4 Questions to Ask When Interviewing B2B Payment Providers

Thanks to the internet and new technology, businesses are saving money—and even generating entirely new revenue streams—simply by changing the way they pay suppliers. Checks are being replaced with faster, easier and more secure digital payment methods and, in the process, businesses are reconsidering their overall accounts payable operations.

But who should you partner with in optimizing and implementing an electronic payments program? Not all fintechs are created equal, so keep the following four questions in mind as you consider which payment provider is best-suited to deliver on your program goals.

1. Is the payments solution customized or out-of-the-box? 

Every business has different needs related to payment volume, timing and type, not to mention processes and systems. Finding a payment provider who can meet you where you are and help you transform your accounts payable to reach your goals can be challenging. So, consider your objectives!

Are you looking to cut payment processing costs? Reduce headcount or repurpose employees? Minimize processing time? Reduce exposure to fraud? Maximize your credit card rebate? All of the above? Look for a payment provider who will work with you to define program objectives that uniquely support your business goals, from delivery and implementation to optimization and growth, all the way through review and analysis. A good relationship with your payment provider means just that—a relationship—not a premade solution.

2. When a payment provider says “vendor analysis” what do they mean?

If you’re currently paying a high volume of your invoices by check, there’s a huge opportunity for you to create new revenue and reduce workload by paying your bills via card, instead. But will your suppliers accept card? That’s where vendor analysis, from a fintech perspective, comes into play—and it’s a critical component of an effective payment strategy.

Many payment providers generate this kind of analysis in order to establish program expectations, but it’s important to understand how they arrived at their conclusions. Eric Riddle, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at CSI, said, “In predicting the likelihood that a vendor will accept cards, we look at hundreds of thousands of accepting vendor records from within our internal database, which houses 20 years’ worth of information, as well as likely accepting vendor data from Mastercard and Visa.”

You can also ask payment providers about how they define program metrics and what their client success rate is—how often do they deliver on their vendor analysis predictions? How will they measure the success of your program?

3. How does the payment provider support onboarding new vendors? 

It’s important to prepare your suppliers for automated and digital payments in order to avoid processing issues and soured relationships. Consider how a payment provider handles communication around this transition—especially if you have a strong preference about when, how and from whom the communication originates.

Some businesses prefer to manage supplier relationships, themselves, so they can introduce changes related to payment method or timing. Other times, it’s really helpful to let your payment provider take care of the transition for you. In that case, do you have input or final approval over messaging? Or, maybe a blended approach—with outreach responsibilities shared between you and your payment provider—would work best.

4. How well does their platform integrate with your systems? 

Finally, take a look at the payment platform, itself. Can the payment provider’s technology integrate with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) and invoicing systems, and will it transmit all of the remittance data necessary for reconciliation? And, if so, can the payment platform sync with those systems one-way, or can information flow two-ways? Do you have the flexibility to determine which system serves as your ultimate source of truth for reconciliation between systems? Finally, how do you transmit data—manually, via SFTP or through an API?

Ultimately, you want to make sure that you choose a payment platform that can accommodate the systems you have in place, at the frequency (daily, hourly, real-time, etc.) you require, with options for one-off or batched invoice payments.