Visa Canada and Canadian fintech company Moneris yesterday announced the launch of a new, unified feature, Moneris B2B Pay, to help businesses make and receive payments.
It works with Visa’s accounts payables solution, Visa Payables Automation (VPA), and Visa virtual cards, to enable businesses to automate the business-to-business (B2B) payment process, dispersing payments for purchases via virtual commercial cards.
“Moneris B2B Pay helps businesses make the transition to accepting virtual commercial cards more easily,” says Rob Wilkinson, vice-president, B2B, Moneris, in a Nov. 3 press release. “With this automated system, buyers and suppliers can know that their routine payments are being made quickly and securely with little effort on their part.”
Businesses recognize the need to re-evaluate their overall payment experience. They are increasingly focusing on automating payables and receivables to have greater control over cash flow. Moreover, the need for a more integrated and digital approach for managing payments has come into sharper focus, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
A recent Visa study determined that 74 per cent of purchasing cardholders surveyed in Canada found virtual cards appealing. It revealed that businesses are identifying ways to use purchasing cards to automate and manage their accounts payable operations. With the new payment solution, businesses can use straight-through processing to pay suppliers digitally with a Visa commercial card, have the funds directly deposited into the supplier’s account, and send detailed remittance reporting right away.
“Virtual commercial cards are becoming a widely accepted form of payment for business-to-business transactions, quickly replacing cheques,” says Jim Filice, head of New Payments, Visa Canada. “We’ve seen an increased adoption during COVID-19, and expect this trend to continue well beyond the pandemic.”