Corpay Streamlined Its Name, Sets Eyes on Streamlining Corporate Payments

Keeping it simple can often pay off in spades down the line.

That’s the tack that the company formerly known as FLEETCOR Technologies hewed to this March when rebranding to a cleaner, simpler “Corpay.”

But the company name isn’t the only thing that Corpay is streamlining.

During its first quarter 2024 earnings call Wednesday (May 8) — Corpay’s first under the new name and brand — the corporate payments company’s leadership explained to investors that they are focused on building a “narrower, simpler company that we can manage and compound.”

Corpay serves more than 800,000 business customers globally and is the No. 1 B2B commercial Mastercard issuer in North America. Globally, Corpay processes over $145 billion annually in over 140 currencies to over 200 countries.

If that sounds like it might get complicated, it’s because it does. On Wednesday’s call, executives stressed to investors their strategy of building out “flagship products in each of our lines of business that we can scale,” rather than providing fragmented solutions that can be challenging to scale.

Corpay’s offerings include payments solutions designed to help customers manage their vehicle-related expenses, travel expenses and payables. And its customers are looking for the same simplicity as they manage their business’s own finances.

For the quarter, Corpay’s overall customer retention remained stable at 91%, with new bookings up 11%, per its latest results.

“Our Corporate Payments and Vehicle Payments segments delivered solid performance driven by implementations and ramping of new sales,” said Tom Panther, chief financial officer. “Our Lodging segment experienced continued softness in the quarter, but the workforce business showed initial signs of stability in April.”

Read more: FLEETCOR Rebrands to Corpay, Highlights Range of B2B Payments Solutions

Simplifying Corporate Payments

“Our results were in line with our expectations. Overall organic revenue growth was 6% and our Corporate Payments segment grew 17%,” said Ron Clarke, chairman and chief executive officer, in Corpay’s earning release.

“Also, today we announced a definitive agreement to acquire Paymerang, an accounts payable automation company, which enhances our position in several new verticals with meaningful revenue and profit synergies,” Clarke added.

The Paymerang acquisition strengthens Corpay’s position in middle market accounts payable (AP), and integrating Paymerang will add over 250,000 merchants and 1,300 customers to Corpay’s existing merchant network of over 1 million vendors. Together, the businesses will process $120 billion in annual spend.

“Our favorite part of the business is full AP, where we take 100% of the client’s invoices … this will support that,” Clarke told investors about the acquisition. “Because it’s so super-adjacent to what we do, the synergies are quite meaningful to us. It will be quite accretive in around 2025.”

According to PYMNTS Intelligence in the report, “Accounts Payable and Receivable Trends and the Path to Profitability,” an American Express collaboration, 73% of executives surveyed said that AP automation improves cash flow, while nearly all agreed that automation can contribute to business growth and enhance vendor satisfaction.

Still, Corpay issued a revised, downward guidance for the second quarter 2024 and full year, with the company expecting full-year earnings in the range of $18.80 to $19.20 per share, with revenue ranging from $3.96 billion to $4.04 billion.

“Our outlook for the remainder of the year reflects unfavorable foreign exchange and higher interest rates, which significantly worsened in April. We expect revenue growth acceleration over the coming quarters driven by sales, improving retention and business initiatives. We are taking actions to manage expenses to neutralize the softness we are experiencing in Lodging,” said CFO Panther.

Read more: FLEETCOR Invests in Zapay, Expands Vehicle Payments Business in Brazil

PYMNTS has long been covering how prioritizing the digitization of payment workflows can streamline operations and reduce costs.

“There’s a lot of messiness around payments, particularly very large B2B payments that might house hundreds or thousands of invoices with hundreds of associated line-item details,” Dean M. Leavitt, founder and CEO at Boost Payment Solutions, told PYMNTS in a recent interview.

“Large enterprises on both the AP and AR [accounts receivable] side are looking for ways to automate those processes, digitize them and reduce their cost as well.”