2020 AFP Security Panel Discussion:
Developments and Future Look

INTRO: 

On this special episode of The Treasury Update Podcast, Strategic Treasurer features its panel discussion on payments, from the 2020 AFP Virtual Conference. Moderator, Dave Robertson, Managing Director of Deluxe Corporation, interviews Doug Cranston of Bottomline Technologies, Sylvia Rodee at Fifth Third Bank, Leigh Moore, at Visa and Craig Jeffrey of Strategic Treasurer, on new payment channels and types across the world. Listen in to this lively panel discussion and debate on technology developments, issues, and predictions around payments. 

Craig Jeffery: 

Hello, I’m Craig Jeffrey with Strategic Treasurer. Welcome to another FinTech HotSeat. Today’s FinTech HotSeat is on payments and our moderator today is Dave Robertson from Deluxe. But before we turn it over to Dave, I’ll let Sylvia and Doug introduce themselves. Sylvia. Welcome. 

Sylvia Rodee: 

Thank you. I’m Sylvia Rodee. I’m the Senior Product Manager responsible for integrated payables from Fifth Third Bank. 

Doug Cranston: 

Dough Cranston from Bottomline Technologies. I am VP of Product Management for our PayMode-X product. 

Craig Jeffery: 

And welcome Dave. Thanks for moderating today’s session. 

Dave Robertson: 

Thank you Craig. Very excited to be here. My name is Dave Robertson. I’m with Deluxe Corporation in our payments division and I work with our advisory services and solution consultant teams. Why don’t we jump in? And I know one thing that’s been top of mind for everyone is the pandemic. So our first issue really is around changes and adaptation. The pandemic has brought about not only economic disruption, but also disruptions to supply chains and even ways of doing business. So why don’t we start with Sylvia and I’ve got a few questions that I’ll tee up. You can take them in any order, but one is how should companies best adapt to these ongoing changes? The second question is how has remote work affected payments? And then lastly, if we can actually turn this around and see the pandemic and its impact as an opportunity, are we going to take advantage of this opportunity or are we going to squander it? 

Sylvia Rodee: 

Those are all great questions. I’m actually going to start with the second question first. When everything shut down in mid-March and many people found themselves working from home. One of the biggest questions that came to us as a bank was, how can I work around the manual processes, especially those involving paper when I am sitting remotely and not physically in my office and able to touch things. And the biggest issue that we saw both on the payment side and on the processing side was, how do we effectively process paper checks? How do they get created? How do they get sent? How do they get accepted and processed? And that was a challenge when people were not sitting physically in their offices. Those clients who were using electronic payments found that things went much smoother when they had to move and pivot to operating in a work from home environment. 

Sylvia Rodee: 

And so, one of the things that we did was work closely with our clients to try and move them to electronic payment methods. And our integrated payables platforms are a good example of how people have been doing that with things like credit cards, ACH payments, in some cases, things like real-time payments or even Zelle in some lower middle market or business settings. And those businesses who were able to incorporate that found that things were much smoother. And again, this was not just from the making the payment perspective, but also from accepting the payment and getting those applied within their worlds. So how did people pivot to this work from home area and how did they manage these manual paper intensive processes? They either had to have somebody going into the office to touch paper. 

Sylvia Rodee: 

In some cases we heard of people who were actually bringing printers from their office into their home environment. Of course, that opens up a lot of concerns about what kind of double checking do you have? What fraud opportunities are being opened up because of this? Another reason that we think moving to electronic rather than a virtual work from home environment, incorporating check stock and check printers and things of that nature. So how do people prepare themselves for this and will we continue with these changes? 

Sylvia Rodee: 

Well, we have definitely seen an uptick in clients, as I said, moving to electronic payment types. And we’ve also seen an uptick in the vendors or suppliers who are willing to accept an electronic payment, such as a commercial card or an ACH payment of some sort. I believe that just recently we may have seen a little bit of pushback and that gets to how important is cash flow to the receiver of the payment. If they are in a cash strapped situation, they are very happy to receive an electronic payment, but some suppliers and some businesses, even in this environment have a lot of cash on hand. And those businesses may be, are more reluctant to take any kind of discounting on their payments. So it’s a mixed bag depending on where the cashflow is for the supplier and how important it is for them to keep that cash moving quickly through their environment. 

Dave Robertson: 

Thank you. It’s interesting how some people are still clinging to paper. Doug, do you want to add any comments to Sylvia? 

Doug Cranston: 

I think our experience mirrors that of Sylvia’s and as one of our partners in supporting that process, we’ve certainly seen that born out. Organizations that have put up with manual processes or paper-based processes for a long time, have this bluntly as an opportunity to have a mandate, to move towards more automated processes. So we have seen a significant spike in interest around these programs that will offer additional fraud protections, offer a move away from a legacy based manual processes to electronic processes. 

Doug Cranston: 

So that’s definitely been a very real dynamic and also echoing on the supplier side, suppliers in many cases are now more sensitive about processes that expose them to manual functions or opportunities for fraud. They’re more protective of their information. They’re interacting with more of their clients on an electronic basis. So being able to talk to those vendors, those payees of these payments and help them understand how an electronic payments process can help them address… And as Sylvia pointed out in some cashflow problems and others just opportunities to move away from paper-based or manual processes, those are definitely dynamics that have been front and center over the last few months. As organizations do view this as a mandate and opportunity to address points of friction that they’ve lived with for a long time. 

Dave Robertson: 

And Craig, anything from your vantage point as an advisor to corporate treasury? 

Craig Jeffery: 

Yeah, both from, as an advisor and also as a researcher, we do quite a bit of research in addition to our project where necessity is the mother of invention. Necessity is also a great motivator to move to electronic when the situation is tough. And we’ve seen a very significant move to electronic processing throughout the pandemic. And we’re capturing information. Right now it looks like it’s above two years worth of growth or movement into the electronic has happened in the 10 months so far this year. 

Craig Jeffery: 

So we’ll see if it ends up being about three years worth of the gradual transition from paper to electronic, or if it’s just North of two. But that’s really pretty significant and I think back to one of your questions there, is this an opportunity that will be squandered? I think the pandemic has lasted long enough that people have either implemented it or are implementing. So I think we haven’t squandered the opportunity. I just hope that the momentum isn’t squandered for those that will take longer to make the implementation that doesn’t get distracted by the latest urgent issue that pops up afterwards. 

Dave Robertson: 

We’re going to switch gears to our next question, which is taking us from the present to the future and the issue of future proofing. I think, we’ve all seen that the pace of change is accelerating and as companies think about future-proofing and as banks and providers like Bottomline, think about preparing to help them. What are the real and the fake issues in making a payment process future-proof? And Craig, why don’t we stay with you and have you start that. 

Craig Jeffery: 

Well, I like your real and fake a description. I’m reminded of going to Disney World years ago and you get stuck in those lines and they always have things that entertain you. And one of them was, in the future packages will be digitized and transmitted as beams of light. And I thought about that and I was like, no, no, they won’t. That’s not a fax machine for physical goods, but this idea of how long it takes changes to occur comes to mind with that question about future-proofing. So I think of payment platforms as they’re going to last 40, 50, maybe 70 years. We have some new ones that have come up. It’s not just five years. When we think about future proof, we have to look at what’s going to last the next, 40 or 50 years, we don’t know what’s going to go beyond that. 

Craig Jeffery: 

And so I think if we think about 40 to 50 years, what do we need to be concerned about? We need to think about the platform. What platform are we moving new payments to? Are we leveraging the type of network it is? The reach. And then some of those key drivers like, flexibility, insight, visibility, the power of a network, control, security. 

Craig Jeffery: 

Those are some pretty substantive things to be thinking about, when we think about future-proofing. The other has to do with things like formats. I mean, you may have a great process that’s working off of a format that’s 20, 30 or 40 years old. It’s not enriched. So we need to think about, every time we’re touching a payment process or we’re touching the formats, we want to move to the most modern ones, that are more enriched, more supportive of real-time activity. And they have a view towards, not just end to end within our organization, but end to end in our organization and end to end in the other counterparty organization. So it could be remittance information, enriched data. So it’s the end to end, to end to end type mindset. So we think about formats platforms and the entire process. I think that’s probably the best way to make it as future proof as you can. When we think about decades, not centuries but decades. 

Sylvia Rodee: 

Yeah. I would agree with that, that we’re looking for things especially that are ubiquitous. And I think that’s the hurdle that any new payment type has to struggle to get over. But also the idea that we can add that important remittance information so that that information can travel from the beginning of the process all the way to the end of the process. And that incorporates some things that may be within banking we haven’t always thought about as our piece of the puzzle, like invoices and things of that nature. And so when you solve that entire problem from the beginning of the purchase cycle to the end of the payment, and you can do that across your entire base of suppliers and customers as partners, then you have a winning kind of payment. And the future payments that we’re looking at, I think they’re still working to get over those hurdles of ubiquity, but they have the promise of adding a lot more enriched data than we have as a capability with our current electronic payments. 

Doug Cranston: 

Just in that same vein agree with both Craig and Sylvia in terms of the future proofing. I think there’s definitely a dimension of looking at the payment provider. And one of the advantages of a cloud-based solution is that, that provider should be evolving that solution over time. And doing some impedance matching between the challenges that treasury and accounts payable accounts receivable have in terms of operational processes and the advantages and limitations of their ERP or accounting system. And these new opportunities offered by both new payment types, but also as Sylvia talked about the full breadth of automation, starting with the purchase all the way through the payment and the delivery of remittance information. So there is the opportunity for a cloud-based solution to provide some, again, that friction reduction or impedance matching provide a set of functionality that continues to evolve as the payment ecosystem evolves. 

Doug Cranston: 

And there’s also a good judge of future-proofing just by the state of a platform today. There are already a wide variety of payment types. Sylvia touched on some of them a few minutes ago. And so a platform should be providing support for that full ecosystem of payment types. And the modularity of perhaps today only a payments automation solution is desirable, but in a future state, having an invoice automation available as well, or additional payment types that are available as a flip the switch option. I think those were all dimensions of a platform that maybe isn’t future proof, but provides a lot of protection for the treasury organization as the ecosystem and technology evolves. 

Dave Robertson: 

And it was interesting, both Doug and Sylvia, you hit on the issue of these payment rails are here they can handle often rich remittance data, but getting that data into the system and connecting the buyer and supplier end to end is really critical. And to that end, there’s been a lot of discussion around real-time payments. And so I think Sylvia, you alluded to or referred to the ISO 20022 message sets with the rich remittance data. If we take a little bit of a shift there, do we think that real-time payments are also going to help companies maximize their cash visibility, their cash on hand, or even their cash forecasting accuracy? And Craig, we’re going to pick on you again to start with. 

Craig Jeffery: 

I think you asked three questions and I think my answer would be, yes, maybe not as firm to each of these, and it depends if you’re talking about real-time payments as RTP or just this faster, better payments schema. But that idea that they’ll help us with forecasting, anytime you take slack out of the system, whether it’s slack of information, delay in information or slack and available funds like float. I think that helps with a couple of those both forecasting. It helps with assurance of where we are. So I think that, that idea really helps improve all three. Your other point was cash visibility, I think was one of them, and certainly lets you see more cash more quickly because there’s no slack or delay, a real-time instantaneous payment, 24/7, 365, lets you see it. We’re used to that on the consumer side now whichever method you’re using to transfer funds, we’re expecting the payment to hit within moments. 

Craig Jeffery: 

And it’s hard to go back to something that’s slower. So I think the answer is definitely yes. Yes to all three of those items, float, information and cash forecast accuracy. Partly because you don’t have to forecast some of it because it’s in your account, you’re not like, is it today or tomorrow? Your zero day and one day forecast now become more accurate. I think it helps in a lot of those fronts, now the challenge I think with RTP specifically is the limits of a 100,000 right now. So for larger companies that are using it for major payments or cash mobilization, it’s not fully adequate in those areas. But I’d start with that, I know there’s probably some strong feelings on that and you can probably challenge a few of the things I said too. 

Dave Robertson: 

Doug. Any thoughts on that? 

Doug Cranston: 

I agree with Craig in terms of the cash forecasting and visibility. I think RTP specifically in the real-time schemes more broadly do provide that advantage of cutting slack out of the system. I think that was a great way of articulating it. I think we see a particular need for real time payment schemes, where there is that immediate timing sensitivity. So as Craig alluded to Fedwire is probably still the most expensive, but also the best way to do very high dollar transactions that have immediacy needs. RTP though offers a nice alternative to some of the credit card schemes and other alternative players in terms of bringing immediacy to the core payments platforms themselves. In other words, the national systems being able to supply immediacy to consumer payments, for instance, very often when you’re standing in physical presence, you want to have that payment become visible to you right away. 

Doug Cranston: 

So RTP and the real-time schemes in general, I think are advantageous there. More broadly I think, specific to the RTP scheme, we do see the opportunity for additional ecosystem collaboration. So part of the RTP scheme is not just about payments and making payments faster, but the opportunity to do messaging in the context of a payment. So being able to request a payment and have the requestor respond with a payment in the context of that request. So there’s not only the immediacy of cash visibility, but also the opportunity for immediate application to the payment. You’re applying that payment in the context of the original request. So it makes application very simple and to go even beyond that and have conversational payments. So, questions about payment application questions about a particular payment request, RTP provides the rails for that sort of collaboration that helped move payments beyond unilateral funds moving into more of a bilateral discussion. 

Sylvia Rodee: 

Yeah, the only thing I would add is that again, it really is going to be dependent on the trading partners need for cash. Whether that be a buyer who’s trying to hang on to cash as long as possible, or that is the vendor who needs to either bring the cash in or if they’re both cash rich. I think what happens when you have plenty of working capital, there is more sensitivity to, am I paying a premium for this to go through the system faster? 

Sylvia Rodee: 

And I think at this point we have not really seen companies who have that advantage of having a good working capital position, want to pay a premium simply for the visibility. That is where, things like real-time payments or even same day ACH. We haven’t seen those adopted in those situations. Where we have seen them, as Doug indicated, is where wire payments have that immediacy and the Fed reference number that provide that certainty that your payment has gone through. I think some of that we’ll see switching to RTP and where the certainty piece of it isn’t as important. You may see that switching to something like a same day ACH, but it is true that payers and vendors are still sensitive to what is the cost of the payment for them, whether it’s a discount to what they’re receiving or whether it’s an actual charge to their bank. 

Dave Robertson: 

Thanks Sylvia. There’s lots of payment options. Right? And I think what I drew from what you were saying is, probably a need to really clearly position these options and of the value propositions be very distinctive, so that companies don’t just look at this and see it all as a big jumbled mess. We’ll switch gears now to outsourcing as a tactic. And this is timely because Strategic Treasurer just did a study on AP and AR sponsored by by Deluxe. And one of the things we really looked at was the level of automation and resiliency, both of which have room to improve, but we also detected from corporations a much greater appetite to outsource all or part of their accounts receivable and accounts payable processing than we’d seen in the past. So Doug, maybe we’ll start with you and ask the question, what do you see working very well, operationally and outsourcing receivables and payables outsourcing? And maybe the flip side, what doesn’t work as well, or what are some of the pitfalls that people need to be aware of? 

Doug Cranston: 

Thanks for the question. So Dave, a minute ago, you used the phrase, a big jumbled mess when you talked about the new payment schemes and all the options available. And I think that’s one of the areas where we see outsourced AP and AR having potentially the biggest impact. AP is no longer just cutting checks and throwing them in the mail. There are now sophisticated optimization tools that help organizations both save money, be safer and more protected. And in some cases actually drive a rebate stream back into accounts payable from the receivables’ perspective, likewise, lots of payment types, multiple payment portals appearing. So AR has the same exposure to an increasingly complex ecosystem. So to have a partner that AP and AR can bring in and have that partner provide the on-ramp to all these different technologies and do that in a unified way, a way that’s tightly integrated with the accounting and ERP system, it is really beyond optional at this point. 

Doug Cranston: 

The ecosystems have gotten sophisticated enough that if there’s not an effective partner in place, AP-AR are probably missing the mark in terms of both operational efficiencies, but again, safety and security and potentially a rebate stream as well. So those are definitely areas where the outsourcing path can be successful, and it’s critical to have an outsourcing partner that is a partner and not just a throw it over the wall and hope for the best. These are sophisticated programs. And it’s important to have a partner that is along for the ride with you and understands the organization’s goals and how to take that ecosystem and pull it into play, to solve the organizational problems. Where there can be challenges is where there is a more unilateral approach, where there is a solution provider that has a solution and that’s the solution that everyone is going to be given. 

Doug Cranston: 

And that can be problematic in some cases that’s a great fit. And If it is a great fit then that’s terrific. There are cases though where AP and AR are a little more sophisticated or a little more complicated or have specific needs. At the end of the day, these businesses are running a business. They’re not running an AP shop. AP is important, but it’s not the core business. So to have a partner that can come in and have the flexibility to address the actual business problems, as opposed to pushing a one size fits all solution is critical and can be the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful outsourcing engagement. 

Sylvia Rodee: 

We are moving. And I think part of it is we, banks and Fin-Techs have made the payers aware of how expensive and what the expenses are within their own ecosystem in terms of what it costs them to process payments. If you’re looking at that entire cost to the organization, then having a partner help you with that and take that over for you makes a lot more sense. If you’re not seeing those costs, if you’re looking strictly at the payment? Then I think we have clients who still are a little hesitant again, from a cost perspective. So part of what we are doing and part of what I think the industry is learning is that there are a lot more costs than simply, what did that ACH cost you if you’re doing all of that work yourself? 

Sylvia Rodee: 

And in order to keep up with the variety of payment types and to understand how to work best with the various suppliers that you have to pay and what they need on their side. Again, all of that really becomes much easier when you’re working with a partner to process those payments. There are still some hurdles for people who like to have control. And I think what they’re learning is a lot of these platforms still give them a lot of control and give them the leavers that they need to feel that they can still maintain good relationships with their suppliers, which of course is also an important thing about what they’re doing. And the payment is just a piece of that. 

Dave Robertson: 

Thank you. It’s interesting. If you were to talk to people 10, 15 years ago about outsourcing, they would have immediately jumped to efficiency and cost saving. And here are both of you talking about flexibility, new capabilities, the ability to have strategic partnerships. So quite a change. Craig, any additional thoughts on the outsourcing question? 

Craig Jeffery: 

Yeah, I thought Sylvia had some really good points. And then your comment there about what people were looking at 10 to 15 years ago, there’s still such a huge drive towards the efficiency. And I think to Sylvia’s point, is that people are like, hey, I can be as efficient as the bank. The bank has to have a profit factor or the tech farm has to have some kind of profit margin built in. And they look at things very much in isolation. And I think what we’ve seen in the COVID environment that the strategic is dominating. It’s not… Someone said, this is our strategic position to do more outsourcing, or it’s just related to business continuity planning. Though the necessity has driven much more activity in that direction to put it with a tech firm, to put it with a bank, to move that activity because, you say, okay, this is what it costs me for this component. 

Craig Jeffery: 

Do I compare that to the all-in cost of something that’s much more rigorous? Much more flexible? Maybe an open system that can plug in be interoperable? Versus, now I have to build redundancies in-house. And that’s almost impossible to make it more efficient in house, it’s only possible when we carve off those other concerns and start looking at a micro level. So it’s very, very rare that it’s going to make sense to do all those pieces. So the strategic elements, the relationship, Sylvia talked about the relationships as one aspect, and then the relationship with your partner and then the overall… A true business case, not a cost benefit of a short component of it, I think makes outsourcing the processing so attractive to more and more companies. And it’s sped up in this past year. As I think people have realized what can go wrong, will go wrong at some point. And it’s nicer to have much more redundant, supported system than most companies, nearly all companies can do on their own. 

Dave Robertson: 

Sylvia. You want to jump in first? 

Sylvia Rodee: 

I was just going to say one thing that we haven’t really talked about, that outsourcing your accounts payable or accounts receivable can help you accomplish, is an extra layer of fraud protection. And so, for example, in our partnership with Bottomline, they manage the supplier data in a way that, our clients don’t have to, first of all, they don’t have to capture sensitive data, which sometimes vendors are reluctant to give. And secondly, they don’t have to store that and figure out how they keep that sensitive data from getting taken in any way. And then third, they don’t have to rely on their employees who very rarely maybe have to change vendor bank account information from understanding all the best practices of keeping fraudsters from tricking you into giving you the wrong account. 

Dave Robertson: 

Great. Thanks. And Doug, you’re going to chime in as well? 

Doug Cranston: 

Actually, Sylvia took words right out of my mouth. The fraudsters are sophisticated. These are not necessarily small organizations or efforts that are trying to hack into businesses. And so accounts payable in particular has realized they’re actively being targeted by the bad guys. Right? The bad guys have figured out AP are the ones initiating payments. Accounts payable now is being faced by these sophisticated social engineering scams, phishing. We hear constant calls for help, we protect against business email compromise. So having a partner that has that sophisticated security stance and fraud awareness and protections as part of the program, is just another complexity that the business can ignore, focus on running their business and let the partner take care of those fraud protection. So very much aligned with where Sylvia was. 

Craig Jeffery: 

Yeah. So one point about that on the idea of outsourcing. When you talk about fraud protection, or the ability to onboard your partners more quickly, whether that’s from a control standpoint or a greater adoption of electronics. And I guess I see those as the power of a network and usually that’s achieved through outsources. Like, hey, now I’m into a network where I’m known and trusted. I’ve entered myself once and now my company can receive payments that way or information in the way I want, or those networks can inter-operate with other networks. There’s a lot of power there from a cost efficiency adoption. Those are all really, really far more powerful, I think, and less challenging, because when you use the term outsourcing, sometimes people get very much on edge. Outsourcing, I need to keep my relationships with my vendors up and good. Yeah, you do. How will you do that? And so that’s a key component. So I think these are all pushing organizations in that manner to leverage the power of networks and open networks, open systems in that regard. 

Dave Robertson: 

We’re going to move on to Fed now, have a little debate here. So the clearing house launched real-time payments to great fanfare and it has grown, but I think the adoption is still slow. And now we have the Fed looking to launch its own real time payment system that would compete with the clearing house. So the question before us is, is Fed now too late, too duplicative? Or is it a continuation of enhanced choice in the U.S. payments arena and that’s going to make us more successful as an industry? 

Craig Jeffery: 

And I go into that. You hear the industry and it’s at one part is like, hey, we already have one. We have the clearing house, we’ve got real-time payments. Why does the Fed need to come in and muck things up? And then you have the other standpoint, which I think I lean more towards is, the Fed is coming in late. It’s 2023, 2024 is when they expect it. And it’s going to be a rollout in waves or a staggered roll out of some of the different options. And so it’s like, why are you doing that? Is one aspect. I think what’s most important from our perspective is that, particularly in the U.S. there’s multiple payment channels for every payment type, whether it’s check clearing, ACH a real-time gross settlement systems, we have multiple systems, usually one driven by The Central Bank, the Fed, and then one that’s a consortium led or owned or managed by the banks. 

Craig Jeffery: 

This really helps with competition and the U.S. payment market is so huge that it can certainly support the type of competition that we see between the Fed and some of these consortiums. It provides redundancy pressure all in a good way. So I don’t know what your question was. I spoke out of both sides of my mouth, but I think it’s helpful that there’s Fed now. I think that’s going to push the amount on RTP up. And I think as people move on to these new payment platforms, moving off of these 40 year old, 50 year old payment platforms to ones that are designed for XML like the ISO 20022 standards that can take more enriched information that are more of a dialoguing system than a pure push information system. That’s going to help, so I’m voting for competition on that one. 

Dave Robertson: 

Any disagreements? Anybody want to chime in? 

Sylvia Rodee: 

I would just add that I think Fed now, is needed in order to get to ubiquity. 

Doug Cranston: 

Yeah, I would second, third at that position. I think the dynamics in the United States are interesting, if you look at it from an economic or from a governmental perspective. I think the Federal Reserve has been very careful to take a circumspect approach to dictating standards. And so in some regards that has slowed the United States down a little. Our stands in regards to real-time payments is significantly slower than, if you look at the European region as an example. 

Doug Cranston: 

However, that has given the free market the opportunity to take some steps and evolve towards this common set of standards, namely the RTP scheme that TCH has championed. I think that’s a nice bounce because again, the free market has kind of decided the direction and invested in that. And now, I think the Fed is stepping in and with their compatibility intentions with TCH, for payments, they are essentially supporting the TCH proposal. And I think mirroring an example we have in payments today, which is TCH and the Federal Reserve acting as cooperators of the ACH network. I think this sets us up for a very similar private public partnership going forward and having the Federal Government stand behind a particular payment standard, I think is overall in the longterm going to be advantageous for us, particularly as we look at the increasing globalization of payments and our ability to inter-operate with systems globally. 

Dave Robertson: 

Thank you. Yeah. And I think ACH is a great example where the Fed did jump in. There’s more competition, and actually the ways that you can settle ACH are varied. And as a banker, as a processor, you can identify which partners you want to work with for which part of the transaction as well. So, that wraps up our questions. We covered a lot of territory today, and I’m very grateful for all the insights that were shared. 

Dave Robertson: 

The one thing I take away from all of this is that, payments and treasury were sufficiently complex on their own to really suggest the need for partnership, you add in a pandemic and the complexity just multiplies. And so I think continuing to offer partnerships, continuing to take that broad view end to end, not just even within your own shop, but looking at the supplier from the buyer’s perspective and the buyer from the suppliers’ perspective, that’s going to enable companies to become stronger in their financial value chain. And it will enable providers like Fifth Third, and Bottomline Technologies continue to develop services that help companies really solve the end to end solution. 

OUTRO: 

You’ve reached the end of another episode of The Treasury Update Podcast. Be sure to follow Strategic Treasurer on LinkedIn. Just search for Strategic Treasurer. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and statements made by Strategic Treasurer, LLC on this podcast are not intended as legal, business, consulting or tax advice. For more information, visit and bookmark strategictreasurer.com.