Few companies began exploring integrating digital payments into their solutions before 2019. But a business that doesn’t offer its customers the convenience and safety of digital payments in today’s world is definitely up a creek without a paddle.
COVID-19 obviously had a tremendous impact on business operations globally. Agile companies adopted new ways of doing business not only in the front office through digital commerce, but also in the back office with automated solutions for accounts payable and accounts receivables. In fact, the recent Back to Business study by Visa® reveals that nearly sixty-five percent of business customers want to continue using contactless payments even after the pandemic is over. As these businesses have experienced (and many more continue to recognize), the digitization of payment processes is not only good for today’s bottom line, but might just be a key to remaining in business.
Let’s take a closer look at five ways digital payments can improve your business.
1. Decrease in Payment Processing Time
Digital payments are faster to process. A PayTech Revolution report by Deloitte reports digital payments to be more than fifty percent faster to process than traditional purchase order processing. For businesses, faster payment processing translates to more control over receivables.
2. Efficient Approval Process
Upon receiving an invoice, a customer’s organization reviews the contents of the invoice, identifies potential disputes, and goes through multiple rounds of review before approving payment. Businesses can make this lengthy process substantially easier for their customers with self-service portals that allow customers to keep track of invoices and make payments from within the portal after approvals. All necessary stakeholders have the ability to view the invoices and comments in one place, which makes the approval process easy to manage.
3. Reduced Administration Cost
Digital payments eliminate reconciliation efforts and reduce manual intervention and errors, resulting in higher cost-efficiency than traditional purchase order processes cost. Factor in the savings of no longer printing and mailing paper invoices and checks, and your total costs are further decreased. All this cost reduction naturally reflects in improved earnings.
4. Improved Cash Flow
Having greater visibility into their cash position helps businesses make timely decisions about the movement of funds, and faster settlement with digital payments improves cash flow. Modern accounts receivable solutions enable businesses to slice and dice information, helping them gain valuable insights to make better-informed decisions.
5. Deeper Relationships with Customers
After nearly dethroning cash in the consumer market, digital payments are well on their way to replacing check payments and paper-intensive processes in the B2B world. By providing multiple options such as ACH, credit cards, debit cards, and digital wallets, businesses can make it easier for their customers to pay their dues on time. In the previously mentioned Visa study, nearly seventy-two percent of the businesses surveyed expect their customers to continue to prefer digital payments in the future.
The pandemic has underscored the importance of digital payments among all demographics. With multiple secure payment options on the market, millennials and boomers have helped drive the shift to digital payments along with Gen Z, who were the early adopters of digital commerce. Embracing digital business-to-business payments and optimizing the back office is a compelling way to help grow to your full potential.
A business that doesn’t provide the option of digital payments is likely to find itself in trouble in the future.
Still not convinced? Or perhaps you’d just like to learn a bit more about how Commerce Bank can help you on your payments journey, just as we did for this customer? Click here to learn a bit more about Commerce Bank and its CommercePayments™ solutions or to connect with one of our professionals.
Commerce Bank, a subsidiary of Commerce Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ: CBSH), leverages more than 150 years of proven strength and experience to help individuals and businesses solve financial challenges. Visit us at commercebank.com/builtforthis to learn more.
