What Is A Payment Factory — And Who Needs One?

What’s a payment factory? Even Google can’t give you a straight answer— but, Bob Stark, vice president of strategy at Kyriba, will shed some light on this on June 8, when he sits down with PYMNTS.com CEO Karen Webster for a Live Digital Discussion.

Kyriba’s clients benefit from global cash visibility, financial controls, and increased productivity across the organization via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) treasury and risk management technology. It’s the number-one cloud treasury solution worldwide. With 18 years of experience in treasury technology, vice president of strategy Bob Stark is at the heart of it, working with clients, partners, and industry influencers to keep Kyriba at the forefront, and continuously educate the market on best practices adopted by progressive treasury and finance teams.

According to Stark, a payment factory— at least within finance— is a “centralized function within an organization that standardizes and processes payments globally, across the organization, through a specific workflow to minimize costs, reduce the risk of fraud, and introduce more stringent controls.”

In other words, a payment factory makes payments less risky and more efficient by streamlining the way they’re sent.

“There are a lot of things that are often multiplied when you have disparate systems and functions going to banks to effectively do the same thing: send payments from the organization to the bank for processing,” Stark told PYMNTS in a preview to the upcoming webinar.

Payment factories are a solution for organizations that process tens or hundreds of thousands of payments per month. They use a certain amount of machine learning and automation to aggregate these payments and identify the best and most cost-effective route to deliver them.

Naturally, this means that certain redundant connections can be severed, and employees tasked with redundant assignments can redirect their energy elsewhere, ultimately reducing the overall footprint and costs incurred by the organization.

Perhaps even more importantly, treasury technology can help organizations reduce fraud and cybercrime by giving Chief Financial Officers and other company executives greater visibility and control.

“Unfortunately, these days, fraud and cybercrime are so prevalent, it’s not just about making a more efficient process,” said Stark; “It’s also about making a more secure process.”

A payment factory, like the one offered by Kyriba, is an opportunity for technology to help an organization rather than hinder it. Oftentimes, said Stark, companies pay too much and get too little by managing things internally, but they feel trapped by technology and don’t know where to turn.

Kyriba’s payment factory is about “not letting technology hold them hostage to working with certain banks, but actually allowing them the ability to be bank-agnostic and pursue the right relationships for them to achieve their objectives,” said Stark.

Stark and Webster will dive deeper on the subject during the June 8 webinar from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST. This is a recommended viewing for all CFOs, plus chief information officers, chief security officers, and other executives who are open to a new way of handling their organization’s payments process.

Listeners can find more info and register ahead of time on the PYMNTS website.