Will BYOD Lead Enterprise To Mobile Payments?

The world of B2B often emulates its B2C peers. The B2C eCommerce push has led to B2B demand for digital procurement solutions, while the trend among consumers away from paper checks and often even cash has eventually encouraged B2B firms to similarly seek out other payments technologies like e-invoicing.

Companies’ adoption of the mobile device is yet another example of how the industry can mimic its B2C counterparts. Enterprises are adopting the Bring Your Own Device movement because consumers want to use their personal smartphones in the workplace to do work-related tasks.

Recently published research from Gartner has found that the BYOD movement is fueling a new trend in B2B. Just as consumers have led the mass explosion of mobile apps, enterprises are similarly voicing their demands for such technology.

Gartner found that the demand for enterprise mobile applications will outgrow market supply five to one in only a few years. By 2017, analysts predict, IT organizations will be unable to meet the high demand to deliver mobile apps to the businesses that want them.

Following In Consumers’ Footsteps

Many analysts see this rise in demand for mobile apps within companies as a pattern stemming from the consumer mobile app boom.

Gartner found that mobile phone unit sales alone will reach 2.1 billion units by 2019, which Gartner added will similarly fuel this demand – especially as businesses continue to adopt the Bring Your Own Device movement. According to researchers, growing mobile sales will “fuel demand for apps in the enterprise that meet the high performance and usability of consumer apps.”

BYOD has led to the development of an array of mobile enterprise apps. A partnership with Apple and IBM announced earlier this year, for example, has the two tech giants developing apps for the workforce, like apps that use near-field communication for healthcare providers to obtain patient data, or supplier order management tools for merchants.

The travel and expense management sector has also emerged as a popular sector for enterprise app development on the basis that when employees are traveling, they need mobile services to come along.

Separate research by Research and Markets, also released just weeks ago, agreed enterprises are beginning to voice their needs for mobile app solutions. “The rising penetration of smartphones and tablets is allowing companies to introduce BYOD policy in their work environment, which helps in increasing productivity and promoting innovation,” a Research and Markets analysis said in a statement.

In a recent interview with PYMNTS, TSYS Senior Product Development Manager Christina Hall said that consumers’ mass adoption of mobile devices and apps certainly has an impact on enterprise’s subsequent demand for similar solutions.

“For years, we have watched the convergence of personal consumer preference impact the corporate setting,” she said, adding, “[today], there is a shifting mindset among employees, who now expect to conduct and manage their [professional] business with the benefit of intuitive tools and applications similar to those they use to conduct ‘personal’ business.”

Will The Boom Spill Over Into Mobile Payments?

Businesses are now demanding mobile apps the same way consumers have. But will enterprise begin to demand mobile payments applications and services the way the B2C world has?

Hall told PYMNTS that there are caveats to B2B mobile payments adoption. For example, “we need to consider the go-to market approach and how it may differ from the consumer launch,” she noted.

Still, she said that as more sellers upgrade their payments systems, mobile commercial payments are likely to emerge with greater frequency. Issuers of travel cards, corporate cards, fleet, fuel and purchasing cards now have an opportunity to connect their payment solutions to a mobile app for employees to monitor corporate spending on-the-go.

But Hall is convinced that mobile B2B payments will eventually become the norm. “Make no mistake about it,” Hall said, “mobile payments for commercial cards is coming. It’s not a matter of if, but when.”