MasterCard has teamed up with electronic payments outfit Xign Corporation to develop an end-to-end automated invoicing-to-payments solution for corporate purchasing.
Under the agreement, MasterCard will integrate its Corporate Payment Solutions into Xign's Payment Services Network (XPSN). The latter platform emerged from a four-year Financial Services Technology Consortium e-chequeing research project.
By combining their solutions, the two companies say they will be able to eliminate several expensive, paper-based steps in the payment and reconciliation processes. The initiative is aimed at providing businesses with streamlined financial supply chain benefits and a range of electronic settlement options, including the MasterCard Corporate Purchasing Card, MasterCard Remote Payment and Presentment Service, and the Automated Clearinghouse (ACH).
The MasterCard/Xign solution has been built to support accounts payable/accounts receivable systems for most of the common proprietary systems, including Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, J.D. Edwards, Microsoft Great Plains, GEAC, AMS, Lawson, Peachtree, QuickBooks and others.
MasterCard forecasts a large market potential for the combined offering. According to Celent Communications, 82% of all B2B payments in the US are currently made using paper cheques.
Alenka Grealish, senior analyst at Celent Communications, says: “The downfall of many proprietary EIPP systems can be traced back not only to cost, but also to their lack of interoperability and the attendant challenges of signing up trading partners."
By building a platform that can plug into multiple ERP systems and utilise common payment vehicles, the solution from MasterCard and Xign promises ease of implementation, and consequently, widespread adoption, says Grealish.