Making sense of the world of B2B payments and procurement technology: Backdrop, market segmentation and vendor mapping

A couple of years ago, I fought a small battle with the management team of Spend Matters’ parent company (Azul Partners) about making the investment to cover what was then a nascent market for B2B payments as a solution extension to categories that we cover in SolutionMap: Procure-to-Pay, Invoice-to-Pay and AP Automation solutions. I was not alone, among my colleagues, in making the case to cover B2B payments, both as a drill-down of SolutionMap within AP Automation and Invoice-to-Pay, but also as a stand-alone area on Spend Matters.

But those who weren’t initially taken with the idea asked the fundamental question: Why?

Why would procurement and AP leaders care about B2B payments in relation to their primary technology decisions? It’s a fair question.

It is clear from a range of M&A activity (e.g., the payments/treasury management services (TMS)/P2P/AP mash-up of Coupa/BELLIN last year) as well as converged solution featuring a combination of internally developed solutions alongside integrated third-party capability (e.g., Coupa Pay, Tipalti), not to mention pure-play solutions (e.g., AvidXchange), that B2B payments are converging with the world of procurement and AP technology.

This Spend Matters PRO series segments and explores the various providers in the non-bank B2B payments market into four distinct market segments while exploring the overlap (think Venn diagram) between the groupings and individual providers. But to get everyone started on the same level, we’ll begin by providing some context and history of B2B payments overall. Still, if you’re from procurement or AP and you're relatively new to world of B2B payments (or brand-new), we recommend starting here:

• Everything Procurement Should Know About Payments: Procurement’s Role and P2P Case Examples (Part 1)
• Everything Procurement Should Know About Payments: Best-in-Class P2P Technology Capabilities and the Reconciliation Process (Part 2)
• Everything Procurement Should Know About Payments (Part 3): Challenges and Opportunities for Payment Operations
• Payments (Part 4): Setting Up Suppliers for Payment — The Intersection of P2P and Supplier Management (Part 4)
• Everything Procurement Should Know About Payments (Part 5): Dynamic Discounting and Supply Chain Finance Models
• Everything Procurement Should Know About Payments (Part 6): Payment Best Practices and Recommendations

But where do B2B payment technology vendors (and their procurement and AP counterparts) fit into this world today?

Let’s begin ...