Five-year-old Invapay is substantially expanding its capabilities by partnering with Earthport, the United Kingdom-based vendor of cross-border payment services. Invapay specializes in automation of the Procure-to-Pay process for firms dealing with infrequent purchases from one-time only vendors. It’s been successful serving U.K.-based buyers, both corporate and government, but lacked an efficient means to make cross-border payments to non-U.K. sellers or suppliers. According to Sid Vasili, CEO of Invapay:
“Integrating Earthport will automate Invapay’s solution for international payments for the whole of the international supply chain, from big wholesale suppliers to the smallest one-time-only vendors. One-time-only vendors can account for 80% of an organization’s purchase-to-pay administrative costs. This service will eliminate the need for manual payment processing and reconciliation for international payments, allowing us to reduce the cost for payment settlement.”
Earthport provides its services as a white-label solution to banks and other payment facilitators. The company provides an ACH-equivalent payment service using its own network of correspondent banks in more than 50 countries and territories. It also asserts that it can provide such services for per-transaction charges that are “typically less than 50% of the current market average for wire payments and international funds transfer.”
Earthport to date has specialized in consumer payments, including e-commerce payments, despite some earlier experience with B2B payments in supporting small value trade transactions. The expansion of its services into a working relationship with Invapay should generate highly satisfactory business at competitive prices for both parties and their B2B customers.
