The Multi-Provider B2B Payment Gateway Strategy

B2B payments have gone digital. 

The Enabling B2B Payments for the Virtual Workforce study predicts that 80% of all buyer-supplier payments could be digital by 2025. As transactions become increasingly mobile and contactless, B2B organizations need payment gateway solutions that can support seamless payment experiences.

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However, it’s essential for businesses to consider going beyond a single-provider approach. Implementing a multi-gateway strategy can be the key to keeping your B2B payments efficient and successful.  

What Factors Impact the Efficiency of B2B Payments?

To choose the best B2B payment gateway solution, you need to understand the precise needs of your payment system. B2B payments differ from B2C payments in many ways, making it necessary to implement a tailored solution that can support the capabilities and payment methods you require. 

Consider the following factors and the benefits they pose for your business:

Multi-Gateway Support

When operating a B2B payment system, you need to consider the diverse needs of your different suppliers and clients. While many well-known payment gateways can offer comprehensive processing capabilities, the better approach is to adopt multiple gateways rather than a single provider.

Plenty of issues can arise when using a single payment gateway. The gateway’s inherent fraud mechanisms may incorrectly flag a payment, causing a payment failure. More rarely, the gateway can experience an outage, putting a temporary halt to all of your transactions.

A multi-gateway strategy can effectively address these issues by giving you the freedom to setup secondary gateways should a problem arise with your primary provider. 

Real-Time Visibility and Scalability

Knowing whether or not your B2B payments are performing well requires you to both see and manage your transactions in real-time. The gateway solution you choose should be capable of scaling efficiently as business transaction volumes increase, such as when you launch a new product or enter a new market. 

Achieving real-time visibility and scalability of your payments also necessitates automation. 

You need gateways that can automatically authenticate transactions with minimal additional labor from either your business or the payment sender. Such a solution can also improve your vendor relationships by ensuring accurate and speedy invoices. 

Recurring Payment Support

Recurring billing plays a significant role in B2B transactions. 

B2B relationships often stem from long-term contracts that involve regular recurring payments, such as ongoing supply contracts or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) agreements.

Your business needs payment gateways that can not only support recurring billing models but enhance them with automation. Automated recurring billing can greatly reduce friction in the payment process, especially when dealing with administrative tasks or cash flow management. 

The gateway solutions you select should be capable of handling flexible billing cycles and contractual changes (i.e. plan upgrades, cancellations, etc.) without introducing unnecessary procedural hiccups, such as lengthy authentication processes. 

Routing and Integration Capabilities

We covered the importance of integrating multiple payment gateways, but what about your actual routing strategy? As mentioned, payment failures can happen for a number of reasons. While hard failures from gateway outages may be rare, soft failures due to things like fraud prevention systems or inaccurate payment information can be more common issues.  

When such problems occur, you need the ability to automatically reroute transactions to a secondary gateway that have a higher chance for the transaction to succeed. 

Your rerouting capabilities depend less on the actual payment gateways themselves and more on the flexibility of your payment infrastructure. 

For example, an open payments platform can enable you to automatically reroute to a different gateway if something goes wrong with the first. The platform can determine exactly which gateway the transaction should be rerouted to based on the geographic and technical requirements of the payment. 

How B2B Payments Differ from Consumer Payments

Comparing B2B and B2C payments can be like comparing apples to oranges. Sure, they’re both fruit, but they require different methods of care and preparation to taste their best. 

B2B payments are typically more complex than a standard B2C payment. They can involve larger transaction amounts and more detailed invoicing, complicating accounting and administrative processes like reconciliation. Differing payment methods are often used as well, with B2B transactions often involving options like bank transfers, ACH payments, and credit lines.

Each B2B payment can also include much greater variation than a consumer payment. Factors like payment terms and delivery schedules can add another layer of complexity to B2B payments compared to consumer scenarios where the customer can directly purchase goods and services. 

So, why do these discrepancies between B2B and B2C matter?

For starters, B2B companies need to be aware of how their payment flows work, particularly if they are dealing with both B2B and B2C transactions. Differentiating between the two is essential for everything from compliance to accounting. 

It also matters when setting up payment gateways.

Some gateways are better suited for B2B use cases, making it vital to select gateways that match your business needs (such as support for bank transfers or ACH payments). Additionally, you need to be mindful of where you are sending and receiving B2B payments, as you may need to select gateways that offer local payment methods and support for specific international suppliers and clients. 

What is the Best Payment Gateway for B2B?

Plenty of payment gateways offer operational advantages for B2B payments. For example, PayPal  offers an all-in-one payments platform for both small businesses and enterprises around the globe, while EBANX can provide critical support for businesses entering emerging markets and in need of a localized cross-border payment solution. 

When you sit down and compare each gateway, you’ll likely find that all of them offer some unique advantage or perk that can help you in certain payment scenarios. 

The true path to success with your B2B payments is to embrace the multi-provider approach. With access to multiple payment gateways, you can not only increase your global coverage but also attract more business clients and suppliers with a more flexible payment system. 

Integrate Multiple Payment Gateways with Spreedly

At Spreedly, our open payments platform is designed to help businesses across the B2B space simplify their payment strategy. Our open environment allows you to integrate as many or as few gateways as you need, as well as configure automated rerouting rules to keep your payments flowing consistently.

Book a Spreedly demo today to witness the potential of open payments firsthand. 

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