Unlocking B2B payments success by leveraging B2C insights.

Last week at the PAY360 event in London our CEO, Jim McCarthy, spoke about what B2B payments providers can learn from best-in-class B2C experiences today.

B2B businesses need to be innovating at the same rate as B2C and learning as they go.

Jim referenced 3 key ingredients for innovation which can be applied to a wide range of business models: 

Removing friction from the onboarding journey  

This is about finding the right customers for your proposition and creating a seamless onboarding experience which meets the needs of local/global regulation including authentication and KYB (Know Your Business), among other requirements – it sounds relatively simple but this is where many organisations fall.  

Taking advantage of the opportunity that virtual credentials offer 

Providing tokenised credentials enables payments to run smoothly while also working to remove the risk of fraud. Jim referenced a recent use case where a logistics business was adding tokens to their vans so the van could operate as the mode of payment. We are seeing more and more innovative uses for tokens and we expect this to continue.   

Interrogating the data available to you 

Most organisations are sitting on a tonne of data. Innovators are spending time investigating and inspecting all the data available, removing departmental silos to get the most accurate picture of how payments are moving through the ecosystem and what this means for serving customers. Jim referenced powering the flywheel by understanding your customers and their needs as accurately as possible.  

We’re excited to see how the B2B market is ripe for transformation. Individuals are operating globally and breaking down geographical borders, therefore businesses need to shift to fulfil these new needs. The model for work and employment has also changed dramatically with the rise of the gig economy and small businesses operating from almost anywhere. Behaviour is changing and businesses need to innovate to stay relevant. 

Jim summed this up with the example of how the Girl Scouts are now accepting card payments – innovation is happening everywhere and with acceptance channels ever increasing comes huge opportunity.