhance the search and match performance of its platform, strengthen the company’s AI and machine learning teams, and continue to develop new capabilities for Uma.

“As the AI work tide builds, organizations of all sizes are seeking out more flexible talent models that match their needs for new and emerging skills, with partners who integrate cutting edge AI technology and valued human workers seamlessly and at scale to rapidly deliver on their priorities,” Brown said in her remarks.

“At the same time, professionals across geographies, specialties and industries want digitally powered ways of working that give them easy access to more autonomy, flexibility and earning power.”