More enterprises are adopting commercial credit card programs to streamline their financial operations, leveraging tools and simplify transactions while improving control and oversight.
To gain deeper insights into how various players in the space compare, Javelin Strategy & Research released its 2024 Commercial ePayables Scorecard. The scorecard guides commercial enterprises in assessing potential ePayables partners, comparing current vendors, and understanding the technology, key benefits, and sample use cases.
Who’s Using ePayables?
Within a commercial credit card program, ePayables operate alongside corporate cards and purchasing cards. These cards, linked to the buyer’s credit line, are used to pay suppliers in an automated and seamless manner, typically integrated with the company’s accounts payable system. They serve as virtual credit cards, providing an electronic payment alternative to checks.
“In the case of ePayables, you don’t present a card,” said Albert Bodine, Director of Commercial Enterprise Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research and author of the scorecard report. “It’s transacted from computer to computer, very similar to what used to be called electronic funds transfer. It doesn’t appear to either the buyer or the seller as anything like a traditional card transaction. The only common piece is that it is based on a card credit line.”
Commercial ePayables are particularly suited for large organizations that process high volumes of invoices and payments. They are widely adopted across industries managing complex supply chains and large-scale procurement processes, like retail, manufacturing, logistics, and professional services. While ePayables can be used for purchases of any size, enterprises typically reserve them for recurring expenses, such as service maintenance.
Third-party platforms are often white-labeled by financial institutions offering other essential treasury services, such as ACH, wire transfers, and check processing. Although some platform providers work directly with corporates, even those with bank identification numbers for issuing virtual cards still require a sponsor bank to provide payment accounts. As a result, most ePayables programs are sourced through chartered financial institutions.
The Industry Leader
The most comprehensive offering, scoring highly across all four categories evaluated by Javelin, was provided by Bottomline. Bottomline also leads in the supplier enablement category, with a standout offering for vendor onboarding and ongoing supplier engagement.
“In our analysis, Bottomline has the most comprehensive offering for a company looking for a soup-to-nuts solution,” said Bodine. “But they also excel in an area that is most important in ePayables, which is supplier enablement. You simply don’t have a good ePayables Program if you don’t have very strong supplier enablement.”
Supplier enablement encompasses efficient supplier onboarding and streamlined payment processes that foster positive relationships between businesses and suppliers. To optimize supplier enablement, companies should adopt tools and technologies that facilitate seamless communication, reduce onboarding time, and provide flexibile payment options.
“In order for a vendor to accept ePayables as a form of payment, it takes quite a bit of effort, mostly because of the cost of the transaction,” Bodine said. “In order to have a strong group of vendors, you really have to be able to paint a very good value proposition with them. Supplier enablement is not a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing relationship.”
The Best of the Rest
Other recognized firms included Boost Payment Solutions for cross-border, Highnote Technologies for ledger and back-office integration, Galileo Financial Technologies for infrastructure and architecture, and Paymentus as one to watch.
While working on this report, it became clear to Bodine that many entities—both customers and suppliers—were better served by focusing on just one aspect of ePayables.
“There are organizations that don’t need soup to-nuts solutions here,” said Bodine. “Some only need the cross-border component. There are organizations that have very strong development staff, so they don’t need any user interface, just the APIs and the nuts and bolts for infrastructure and ledger to be able to integrate into their systems. That was one thing I didn’t really expect going into this project.”
