Boost and Esker Partner to Automate B2B Virtual Card Payments

Boost Payment Solutions and Esker have partnered to fully automate virtual card processing for accounts receivable (AR) departments.

The collaboration seeks to streamline payment reconciliation and eliminate manual efforts, offering greater efficiency and simplicity to the virtual card acceptance process, the companies said in a Tuesday (Sept. 5) press release.

Virtual card payments have gained popularity in the business-to-business (B2B) landscape, but the manual processing of these payments can be burdensome for AR departments, according to the release.

To address this challenge, Esker’s automation technology will be integrated with Boost Payment Solutions’ straight-through processing (STP) solution, Boost Intercept, the release said. This integration will enable businesses to incorporate virtual card payments into their AR workflows, reducing human errors and improving processing time and costs.

“We are thrilled to pair our award-winning technology with the well-established Esker Pay suite to create a fully passive acceptance experience,” Dean M. Leavitt, founder and CEO of Boost Payment Solutions, said in the release.

Steve Smith, U.S. chief operating officer at Esker, added: “Virtual card payments are growing at a tremendous speed. We’ve seen a huge uptick in card issuance on the AP side and want to be a step ahead as it progresses to the receiving end.”

Boost Payment Solutions, with operations in over 45 countries, offers a technology platform that seamlessly serves the needs of commercial trading partners worldwide, according to the press release. Its patented technology solutions eliminate friction, deliver process efficiency, enhance payment security, provide data insights and optimize revenue.

Esker is a global cloud platform that unlocks strategic value for finance, procurement and customer service professionals, the release said. Its solutions incorporate AI technologies to drive increased productivity, enhanced visibility, reduced fraud risk and improved collaboration with customers, suppliers and employees.

Integrated and automated solutions are gaining ground in the B2B payment landscape, Leavitt wrote in the PYMNTS eBook, “2023 Payments New Year’s Resolutions.”

“I feel confident that the solutions that rise to the top will be the ones that understand and solve the problems we consistently hear, offering simplicity, cost effectiveness, easy implementation and flexibility,” Leavitt wrote.

These solutions also equip companies with the type of real-time visibility that is essential for making strategic business decisions and adapting to changing conditions, Esker CEO Jean-Michel Berard told PYMNTS in an interview posted in May 2022.

“Esker’s AI-driven technology automates O2C [order-to-cash] and P2P [procure-to-pay] processes, removing low-value tasks and speeding up processes so that companies are in a position to pay and get paid in a timely fashion,” Berard said at the time.