Bank and Fintech work together to transform the world of B2B payments with virtual cards
Corporate Spending Innovations (CSI), a leader in electronic B2B payment solutions, announced today that they have teamed up with Bank of the West, a subsidiary of BNP Paribas, to launch V-PAYO, an evolution of their ePayables products and services that provides a unique payment experience for commercial customers and their vendors. This product offers clients greater automation, process efficiency, and digitization through an integrated payables experience utilizing a virtual card optimization process for B2B payments.
Virtual cards streamline operations enabling corporate clients to work more efficiently. They replace paper checks with digitized B2B payments, making them more effective than traditional ACH. Expenses are greatly reduced, and the buyer and supplier portals provide payment visibility and status with faster and more comprehensive reconciliation. In addition, virtual cards allow for an increased float period, up to 55 days, which can help improve cash flow.
V-PAYO features:
- Single file for all payment methods including virtual card, ACH or check print and delivery
- File Transfer Protocol (FTP) with flexible file formats and Application Programming Interface (API) capabilities
- Card payment optimization, increasing usage from the industry average of 15% to 25%+ of total payments
- Buyer and supplier portals providing full visibility of payment status and automated reconciliation capabilities
- Centralized database with comprehensive vendor information and high success rate of vendor on-boarding
The integration with the state-of-the-art software will mostly be through an API into a company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) – system – making the accounts payable process automated, efficient, and easy to reconcile.
“Applying a unique method to each payment based on an algorithm that optimizes for cards or ACH, is the next generation of ePayables,” said Dominique Fracchia, Head of Commercial Card and Managing Director at Bank of the West. “V-PAYO will help our customers save money, increase controls, provide greater fraud protection, and allow for extended float and rebates.”
“The challenges created by the pandemic have accelerated the market need for corporate AP automation and invoice payment digitization and Bank of the West recognized this early on,” said Jim Foster, EVP Payment Partners & Financial Institutions at CSI. “We are excited about the opportunity to bring our CSI Paysystems technology assets and B2B payments expertise to bear in collaboration with Bank of the West to create the V-PAYO integrated payables solution and provide efficiency and cost savings to the bank’s commercial customers.”
