We are seeing a lot of challenges confronting the digital B2B payment space as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The shift to digital tools and remote processes has exposed the costly infrastructure loopholes and inefficiencies of a financial system worth hundreds of trillions of dollars, yet still largely dependent on individual processes, slow-moving checks, and expensive invoicing processes.
For any size of business, digital payments infrastructures have proved to begin addressing some of these challenges.
Benefits of digital B2B payments
When you switch to accept digital payments, you free up time, money, and energy to grow and scale your business. Your customers also benefit because now they can quickly and easily make payments, while you ensure your cash flow remains consistent and easy to forecast.
If you set up recurring billing and automate payment collection, as most of Cellulant’s customers have, this process becomes effortless. When you consider that the average B2B payment cycle takes about 35 days to complete and 47% of invoices are paid late, it’s clear that unless businesses move beyond paper-based payments, they will always be mired inefficiency.
With digital B2B payments, you can process payments extremely fast allowing for instant cash application and automatic reconciliation, which has been proven to eliminate data entry errors and ensures your books are accurate. By embracing B2B digital payments modes, businesses can manage their accounts receivable process more effectively, which leads to faster payment cycles and more efficient collections. Digital payments have several advantages;
- Convenience & accessibility: with digital payments, customers can self-serve and pay invoices from anywhere at any time. They can even pay directly from the emails and invoices they receive with a 1-click “Pay Now” button.
- Low risk: Digital B2B transactions are much more secure than traditional ones because they are processed by secure gateways which are hard to tamper with. Most platforms are heavily regulated and protected to keep your money safe.
- Easily traceable: Details of payments are stored in a merchant-specific database. Both merchants and customers have easy access to payment information. This avoids ambiguity and confusion while tracking payments, because you know where the money is at all times.
- More options mean faster payments: There are several studies that prove that offering customers multiple payment options can lead to getting paid faster, improving cash flow, and allowing companies to expand at a quicker rate.
- Costs Management: Many payment methods are loaded with fees and soft costs, especially paper checks. One of the benefits of going paperless is that most solutions have fixed fees that allow for better planning, and businesses can choose the model that better suits their needs. Some B2B digital payment platforms offer very affordable transaction fees at business standard percentages, like Cellulant.
What does this mean for B2B businesses?
Payment preferences are shifting toward digital transactions, driven by the desire to make operations more efficient, faster, remote, and secure for all. While some companies choose to keep traditional payments in their catalog, this may result in more expensive and inflexible transactions in the long run.
In the last year alone, several industries have shifted to digital, touchless payments as a way to stabilize revenue and expand their business during COVID-19. This is likely due to the fact that 67% of customers now prefer using contactless payment options. Cellulant is building and leading the charge for B2B digital payments adoption across Africa.
Senior Product Manager, Joy Nimen said; ‘’We provide an enterprise-level easy to plug in API that is adaptable to your business needs, enables businesses with a plethora of payment options across the continent and streamline the way companies processes payments and recognizes revenue.’’
She also noted that Cellulant’s low-cost, frictionless B2B payment network automates manual processes, lowers transaction costs, and speeds up time-to-cash for business across Africa. Banks, Merchants and Multinational Businesses like Multichoice, Bolt, Ethiopian Airlines, DHL Africa eShop, Emirates Airline, have trusted and used Cellulant’s technology to receive and process payments from their customers over the years.
‘’We are Africa’s foremost one-stop digital payments platform for every business transaction, enabling and connecting business to a system that integrates ERPs for carrying out invoicing, payment processing, and reconciliation without the usual fees charged by credit cards or banks.’’ Joy added.
Cellulant is building the most advanced commercial payment network available to improve bottom-line savings for businesses. The model creates a smart billing and payment network that can digitize receivables, automate processing, shorten payment cycles, and lower transaction costs for mid-market and enterprise businesses. This is a one-stop solution for smarter finances. If you want to know if Cellulant and your company can be a perfect match, schedule a free demo today.