BPN is Now Bi-Directional, Supporting Both Invoice Delivery and Payment Acceptance
Billtrust, a B2B accounts receivable automation and integrated payments leader, announced the next major version of its Business Payments Network 4.0 (BPN) during its Billtrust Summit 2021 event. BPN 4.0 now supports the bi-directional exchange of transactional data and documents, enabling invoice presentment to accounts payable portals in addition to its existing payment and remittance acceptance capabilities. BPN, an open network supporting buyers and suppliers allowing both AP and AR platforms to exchange invoices, payments and remittance data, now delivers invoices to over 170 leading accounts payable portals.
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These new BPN benefits are designed to help suppliers seeking ways to address increasing buyer demand to deliver invoices through AP and procure-to-pay platforms. According to a 2021 study commissioned by Billtrust, over 350 accounting/finance senior leaders reported, “dealing with increasing numbers of customer payment portals” (38%) as a top concern while the majority of respondents stated that their teams interact with an average of 11-20 AP portals.
Dave Adams, Chief Customer Officer at Taulia, a leading fintech provider of working capital solutions, stated, “The integration between BPN and Taulia provides an obvious win for our customers. It creates another channel for invoices to be quickly, easily and accurately presented which leads to high levels of invoice automation.”
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BPN’s new invoice delivery capabilities arrive at a time when BPN is experiencing substantial growth in both transaction volume and overall participation. First quarter 2021 card volume was up 117% year-over-year and total payment volume up 146% year-over-year when including ACH and wire payments, new payment modalities added in August 2020. The network has also seen a strong increase in unique bank and fintech payables platforms directing payments to suppliers through BPN, growing from 34 in 2019 to 58 in 2020, indicative of the continued expansion of participants in the payables automation space, as well as BPN’s relevance to AP platforms looking to increase electronic spend with suppliers.
“BPN is now an even more powerful resource for AP and AR teams to implement straight-through processing,” said Greg Hanson, Chief Product Officer, Billtrust. “Our growing number of participants and network volume, combined with an increased ability to transact across multiple digital modalities, makes BPN a key driver in digitally transforming B2B payments while giving CFOs and CEOs the means to reliably predict and maximize cash flow.”
