ApplePay. SamsungPay. Facebook payments. Google Wallet (2.0?). Micro Payments….the list goes on!
I’ve written about it before, but the drumbeat of new, innovative payment methods for consumers continues its consistent cadence. Until recently however, B2B payments have not enjoyed the same levels of innovation and, when 50% of payments in the US are still made by paper check, B2B payment solutions have been anything but disruptive.
This is changing, and AribaPay, the new B2B payments solution offered by Ariba and in partnership with the Discover Network, is leading the way by bringing certainty, security and simplicity to B2B payments. This is no idle boast made by a marketer, but rather the conclusion of the 2015 PYMNTS.com innovation project panel that recently chose AribaPay out of over 600 submissions as the recipient of two of their 2015 Payments Awards for Best B2B Innovation and Most Disruptive solution.
Now, I know the terms “Innovative” and “Disruptive” have been thrown about so much in recent years, that they threaten to become cliché’s. But after looking up their root definitions, I am convinced these are exactly the right words to describe AribaPay. Consider these definitions from Webster:
Innovate (verb) - ": to do something in a new way : to have new ideas about how something can be done."
Disrupt (verb) - ": to cause (something) to be unable to continue in the normal way : to interrupt the normal progress or activity of (something)"
AribaPay won the best B2B Payments innovation award because at root it represents a completely new way of approaching the long-standing process of payment. And it was born out of an idea that in today’s world of business networks, B2B payments could be done differently and better.
By utilizing the strengths of the Ariba and Discover Networks that already connect business partners to each other, to their data and to their banks for payment, AribaPay flipped the payment equation on its head. Rather than trying to find new ways to connect rich remittance data to the same old. limited payment methods, AribaPay instead simply connects the payment securely to the data and connections that already exist in the network ecosystem.
And AribaPay won Most Disruptive because now that Network based payments have created a way to finally remove the need to hold sensitive bank information, and have seamlessly connected the data businesses need to reconcile the payments they receive, all while providing a level of visibility into payment previously unheard of…well, its going to be hard for businesses to keep doing B2B payment in the old way.
