Digital Platforms Reduce Costs and Risk of Business Payments

It’s a new go-to-market landscape with a new set of rules for B2B players.

Modern B2B marketplace platforms are helping reshape how organizations of all sizes operate and scale, while digital capabilities are rapidly transforming the ways in which buyers and sellers interact across every B2B touchpoint.

This, as Samsung announced it is expanding its online B2B store to enable more small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across 30 countries to shop and receive benefits that fit their needs. And new PYMNTS research in the April 2023 report, “Merchants Need Modern Payment Systems to Meet Customer Demand,” shows that legacy B2B payment systems are rapidly giving way to digital platforms that can accelerate transactions, improve cash flow and streamline compliance.

“The key elements to … B2B online stores are open accessibility, simple purchase process, and a variety of payment methods specialized for SMBs,” said Daniel Kang, executive vice president and head of the D2C Center at Samsung Electronics.

Kang added that, when taking a global view, he sees attractive “growth potential” in the online B2B business.

That’s because in today’s modern and increasingly digital landscape, it is possible for businesses to have their cake and eat it too — reducing costs and increasing growth at the same time.

In an interview with PYMNTS, Luke Trayfoot, chief revenue officer of Mangopay, explained that once businesses go digital, they do not go back.

Get the report: Businesses Fast-Track B2B Payments Digitization to Boost Growth

Digital Can Drive Success Even Amid Challenges

In the face of ongoing macroeconomic challenges that both include supply chain disruptions and historic heights for interest rates and inflation, organizations are increasingly refocusing their business strategies.

Economic headwinds have leading firms shifting away from a growth at all costs mindset to prioritizing near-term roadmaps that emphasize healthy and sustainable profitability while protecting their balance sheet fundamentals against unforeseen events.

Helping underpin this broader marketplace transformation, businesses throughout the economy are increasingly leveraging digital platforms to drive future-fit B2B opportunities that can ensure their ongoing success according to new research in the March 2023 PYMNTS report, “Digital Payments: Modernizing Procurement Processes,” a collaboration with Corcentric.

It is becoming difficult for firms to ignore the spiking interest among business customers in digital payments and modern features that can significantly reduce costs while also improving user experience and enhancing an organization’s position in highly competitive markets.

As they take their cues from an ongoing consumerization of the B2B marketplace, B2B payments, the engine of any marketplace platform, are growing increasingly digital themselves — helping accelerate growth by supplanting error-prone, slow and expensive legacy methods.

See also: How AP And AR Digitization Are Transforming Customer Relationships

Reducing Administrative Burdens and Removing Manual Processes

That’s why the companies behind an emergent suite of next generation B2B platforms, including Samsung and others, are building them out with digital tools like machine learning (ML) algorithms that match buyers with sellers while offering dynamic pricing capabilities, streamlined solutions like automated invoice reconciliation and foreign exchange (FX) support, along with other digital-first solutions that take aim at historic frictions.

As just one example, paper checks have historically been the preferred method of choice B2B payments. Now, according to a PYMNTS survey, as few as just 25% of B2B payments are made by check, underscoring the impact of digital.

PYMNTS has written previously about how an emergent blend of FinTech advancements, future-fit payment platforms and dynamic, next-generation B2B marketplaces are increasingly offering businesses large and small new opportunities for critical operational and relational transformations across both industries and borders alike.

More than half of CFOs tell PYMNTS that digitization has allowed them to support an increase in a variety of modern payment types, including: digital wallets like PayPal (64%), credit cards (64%), ePayables with virtual cards (55%) and real-time payments (52%).

In contrast to checks and other traditional methods, digital payment platforms are fast, flexible and efficient.

Nine in 10 SMB owners (90%) surveyed in PYMNTS’ “AP/AR Quick-Start Guide,” a collaboration with Plastiq, report that all-in-one payment platforms for B2B transactions are able to save time and drive third-party convenience.

Buyers will always want to be able to more efficiently find supply, and many of the emergent B2B marketplaces jostling for position come with bells and whistles that reduce administrative burdens and remove manual processes by combining various technologies to increase speed, efficiency, and operational visibility, while simultaneously building greater trust between business partners with real-time settlement systems, remittance networks, and currency exchange platforms that can coordinate and complete complex transactions that historically used to take days, or even weeks, in seconds.

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools and solutions charting the B2B landscape’s digital transformation, the next few years are set to be an exciting time for a new era of B2B success stories.

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