Following on the heels of the announced strategic partnership with Bora to deliver additional virtual card capabilities for B2B payments, J.P.Morgan released news about their investment in a India-based fintech, Global PayEx. The 2011 startup is based in Mumbai and provides solutions to improve the corporate cash cycle. J.P.Morgan did not disclose the terms of the investment, but targeted clients are in the Asia Pacific region. The announcement appears in Financial Express, and highlights the Freepay platform, a cloud-based solution that allows for working capital flexibility through digital processing of various transactions such e-invoicing and dynamic discounting.
‘Freepay is Global PayEx’s cloud-based platform and has been live for more than three years….The platform is fully automated and self-servicing, JP Morgan stated, adding that its real-time feature and sophisticated analytics function provide corporates with full visibility of their payment status as well as insights on their receivables collection, which can, in turn, help optimise working capital….The company claims Freepay improves working capital efficiency by digitising all processes in the order-to-cash cycle such as invoicing, dynamic credit and trade terms support, credit/debit notes, instantly applicable cash discounts, full document support for payment decisions including ePoD, and analytics driven dunning.’
This is a consistent theme and part of what we have described as the convergence of cash cycle solutions, which in formative years were more generally point capabilities designated for particular transactions such as a payment or paper to e-invoice conversion. The clear trend is for order-to-cash connectivity through various integration methods, most notably APIs. We described this ecosystem approach in a report titled Procure-to-Pay Convergence: Market Review and Vendor Comparison. As the old TV advert used to conclude, ‘it’s the right thing to do.’
‘Kalpana Morparia, chairman of South and Southeast Asia, JP Morgan, said the strategic investment in Global PayEx is a significant step towards working with its clients in a more nimble way and enhancing their experience….“This is all a part of a journey where global banks such as ourselves are doing a lot of innovation on how do we make our platforms more efficient in their client engagement. There will be several instances where we will partner with people who already built a great product. Our entire focus is really in terms of what can we do for our clients on making their life easy in their overall treasury management— how do we digitise as much of the paper work as possible and give them end-to-end solutions…” ‘
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
