PayPal Loops Into B2B Payments

PayPal began stepping into the B2B world with its launch of PayPal Working Capital in 2013; last week, the company revealed it had lent more than $2 billion to SMEs across the U.S., U.K. and Australia.

But this week, PayPal said it is moving deeper into the B2B finance realm, with a little help from small business accounting software company Reckon.

An announcement on Monday (July 11) said Reckon will integrate PayPal’s payment capabilities into its platform to allow small businesses to issue invoices with a Pay Now button, allowing business customers to pay B2B bills via PayPal.

Reckon said this capability can help SMEs increase cash flow and reduce reliance on checks and EFT payments. The Pay Now button will also support payment via American Express and MasterCard credit and debit cards, reports added.

“We see this partnership with PayPal as a very innovative step forward for Reckon One,” said the company’s Australia and New Zealand managing director, Sam Allert, in a statement. “We are able to enhance our technology to help solve a real business problem, and we are able to do this so efficiently we create substantial time and cost savings in the invoicing and payments space.”

The executive added that the collaboration aims to reduce the friction associated with onboarding a business to a credit card processing network. Allert also pointed to recent research that found about 44 percent of business failures in the 2014–2015 fiscal year were due to cash flow problems, another focus of the Reckon/PayPal partnership.

Earlier this year, Reckon revealed a separate partnership with OFX, a move aimed at lowering the cost of cross-border B2B payments.