23 Sep 2013 MasterCard and Basware announce new partnership
On the back of the extraordinary announcements over recent weeks , MasterCard and Basware have just declared another supply chain finance deal.
It’s a big deal and it’s another sign if we needed it that products and services providing working capital support to business is one of the faster growing areas in B2B. I chatted to Esa Tihilä, CEO of Basware and Hany Fam, President, Global Strategic Alliances at MasterCard last week about this new partnership. It’s good news for Basware – they now have an important new string to their bow, but I think it’s even better news for MasterCard who couldn’t have chosen a better partner.
We’ll cover this deal in more detail in the coming weeks and months as it evolves, but for the time being the details are this:
Basware has partnered with MasterCard to launch a revolutionary electronic payment solution that ensures suppliers are paid fast upon invoice approval, while extending payment terms for buyers.
MasterCard and Basware claim that they will revolutionise the way that companies do business with each other by providing a single global payment solution to guarantee that suppliers receive payment fast upon invoice approval, while lengthening payment terms for buyers.
The e-payment service is enabled by the Basware Commerce Network, which is connected to the MasterCard global payment network and leverages MasterCard’s unique suite of payments products. This will deliver immediate cost and efficiency savings to companies of all sizes.
Esa Tihilä, CEO of Basware, commented: “This is a partnership of huge importance and significance, not just for Basware and its customers, but for all buyer and supplier organisations and the whole purchase-to-pay (P2P) and e-invoicing industry. The launch of this service represents another example of how e-invoicing is evolving from being a largely technical service focused on delivering process efficiencies, to one that is able to deliver transformational commercial benefits to the business. Solutions like this are the present and future of every corporate’s financial strategy and this development has the potential to revolutionise business payment, which can even impact the economy at large.”
Basware’s Commerce Network already processes over 50 million invoices annually, totalling more than US$420 billion across 900,000 trading partners in 100 countries. This scope and reach is combined with MasterCard’s international payment network covering over 150 currencies across more than 210 countries and 22,000 financial institutions. The new service will make sure suppliers get guaranteed early payment without placing any additional burden on buyers, creating a vital economic buffer for businesses of all sizes.
Hany Fam, President, Global Strategic Alliances at MasterCard: “We see this alliance as key to addressing the entire customer journey, not just one link in the chain of a customer experience. MasterCard’s goal is to help organisations of all sizes and sectors to reinvent and rewire their customer relationships in innovative new ways.
We are bringing our network, data and technology assets to bear alongside Basware’s industry-leading purchase- to-pay network to achieve these goals. Together we are combining one of the largest payment networks with a transaction network of comparable scale, so this is an ideal partnership.”
Pete Loughlin can be found on twitter @peteloughlin
