Traditionally, invoices, receipts, and disbursements were all manually paid and processed either through cash or checks. These payment methods resulted in an increasing rate of financial complexity, delays, and risk. Fast forward to the present, digitalization has proven to be a key enabler to change the entire landscape of payments.

2.1 Ways to Pay: Emerging Payment Formats

While traditional paper check-based payment systems continue to drive the majority of the cash management cycle, there’s an ongoing world-wide reform to switch to real-time payments. Let’s go over the basic payment systems in place and understand the necessity of improving efficiency with reduced operational risks.

Figure: Different Payment Methods

2.2 The Potential in Mid-Sized Businesses

According to Mastercard, the financial sector within the B2B space stands at a range of USD 25 trillion, annually.
As reported by Deloitte, mid-sized businesses are a key player in the US economy: the total revenues round to over USD 6.6 trillion, making them a developing leader in the economy

Furthermore, according to the National Middle Market Summit, up to 55 percent of businesses face challenging issues in terms of maintaining a balanced working capital. With opportunities in obtaining valuable information through payments, mid-sized B2B companies can leverage digitally produced insights to address complex problems such as handling the processing of consumer payments while managing regulatory, compliance, and cost-based challenges.

2.3 Trends Redefining the Payment Landscape: Driving Forces of Change

Let’s go over some of the trends that continue to redefine the entire payment landscape.

• Ongoing digital transformation – Improving business efficiency: Mid-sized businesses continue to recognize the many benefits of digitizing payments that provide better control with minimal manual intervention. So, the interest in investing in new-age solutions is primarily to streamline workflows while reducing the overall operational costs involved.
• Managing customer expectations: Customers in today’s fast-paced world are growing accustomed to convenient payment methods. Financial ecosystems within mid-sized businesses need to get used to the consumer-demands for better customization, speed, and personalization of payments.