In today’s global economy, more often organizations are finding themselves buying products and services from businesses in foreign countries. This means that those businesses need to be able to make payments to their vendors or partners seamlessly to keep up with their other daily demands. Moving money across borders and converting those payments into foreign currencies can be both complex and costly. With all the unique requirements, most companies struggle to manage these FX payments. To keep costs down and stay competitive in the market, it is essential for organizations to partner with a technology company that can provide an integrated global payables platform for their FX and cross-border payments.

How can this type of solution affect global suppliers?

An integrated payables platform should be designed to remove friction from this particular payment’s ecosystem. For example, let’s say that a domestic US company is making a payment to a vendor in Canada. Without an integrated payments platform, the buyer would have to first issue a check in US dollars (USD). Once received, the vendor would have to cash that check through their local bank and incur the exchange rate expense for converting those funds into Canadian currency (CAD). To account for this added expense, most vendors doing business in other countries will mark up their products and services, while issuing the invoice in USD. This inflates their price and value in the market and may negatively impact their relationship with the buyer.

Why is it important to have an integrated payables platform?

With an integrated payables platform, buyers can leverage a single workflow for both domestic and international payments and experience a consistent user interface. Users can access both live and contract exchange rates and with a single click can select the live or contract FX rate that best suits their payment needs. This takes the operational burden off the buyer and incremental exchange costs off the supplier, saving both parties time and money.

In fact, an integrated payables platform can impact an organization’s cross-border payments in four distinct ways:

• Streamlined workflow – Without an integrated payables platform, companies have to strip out FX/CB payments and process them separately from the rest of their accounts payable payments. With this platform, organizations can create a single file in a standard format that is both efficient and cost effective.
• Global infrastructure – Integrated payables platforms can transmit payments in over 140 currencies to some 200 countries across the globe.
• Transparency – An integrated payables platform can provide straight forward exchange rates and low payment fees as well as a single portal to view all details (pricing, remittance, notifications, exceptions, etc.) related to both domestic and international transactions.
• Service – As a single platform that can handle all accounts payable spend types, integrated payables allows corporate buyers to consolidate their service providers, making all aspects of service and support extremely easy.

Why is FIS the right technology partner?

Having the right technology partner means having a partner that can grow and develop their technology to future proof for a business’s changing payment needs. FIS differentiates itself through our ability to not only deliver world class solutions, but to work with organizations at a pace and scale that competitors cannot match. FIS is the market leader in B2B payments, serving mid-market and corporate businesses with comprehensive integrated global payment solutions.