Mastercard has announced the commercial launch of its Track Business Payment Service. The solution is designed to offer greater control over payments and richer data exchanges that enable automated reconciliation for suppliers and application of all payment options approved by suppliers.

The card giant says that the service brings improved efficiency and working capital management to buyers and suppliers of all sizes, which is more necessary than ever in the current economic environment.

Suppliers can systemically manage how they get paid for different invoices for different buyers. For buyers, they can optimise and automate efficiencies in paying suppliers with improved reconciliation to manage cash flow and capture early payment discounts.

All of this is managed through a single platform that minimises the need for manual processes between buyers and suppliers. Mastercard says that further efficiencies are realised through the provision of rich remittance data with every payment, allowing suppliers to reduce time and labor spent on reconciliation and on making inquiries to their buyers.

“When we started work on Mastercard Track Business Payment Service, we looked at the persistent problems in B2B payments and asked ourselves how we could solve them for the benefit of Buyers and Suppliers,” said James Anderson, executive vice president of Global Commercial Products at Mastercard. “We realised that we needed to apply the techniques that work so well in consumer payments: delivering value to both buyers and suppliers, embracing standardisation, driving scale by working with the most capable partners and by creating incentives to drive behavioural changes by the participants.”

“What we’re building with our partners is a fully digitalised and extremely efficient way for businesses to pay and get paid using multiple payment rails so that Buyers and Suppliers each capture new and demonstrable value from their payments activity,” Anderson added. “It gives businesses a way to maintain control, manage cash flow better and be more operationally efficient - all things that are incredibly important for companies navigating today’s economic challenges.”

The first commercial version of Track Business Payment Service has launched in the US with distribution partners across the B2B ecosystem, including Global Payments, AvidXchange, Boost Payment Solutions, Corporate Spending Innovations (CSI), Fiserv, HighRadius, Tesorio, Veem, Velo Payments, VersaPay and YayPay.

“In today’s environment, innovations that support efficiency and cash flow are critical to address the challenges businesses experience with paying bills,” said Michael Praeger, CEO and co-founder of AvidXchange. “We share Mastercard’s focus on delivering value for both buyers and suppliers through accounts payable automation, and view this as an opportunity to continue our collaboration in transforming B2B payments by eliminating paper checks.”

“Connecting buyers with suppliers streamlines B2B payments, and increases the number of payments that can be completed electronically,” added Suhas Gosavi, SVP and GM of B2B Solutions at Fiserv. “With access to Mastercard Track Business Payment Service, businesses using our SnapPay solution will benefit from a more efficient process while continuing to have access to their preferred payment methods including card and ACH.”

New functionality and geographies in the works

Track Business Payment Service is live in the US using card payment rails. ACH payments will be added later this year and cross-border payments in 2021. Mastercard says it is working with its US commercialisation partners, including CSI, Veem, Velo Payments and VersaPay, to execute a series of market tests on ACH payments in the US throughout 2020.

Beyond the US, the payments firm says it is aggressively pursuing global expansion. Mastercard piloted Track Business Payment Service for card with Paymentez in Latin America in 2019, and is readying its full commercial launch there.

“Companies of all sizes are looking for ways to become more efficient, reducing the time and people required for reconciliation and manual processes,” noted Juan F Franco, CEO and founder of Paymentez.

Further pilots will be executed in Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific during 2020, with commercial launches to follow. For example, in Europe, Mastercard is piloting card payments with Adflex and domestic and cross-border ACH payments with Veem.

Speaking about its partnership with Mastercard, Velo Payments put out a press release noting that its buyers will be able to optimise incentives, spend less time on accounts payable and reduce fraud, while suppliers will benefit from greater control, efficiency and flexibility. Velo is integrating into the Track ecosystem to enable both bank account and card payments. Velo says it will offer Track capabilities by default to all its direct and wholesale clients.

Velo’s technology, which integrates with existing legacy interfaces, is designed to help large corporations optimise their treasury management and helps businesses of all sizes manage their payments.

“The business payments ecosystem has, up until now, failed to keep up with the advances in global trade and technology,” commented Drew Weinstein, CEO of Velo Payments. “Businesses are starting to embrace the data-driven payments modernisation that is needed to reduce cost, complexity and time for domestic and cross-border transactions.”

Velo says it believes the world needs a more effective and transparent payments ecosystem that puts users in full control of their money and data to ensure transactional integrity and to generate operational efficiencies. The launch of the Mastercard Track Business Payment Service suggests that the full digitisation and optimisation of commercial payments management for large corporations is achievable.