Client Showcase: Global B2B Payments Leader

Client Profile: Business-to-Business Payments 

Notable Quote: “This will save us hundreds of hours, but more importantly, it will bring revenue faster.” 

Type: Private 

Industry: B2B Payments 

Operates: Worldwide 

Valued at almost $10B with over 5,000 clients worldwide, this company processes more than $75B in annualized payment volume. They are among the leaders in the global finance automation space. Their platform is designed for companies that need to pay large numbers of suppliers, contractors, or vendors. It automates critical finance operations such as accounts payable, mass payments, procurement, global supplier payments, expense management, and compliance/tax workflows. 

We began working with them as a design partner. We have collaborated on several features, and their ongoing feedback has significantly improved our product. Since then, they have been using our platform to test their current vendor, ensuring timely list updates and overall system capability. The key to their success came from being able to demonstrate to their business teams how identity attributes can dramatically reduce the number of alerts their operations team must handle each day, and more importantly, expedite revenue. 

In online onboarding, the less information you ask from a user, the higher the likelihood that they complete the process. For compliance and security, however, there is a balance that must be struck. The risk of onboarding a user with minimal information must be weighed against user adoption. In their case, they were collecting less information from users in certain jurisdictions. For sanctions screening, unfortunately, the less information you have about an individual or business, the more alerts you generate. With more information, you have more data points to rule out potential matches—which results in fewer alerts to review, less wasted time, lower operational costs, and a much happier compliance team. 

The number of alerts in jurisdictions where more user information was collected was significantly lower than in jurisdictions with limited information. Still, the compliance team needed to prove to the product and business teams that the operational cost from the increased alerts outweighed the benefits of reduced sign-up friction. We partnered with them to estimate that by simply asking for “country of origin,” they could save tens of thousands of dollars per month in operational costs. But more importantly—and likely what changed the business team’s view—reducing the number of alerts would also speed up account opening for users or businesses stuck in review due to potential matches. In total, the compliance team expects to save tens of thousands in operational costs and bring tens of thousands of dollars in revenue into the business faster. 

The product and business teams are now working on the necessary adjustments to the user experience across their various onboarding flows. 

When onboarding clients globally, they collect certain information to perform sanctions matching. The general rule is simple: the more information, the better. For example, there are many individuals named “Mohamed” on sanctions lists. If you only rely on the first name, you will receive numerous potential matches. But if you incorporate last name, middle name, date of birth, and location, the number of matches drops dramatically.