Enterprises can take direct control over sending and receiving payments. With less involvement by traditional financial institutions, monetary flows will be simplified, settlement times will shrink, and costs are reduced.
This is the B2B Payments Ecosystem – a set of technologies and processes driven by a single digital ledger designed to give enterprises more control over their global money movement.
Q: Why are payments hard?
It’s harder than most people think to move money. Simply put, it’s about transferring money from where it is today to where you want it to be in a legally compliant, safe, and secure way. It's not the same as just handing someone cash at a grocery store. The reality is there's a lot of complexity and difficulty, which is amplified by the speed of consumer demands and the pace of business innovation. Ultimately, the inefficiency sits with bank settlement times and fees.
Q: What is a B2B payments ecosystem?
The idea of a payments ecosystem is that you're not moving money in and out of many different financial institutions. You're keeping it localized and centralized with the people you need to pay or receive money from.
It’s about moving money between accounts without a bank having to do an additional transaction. A great parallel is a peer-to-peer app in the consumer world—you can pay people seamlessly. Now, with embedded finance, similar solutions are possible for businesses. Two businesses can pay each other without routing through separate banks. It’s seamless, transparent, and frictionless when moving funds from one account to another in the same payments ecosystem.
Q: What is the use case for a B2B payments ecosystem?
There are also some really interesting use cases that we've enabled around B2B payments ecosystems. Gig workers, for example, benefit from faster payouts.
We can also look at how a franchise model works domestically. A large parent company with many franchisees often deals with different payment providers and banks, which means moving money can take three to five days. That’s moving the funds from Bank A to Bank B, then to the parent company’s Bank C — creating friction and latency in the process.
One of the solutions we enable is for the parent company to provide banking services to each of its franchisees right from the start. This is especially valuable because the parent company can act as a full-stack solution. They can tell the franchisees, "Here’s your order management system. Here’s your CRM. Your branding is pre-set. And now, here's your accounts for payments. You don’t have to build any of this. Everything you need is right here in the box."
Being able to offer financial services as part of that package makes it much easier for franchisees to run their businesses.
Q: What’s an example of a B2B payments ecosystem?
Parent companies often group-order for all their franchises to secure economies of scale. However, they typically have to wait to collect money from the franchisees, causing settlement delays and friction in the process. With a B2B payments ecosystem, that money transfer happens immediately. The funds pass from the franchisee’s bank account directly into the parent company's account, allowing them to pay suppliers without delay.
There’s complete traceability of all fund movements—without bank fees, latency, or reconciliation issues. The cherry on top? This can be integrated or embedded into existing software applications. It works with existing flows, existing software, and existing business processes—serving as an upgrade rather than a rip-and-replace solution.
Q: How does this apply to B2C payments?
We see a lot of consumer-facing applications where people are looking for cross-border payments, such as remittances or paying for a service in another country. For example, someone in the U.S. may need to pay for something while overseas. That’s a key consumer-facing application—the end user is a consumer.
