Visa’s B2B Payments Chief Says Don’t Call Innovation a Resolution — Call It a Mission (Critical)

The payments industry’s collective responsibility is to lessen the B2B money movement burden across industries and the globe, Visa SVP Darren Parslow writes in the new PYMNTS eBook, “2023 Payments New Year’s Resolutions.”

At Visa, we’re anointing 2023 the year of B2B Payments 3.0.

According to a Visa survey of 500 U.S. business owners and senior finance executives, nearly half of businesses (41%) said that slow B2B payments have at least as large an impact on their company’s financial outlook as inflation and recession fears. The payments industry’s collective responsibility is to lessen the B2B money movement burden across industries and the globe. B2B payments currently represent $120 trillion in commerce globally, so there’s real value in making them more seamless.

In 2023, we expect innovation within the B2B payments industry to continue to accelerate, and with it will come another wave of digital transformation. Payment buzzwords like digital, secure, fast, flexible and seamless — terms that have been circulating for years with fits and starts of progress against each — will finally be commonplace in global B2B commerce.

We know CFOs are looking to be able to determine their working capital position via a glance at their mobile devices. Employees want to be able to make expense payments with a single tap. We must ensure we’re meeting these needs because, by 2025, 80% of B2B transactions are expected to be digital. That’s a big shift from today, when 55% of businesses surveyed still use physical checks for B2B payments. It’s also a real opportunity to help current and potential clients get paid faster.

We can make predictions all day, but none of this is possible if we — the “payments industry” — don’t collectively do the hard work.

As we head into the new calendar year, we’re calling on our peers, partners and clients to build on the progress made over the last couple of years and make it your mission to provide any opportunity to customers — new and existing — to modernize their B2B payments infrastructure. Give them the tools to move domestic and cross-border money seamlessly; offer relevant data so they can avoid manual reconciliation; and provide real-time solutions like virtual cards that improve cash flow and provide spend controls. This is just the start (of B2B Payments 3.0, that is).

It’s our job to ensure business transactions are just as simple, efficient and secure as consumer points of sale. This can potentially have a lasting impact (think customer loyalty, new business opportunities, etc.). In less than three years, more than 70% of the workforce will be digital natives (millennials and Gen Z). These are the current and future corporate treasurers, procurement officers, accounts payable and receivable managers, business travelers and more. They expect their B2B transactions to be digital, fast, and secure.