OB10, the global e-Invoicing network that sits at the heart of Tungsten Corporation plc, has announced a partnership with PNC Bank, part of the PNC Financial Services Group, one of the United States’ largest diversified financial services organisations.

Through its partnership with PNC, OB10 will power e-Invoicing capabilities for mid-size and large businesses, improving data processing and management. This will allow US corporates to achieve straight-through processing from invoice receipt to payment, delivering an ROI on their investment in as little as one year.

PNC is the first commercial bank in the US to integrate OB10's e-Invoicing network with its invoice automation platform. Benefits of combining PNC’s accounts payables solutions for commercial customers with Tungsten's e-Invoicing network include:

• One provider to receive and process both paper and electronic invoices.
• Automated invoice-to-payment process and straight-though processing.
• Higher quality data that reduces exceptions and error-prone manual processing.
• Streamlined invoice processing through automated receipt of invoices and online workflow approval.
• Faster, more cost-effective payment process.
• The ability to capture more early payment discounts (not to be offered at this stage).

Banks and e-invoicing 

OB10 is the leading global e-Invoicing network, processing more than £109bn of invoices per year. Compliant in 43 countries across Europe, the Americas and Asia, OB10 can reduce invoice-processing costs by 60%. OB10’s network connects some of the world’s largest companies and government agencies to their thousands of suppliers around the globe. It processes transactions worth over £109bn per year for organisations such as Aviva, Cargill, General Motors, GSK, IBM, Kellogg's, the US Federal Government and Tesco.

Although there are superb e-invoicing service platforms to partner with like OB10, only a small number of banks offer e-invoicing services including banks in the Nordic region, RBS and J.P. Morgan. The important question is “Why don’t more banks offer e-invoicing services?”. This is particularly important for many SMEs and MNCs who like to buy all/most of their services from one bank. Accepted that e-invoicing is a messy non-standardised business with variations all over the place, but a partnership/white labelling services of an e-invoicing platform removes most of the pain, and, more importantly, it gets the bank access to the information flows to be able to offer the new forms of trade finance which SMEs need. 

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CTMfile take: This is not going to change quickly, but it should. Maybe the European Commision and/or the ECB should ’give’ the banks in Europe a deadline of two years maximum for having a fully integrated and operational e-invoicing partnership or white labeled e-invoicing service and a conversion of 50% of their business customers’ invoices to e-invoicing. This would have far more impact on business efficiency than SEPA.