So, you’ve established your business, and perhaps even moved it online. You’ve selected a Payment Service Provider (PSP) to receive a range of payment types from customers. You’ve put a lot of effort into making your products or services available to a wide range of customers to access and pay in a myriad of ways, and for good reason! Without customers, you don’t have a business. But what about the operational side of things? Did that get neglected along the way?

One thing that may not have crossed your mind, is how you send and receive payments between your business partners – such as suppliers, partners, and delivery companies.

Outdated, lengthy processes

Business to Business (B2B) payments have been around for a long time, of course, and they are often susceptible to the “that’s just how we’ve always done things” line of thought. Traditionally, businesses would place orders in person, via mail, or over the phone. This meant merchants would manually enter the order, ship the product, and provide a paper invoice. Then the waiting game began: it would sometimes take weeks for the invoice to be processed and paid – typically in the form of a paper check which would then need to be taken to the bank for deposit.

Digitizing payments

In the same way that credit cards brought increased speed and security to the merchant-consumer payment relationship, so have they brought some simplicity to the B2B side of things. Small businesses can utilize specialized credit cards, making payments between businesses nearly instantaneous.

The digitization of payment processes means less hands-on tracking and management of ledgers. Payments are received instantaneously and processed via a PSP, then automatically recorded. This means you can focus on growing your business, rather than maintaining the details. There is also increased security in processing payments via digital methods, eliminating the risk of checks lost in the mail, or issues when cashing them.

Payment methods

Credit cards aren’t the only option, of course, to send and receive B2B payments. There are also prepaid cards, which function like credit cards but are pre-loaded with an amount. These are especially helpful for employee expense accounts for travel and meals. Global bank transfers allow for the direct transfer of funds from one merchant account to another. Mobile wallets are digital money wallets (including PayPal) which can be used to easily settle payments.

Conclusion

Examining your B2B payment process for sending and receiving funds is a bit of “low hanging fruit” for streamlining your business, increasing your bottom line, and adding a further security layer to your accounts. Just as diversifying and modernizing your payment methods available to customers creates a better relationship and brings repeat business, the same can be said for B2B payments.

The PSP you select is vital to this process and you want one which will stay ahead of trends in payment methods and security, and provide you with the support and reporting that you need to understand your business. DPO is adept in processing all payments on behalf of businesses. See DPO’s B2B payment solution for more information on B2B payments.