Albertsons announced last week it would work with the fintech C2FO to give diverse suppliers access to early payments.
“At this juncture, this special C2FO initiative is only available to diverse suppliers,” Jonathan Mayes, senior vice president and chief diversity & inclusion officer at Albertsons Companies told Supply Chain Dive.
The website notes that while supplier diversity issues aren’t new in the grocery world, Albertsons is part of a new group of retailers tackling diversity through better processes.
Mayes said early payment will “enable diverse suppliers, which in many cases are small businesses,” to gain seamless access to capital, helping them grow and scale.
“Supplier diversity is a proven way to increase the financial performance of your organization, attract top talent, and optimize innovation,” Mayes said. “In addition to being a moral imperative, it helps ensure that a retailer’s product assortment is relevant to a broad customer base.”
Supply Chain Dive says supplier diversity is something retailers and grocers are focused on of late, with the midwestern grocery chain Mejier hosting a virtual summit with diverse suppliers during the spring, and Target pledging to purchase more than $2 billion from black-owned suppliers in the next four years.
C2FO’s deal with Albertston’s is similar to deals the company made with Walmart and Sam’s Club in May.
“The simple interface, provided by technology platform C2FO, enables suppliers to hand-select the invoices they would like to request early payments on,” executives from the two Walton companies wrote in a blog post at the time.
As PYMNTS noted earlier this year, the issue of late B2B payments might seem simple on the surface, but is actually more complicated when examined in depth. While some businesses may withhold payments to suppliers for longer than necessary, in most cases, cash flow constraints have their roots in factors that have more to do with longer payment terms than intentional late payments.
Read our report to learn more about discerning the difference between long payment terms and late payments and the benefits of invoice financing.