FIs offer account validation to corporate clients

Financial institutions (FIs) strive to help their corporate customers meet their B2B payment challenges.

Some of the most common challenges companies face when paying vendors are invoice reconciliation, inability to offer vendor portals, working capital management, and slow underwriting.

These issues are cited by 42%, 42%, 34%, and 33% of companies, respectively, according to “Meeting the Challenge of Payments Modernization,” a PYMNTS and FIS collaboration based on a survey of 311 executives of leading financial institutions that manage assets of more than $500 million.

Get the report: Meeting the Challenge of Payments Modernization

Other common challenges include lack of payment choices, expense management, real-time cash flow management, and data not being provided across all areas of the organization. These issues are cited by 31%, 29%, 26% and 26%, respectively.

Some of the most common services FIs provide to their corporate clients to help mitigate these issues are account validation, digital safes, and immediate transaction confirmation. These digital solutions are offered by 89%, 82% and 76% of FIs respectively.

Other services offered to business clients by about half of FIs are instant credit underwriting and access to credit and automatic reconciliation of payments and invoices, which are offered by 51% and 48%, respectively.

The number of digital solutions offered by FIs varies depending on the size of their customers or the markets these customers serve.

PYMNTS found that FIs serving cross-border payments customers offer an average of 7.1 digital solutions, those serving large businesses provide an average of 6.8 solutions, those serving mid-market businesses offer an average of 5.5 solutions and those serving serving small businesses offer an average of 6.8 solutions. 3.9 answers.

Understanding what drives different business markets can guide FIs as they modernize and streamline their B2B payments and cash management offerings.