Visa and Billtrust Partner to Simplify B2B Virtual Card Acceptance

Visa partnership also includes strategic investment in Billtrust

Visa and Billtrust announced a strategic partnership to streamline the reconciliation of B2B payments and increase automation of virtual card payments. This effort is part of a multi-pronged strategy Visa and Billtrust are pursuing to support critical growth in the B2B segment. Visa has also made a strategic investment in Billtrust to help accelerate Billtrust’s growth strategy.

The opportunity for corporate virtual card payments continues to grow, providing tremendous value and efficiency for accounts payable professionals. However, the process for accepting and processing virtual card payments has increased manual data entry and reconciliation challenges for accounts receivable departments. Visa and Billtrust are partnering to integrate Visa’s Straight Through Processing (STP) capabilities with Billtrust’s Virtual Card Capture solution in an effort to automate and streamline the receipt and reconciliation of participating Visa issuers’ virtual commercial card payments.

“One of the key pain points for companies is the time and resources it takes to process payments,” said Taira Hall, vice president, US partnerships & new initiatives, business solutions at Visa. “Collaboration with leading partners like Billtrust helps our financial institution clients streamline B2B payments, support supplier needs, and simplify the process suppliers have to go through in order to accept a payment.”

Visa’s STP enables a buyer of a participating issuer to initiate a Visa commercial credit transaction directly from their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or accounting solution to help streamline the accounts payables process. With Billtrust’s Virtual Card Capture, payments sent to Billtrust suppliers are routed to Billtrust for processing and the funds are deposited into a supplier’s bank on the next business day. Further, the remittance is consolidated across all payment sources and matched to open invoices in any ERP.

“The integration of Visa’s STP and our Virtual Card Capture enables suppliers to more expediently manage a highly manual, cumbersome payment process,” said Flint Lane, Billtrust CEO. “With the increasing popularity of virtual cards in the B2B market, we’re solving what is quickly becoming a very critical pain point for A/R teams – one that impacts their cash flow, customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.”

“The ability to consolidate payments from all payment sources and reconcile those payments to the remittance information is the embodiment of the frictionless payments concept,” said Erika Baumann, senior wholesale banking analyst, Aite Group. “The partnership between Visa and Billtrust represents a strategic opportunity for thought leaders in the industry to serve their mutual clients by providing a path to frictionless integrated payments.”

At Money20/20 in Las Vegas, Visa and Billtrust will take the stage to share more details about the partnership and how they are working together to simplify accounts receivable processes for buyers and suppliers. Stop by the Murano Ballroom on the third floor of the Venetian on Tuesday, October 24 at 3:10 p.m. to learn more.