Digital Payments Strengthen Collaborative Ties Between Trading Partners

As companies look to improve their cash flows, streamline their accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payable (AP) and strengthen collaborations with trading partners, the lure of paper checks has diminished severely.

Trading partners that use digital payments report increases in overall customer satisfaction, more flexibility in the payment options they offer and increased book-balancing efficiency, according to “Reimagining Business Payments,” a PYMNTS and Billtrust collaboration.

Get the report: Reimagining Business Payments

The desire to speed up payments and streamline business processes has motivated companies and the banks they rely on to work together to convince payers to shift to digital alternatives.

Deploying Digital Lockboxes

For example, digital lockboxes can receive payments and quickly match remittance information while sending the information almost simultaneously to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The result is a high match rate of invoice payments and more easily balanced books, which can each help improve customer satisfaction.

B2B payments require simplicity and certainty, Billtrust CEO Flint Lane told PYMNTS in an interview. Digital lockboxes can automate the processing of payments and invoicing — cutting down the labor-intensive tasks that were once tolerable before the pandemic but have always stood as barriers to reconciliation and cash flow visibility.

Read more: Digital Lockboxes Tackle B2B Payments Mail Float Problem

“All a supplier should know is that the digital payments should be streamlined, and the rules can be enforced,” Lane said. “And the byproduct is that ‘paper check’ enterprises will move to digital. Getting paid faster, with fewer exceptions and less labor, represents a win all around.”

Improving the Collaborative Commerce Quotient

A digital lockbox can encourage collaboration, optimize transactions and reduce the work sending, receiving and reconciling payment information involves.

In addition, a digital lockbox can help businesses take a collaborative approach to generating and processing invoicing and payments. Digital lockboxes can ensure payments arrive quickly and securely with remittance data integrated directly into an AP or ERP solution, ready to be reconciled in the monthly books.

Using a digital lockbox as a central collection and distribution point for incoming payments can lead to some transformative changes, including more effective problem solving, better overall financial processes, increased flexibility, reduced manual tasks and improved overall customer satisfaction.

On the latter point — improved overall customer satisfaction — a digital lockbox can give a client more flexibility for remittance for electronic payments, whether through email, AP systems integration or an online portal.

This will help build goodwill and collaboration between trading partners, which can go a long way in maintaining long-lasting business.