Neither the pandemic nor economic cooling is stopping the progress of cross-border trade, but companies doing business internationally know their payments tech needs attention.
Needing B2B payments, cash management and invoice reconciliation simplified and made more manageable, mid-market and enterprise companies continue seeking ways to streamline money movement and data, but research finds that less than one-third feel they’re progressing.
For The Innovation Gap: Meeting The Challenge Of Payments Modernization, a PYMNTS and FIS collaboration, we surveyed over 300 executives from financial institutions (FIs) with assets over $500 million to see what’s needed to bring cross-border money management under control.
Get the study: The Innovation Gap: Meeting The Challenge Of Payments Modernization
Numerous companies involved in cross-border trade created in-house systems to manage areas like B2B cash flow and forecasting, but few feel these are enabling business adequately.
Online portals are seen as the better way, but most companies require expertise in creating them. The study found that 42% of FIs “cited the inability to offer supplier portals as a key problem for their corporate customers’ experiences, with 15% reporting this as the most important issue. Other common frictions enterprises of all sizes experienced include poor working capital management due to a lack of cash flow visibility at 34%, slow underwriting at 33% and a lack of payments choice at 31%.”
Customization and flexibility are important traits that fast-track international payments, whose complex flows require an integrated real-time view to maintain a unified picture of finances.
“PYMNTS’ research makes it clear that FIs need to focus on four specific innovation areas to better address clients’ B2B pain points. They must offer a centralized view of cash flow and liquidity, streamline business user authentications, simplify invoice reconciliation and deploy speedier supplier and vendor onboarding tools that can rapidly scale with the addition of new businesses,” the study states.
Corporate mindset is an important consideration in modernization projects, and simply knowing that one’s organization needs partner expertise shows an important willingness.
A meaningful share of surveyed executives see the inclination “to partner with FinTechs on payments digitization as a top characteristic needed to address B2B payments friction,” as 31% of FIs called this attribute “very helpful” and 14% believe it is “the most helpful.”
Get your copy: The Innovation Gap: Meeting The Challenge Of Payments Modernization