A Guide to Payment Automation in Accounts Payable - Webinar Highlights

Controllers Council recently held a CPE training webinar titled, A Guide to Payment Automation in Accounts Payable, sponsored by AvidXchange.

AvidXchange is a trusted, leading provider of accounts payable (“AP”) automation software and payment solutions for middle market businesses and their suppliers. AvidXchange’s Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) based, end-to-end software and payment platform digitizes and automates the AP workflows for over 8,000 buyer customers, and it has made payments to more than 1,200,000 supplier customers over the past five years. Additionally, AvidXchange, Inc. is a licensed money transmitter for US B2B payments, licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services, and many other states.

Our expert panelists are Danny Gassaway, Senior Product Marketing Manager, and Wayne Richards, Senior Manager of Sales.

Following are key takeaways to this discussion. If you are interested in learning more, view the full webinar archive video here.

Parting Ways with Paper

The business world continues to move away from paper checks more and more that companies are preferring more modern payment methods for a number of reasons.

Since 2004, B2B payments made by checks have dropped from 81% to lower than 33%, and that’s just as of 2022. So, we know that number has continued to drop. While technology is getting better and speed to payments is getting faster, one major reason for the drop in check usage is security and the peace of mind that comes with modern payment modalities.

Looking specifically at check fraud and the increase there, given the pervasiveness of check fraud today, businesses are really moving hard away from paper checks. Since the pandemic, the US Treasury Department has reported a 385% increase in check fraud.

What are some popular electronic payment methods to replace checks? Here they are:

Credit Card or Virtual Credit Card
Debit Card
Online Banking
Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)
Automated Clearing House (ACH)
Wire Transfer
Real-Time Payments – 49% of organizations used real-time payments to pay suppliers in 2023
Mobile Wallet
Contactless Payment

AI Revolutionizes Accounts Payable

AI is at the forefront of financial professionals. So, how can AI help improve AP processes?

Invoice entry and verification: Computer vision can automate invoice entry and improve accuracy
PO matching: AI can validate invoices against purchase orders and sales receipts without human intervention.
Workflow automation: AI-driven workflow automation tools can route invoices for approval based on both machine learning and predefined rules.
Anomaly detection: AI can search historical data so it can help detect fraudulent invoices or even irregular payment patterns by looking back at previous invoices, previous payment data, and it uses that to detect.
Reporting and analytics: AI can generate insightful reports and dashboards, providing a clear view of AP performance to help make date-driven decisions.
Buyer savings: An algorithm can analyze contract terms and offer suggestions and notifications for payment timing to capture supplier discounts.

As of right now, 72% of organizations are currently using AI technology in their finance department.

AI’s Impact on Electronic Payments

Another important piece of technology at the center of the digital payment revolution is AI. There’s a few ways AI is impacting electronic payments today. Some of the benefits of using AI for payments include boost to efficiency, enhanced security, accuracy, increased speed to payment, help strengthen supplier relationships, predictive analytics and fraud detection. Leveraging AI within electronic payment methods can make that payment process more streamlined, and the process can just be a lot more efficient.

In our B2B Payment Security Survey, we found that only 5 % of AP departments are currently using AI-driven anomaly detection to help mitigate the risk of payment fraud.