Stampli launches fight back against virtual cards
As businesses are going digital, payments fintechs are capitalising on this trend to lure businesses to adopt their payment platforms. Payments automation companies are launching products or adding innovation within their existing platforms to make it more accessible and attractive to businesses.
This week, the US-based accounts payable automation company Stampli has launched Stampli Direct Pay, which is an extension of its AP automation platform and would enable businesses to pay for invoices inside the Stampli platform via ACH or check from their bank accounts. According to the company, this would avoid credit card processing fees on vendors.
Stampli’s CEO Eyal Feldman has attacked virtual credit cards, stating that they make way “for third-parties to hold vendor information hostage and push alternate payment methods – such as virtual credit cards – for their own financial gain”.
Adding further, Feldman says that their Stampli Direct Pay platform “is the opposite – flexible, straightforward, and low-cost with the singular goal of ensuring the entire financial process from invoice to payment to reconciliation is easy and efficient”.
Other offerings by Stampli Direct Pay include individual ACH payment reconciliation, the platform automates sending physical checks from a company’s own bank account and supporting documents.
According to the press release, “Stampli Direct Pay is completely optional and Stampli will not require customers to use its payments offering nor will customers have to surrender their vendor payment information, instead of retaining full ownership of vendor relationships and data”.
This year a number of payment companies have launched virtual credit cards individually or through partnership such as Onyx CenterSource, J.P. Morgan and Marqeta, or Conferma Pay and CIBT, while BNP Paribas integrated its virtual cards with Coupa Pay.
Other companies such as Brex had partnered with SAP Concur to let business customers automatically update and reconcile their corporate card expenses with Concur Expense, while ClearBooks and Metro Bank had partnered to launch accounting software with online and mobile feeds and financial management tools for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs).
On the other hand, Repay had announced an integration with Sage 500, an enterprise management product. It had already connected with Sage 100 and Sage 300.