The True Power of a Payments Partnership

by TransferMate

As part of Ivalua’s journey to bridge the gap between Finance and Procurement, Ivalua has partnered with TransferMate to reduce the financial friction within cross-border trade. But why is this so important for business, and what does it mean for prospects and customers? This blog will answer these questions plus a few more.

How important is this partnership to both Ivalua & TransferMate?

“Having the complete source-to-pay journey within the Ivalua Platform will help our customers build stronger, reliable supplier relationships”, said David Khuat-Duy, Founder and CEO of Ivalua. “Our partnership with TransferMate will help to simplify and streamline complex, costly payment processes and bridge the gap between procurement and finance processes,” concludes David.

“Our unrivaled licensing and banking networks are setting new standards of security, transparency, and speed for B2B cross-border payments,” said Sinead Fitzmaurice, CEO of TransferMate Global Payments – a subsidiary of the Clune Tech Group. “We are delighted to be partnering with Ivalua to complete the advanced capabilities of their pioneering new payments platform, helping them to eliminate the friction inherent in the financial processes of international trade.”

What are the benefits of the TransferMate Ivalua partnership to customers?

The high-level benefit of embedding the TransferMate payment solution within the Ivalua Source to Pay journey is that supply chains can become stronger. By removing the friction in global supply chains, for the first time, the payment and the sourcing event are seamlessly linked. This allows for part-payments, quality or milestone-based contract terms, even payment on receipt to be visible to the supplier, finance, treasury, and the buyers.

The primary benefit of the TransferMate Ivalua partnership is that Ivalua customers now have seamless access to an expansive international banking network that allows them to make and receive global payments as easily as making a domestic funds transfer. This they can do in multiple currencies, faster and more securely than traditional banking methods and with complete transparency of the transaction to the point of final reconciliation. This delivers a level of confidence never seen before, eliminates unnecessary financial risk, and drives significant cost-efficiency benefits throughout the supply chain.

How does the TransferMate part of the solution help drive that new way of doing business?

It is important to understand that with TransferMate a supplier payment can be made in hours, which is dramatically faster than traditional banking-based solutions, which take days. This is possible because TransferMate uses a network of payment rails that allows for same-day payments in many cases plus receipt confirmations. All this is transparent across the payment journey, to the buyer and supplier.

This is possible because TransferMate is the world’s leading B2B payments infrastructure as a service provider. It has 4 core competencies that have been meticulously built over 10 years which are driving the new way of doing business. These are the most comprehensive global licensing networks, that incorporate 54 currencies in every major jurisdiction around the world, the resulting banking network covering over 200 countries and jurisdictions, a world-beating compliance infrastructure to proactively mitigate and manage risk, and TransferMate’s advanced API technology. These all combine to offer a global payments infrastructure never before available, resulting in significant financial and efficiency gains across the entire payment journey for both suppliers and buyers.

How does the solution remove friction in the supply chain?

By combining the high levels of procurement automation in the Ivalua platform with the payment efficiencies found in TransferMate, the result is dramatic. Firstly, there is a reduced administration overhead, but also the automated solution reduces the time spent reconciling payments and recording invoices across multiple account systems. In addition to this, the buyer can now pay more international suppliers without costly banking relationships or foreign exchange worries. Meanwhile, the supplier gets paid the correct amount within 24 hours, with real-time status updates – all under the security blanket of TransferMate’s world-class Risk and Compliance Program. Something impossible in the traditional trade models.

How does the combined solution improve supplier relationships for Ivalua customers?

According to the latest Ardent data, supplier inquiries are at an all-time high of 22% of AP FTE time. These are almost all relating to the payment of an invoice. The supplier can find the answers to all these questions within the free supplier portal. So not only does the solution eliminate errors, and speed up payment, the transparency of the payment process within Ivalua helps rebuild trust and reduce unwanted inquiries. Basically, creating happy suppliers, and members of the AP team.

Where do the bottom-line savings come from and how quickly?

There are several very visible areas of monetary savings. As the whole solution avoids costly bank fees, FX markup, and hidden interchange fees, these savings are visible as soon as the combined solution is used. In addition to these, the buying organization will see savings in the consolidation of payments into one outgoing banking transaction covering hundreds or thousands of invoices, to any number of suppliers. To this can be added the time saved in processing the physical payments and reconciliation. Finally, is the balance sheet savings made possible in the next payment rather than the current 3 to 5 days which impacts the buyer’s capital and the suppliers’ cash flow.

What makes this partnership different from other partnerships?

Ivalua offers a different type of experience for their customers, one that is very focused on end-to-end transparency across the whole procurement cycle. With this comes high levels of financial automation and efficiency that we know are critical in global trade. But beyond this, Ivalua has built a solution that bridges the chasm between Finance and Procurement, and this enables a transformation in how organizations not only remove friction but also turn fragile global supply chains into robust partnerships.

Learn more about the power of seamless payments within the Ivalua Source-to-Pay journey here.