the multitude of e-Commerce and pay- Accounts Payable Automation for growing and midsized businesses. ments platforms listed previously. They The drive to remove paper invoices, MineralTree captures invoices as they can also look at a service like Western cheques and purchase orders is hardly arrive, routes them for approval through Union’s Edge platform, launched in new. So ACOM has been automating existing workflows and directly executes April last year. This is a business-to-busi- B2B payments since 1983; Corcentric payments. ness platform that connects companies has been focusing on e-invoicing since The future these companies envisage is with each other and which has been 1998 and Comdata, the payment proces- one in which firms plug into one or more designed to take on services like Amazon sor and corporate cards giant, was cloud-based solutions on a subscription and Alibaba. WU EDGE unifies AP and founded in 1969. basis to access particular functionali- AR workflows with Electronic Invoice ties. Businesses that use this model will Presentment and Payment (EIPP) on a However, there is a large group of newer, avoid legacy system issues, nor will they single global platform. SMEs can invite mostly Cloud-based FinTechs, again be forced to buy one system that does existing and new partners to trade glob- often smaller and midsized companies, everything they need. Instead they will ally and interact with them in real-time offering as a stand-alone service for one end up with a ‘stack’ of solutions work- to potentially enhance trade and growth. or more types of payments. These typi- ing together and integrated with an It also provides analytics via its foreign cally offer to make batch payments, via existing (or new) ERP. cash management and trade intelligence virtual card, ACH or wire, with all pay- modules to generate insights for compa- ments managed via the legacy ERP sys- Supply chain finance nies wishing to optimise their cash flows tem. The automation is not simply the and profits. removal of paper, it is the aggregation of Getting supply chain finance to smaller Edge differs from competitors firstly data from multiple systems, business units companies is another problem being and locations to manage payments in one solved by technology – though in this case because it is designed to provide a plat- place with comprehensive reporting. the solution may be a combination of form that connects businesses already older technology and new joint ventures. doing business with each other and sec- ondly because it is based on an existing Demica has been providing working network of 100,000 companies that FinTech is largely a capital solutions to large multi-nationals make payments through WU anyway. wait and see game for via its reverse factoring platform for Edge offers invoicing services in one some years. This type of SCF has been platform, and allows ‘near real-time’ corporate treasury, with confined to large corporations not just service for 22 currencies at its launch. the most relevant action because of the need to have significant The WU EDGE platform provides fee- global banking relationships, but also free, real-time transactions in 51 cur- happening at the banks. because only companies with fully elec- rencies, with capabilities in over 130 tronic invoicing can get invoice approval currencies overall. fast enough to enable approved invoices to be funded by the banks. WU Edge has competition of course. To help access the estimated $3 trillion of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has a potential for SME SCF, Demica has just platform that allows wholesale buyers announced a partnership with FCI, a and sellers of items to find each other and facilitator of supply chain finance tools, facilitate payments. Amazon has a simi- to create FCIreverse, a solution that uses lar service called Amazon Business. FCI’s relationship with hundreds of local However, both of these services are a by- and regional banks and factoring com- product of marketplaces of physical panies to allow FIs across the globe to transactions. Edge is solely a platform for vouch for their own clients. companies to execute financial transac- tions. It also provides analytics and help To give some idea of the number of Fin- Demica CEO Matt Wreford explains, with international compliance, unlike Techs that pitch themselves in the billing “This way of partnering regional banks most e-commerce platforms. and payments automation space, this is a with each other is going to transform Western Union does face FinTech com- list of just some of those that have been the industry over the long-term”. “It petition. B2B start-up Currency Cloud is successful enough to raise announced will enable supply chain finance to go one of the most prominent and in March VC funding: Zuora, MineralTree, into the mid-market, where global it raised $25 million from Google’s ven- Nvoicepay, ConnectPay, Paymentus, banks aren’t interested in operating. ture capital arm, GV and others. The Payveris, Aria, MyCheck, Fortumo, And it will provide a lot more financing company is both a plug-and-play pay- Tradeshift, Traxpay, Vindicia, Bill.com, to SMEs, because regional banks will ments platform as well as a set of APIs Boku, Transactis, PaySimple, Danal, run smaller programs and onboard that let developers create their own cus- Judo and NumberMall. smaller suppliers.” tomised access to global payments. Cur- These companies target specific business These SCF platforms need relationships rency Cloud has had more than $25 types. Zuora focuses on businesses with a with banks to help with client onboard- billion sent across its network. It works subscription model. ConnectPay is a ing and credit provision, but they also with other FinTech businesses such as card payment gateway. Payveris is a set need access to more clients and more mobile remittance business Azimo, of digital tools and APIs designed for financeable invoices. So in late 2016, crowdfunding platform Seedrs and for- small banks and credit unions to allow Demica also announced a venture with eign exchange card Revolut. them to offer digital payments and Basware, the Finnish e-invoicing and money transfer solution. Boku is a mobile purchase-to-pay technology group that Treasurers can also look to FinTechs in payments solutions for SMEs. Mineral- will make supply chain finance available more specific treasury silos: Tree focuses on accounts payable to Basware’s clients. 26 // TREASURY PERSPECTIVES 2017/2018 www.eurofinance.com