One of the more important jobs of the accounts payable professional is keeping up with what is happening in the industry at large. This is critical for a few reasons, including skills development and the hunt for new technologies, but is sometimes difficult to do. That is why, each week, the team at Payables Place collects news stories and announcements on the people, companies, and events that can have the biggest impact on the accounts payable team; this cuts down on the amount of time that the AP professional needs to spend keeping up to date and makes it easier to get back to the task at hand—driving strategic value for the organization.
This week in payables news includes a few developments: Lexmark becomes the latest AP automation provider to integrate with Microsoft Dynamics, the European Union ruled that Bitcoin is a currency and not a commodity, and Apple filed a patent that may open up Apple Pay to corporate users. Read on to find out more about these and all the other impactful news from around the accounts payable world.
Lexmark Invoice Capture Service (ICS) Brings Accounts Payable Automation to Microsoft Dynamics NAV Users
Lexmark this week announced that their invoice capture service (“ICS”) is now available for use with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016. The cloud-based ICS is available on a subscription or pay-per-use model, and includes a freemium proposition that allows enterprises to process up to 75 invoices per month free of charge—something Lexmark says helps organizations validate their AP automation goals. Lexmark’s ICS also allows for processing in multiple languages; it is available now through the NAV interface and at the online store.
Lexmark is the third AP automation solution provider in as many weeks to announce integration with Microsoft’s Dynamics NAV 2016. Given that Dynamics is Microsoft’s cloud-based ERP that targets the small and mid-sized business (“SMB”) audience, the amount of AP automation solution providers announcing integration makes clear that the SMB marketplace is a key growth area for many companies. This is easy to understand; there are more SMBs than large enterprises by far, and in general the SMB environment is ripe for automating AP processing because enterprises of that size are by and large unable to access the economies of scale that large enterprises can.
U.S. Banks Unite to Form Industry Leading Secure Real-Time Payments Network
The bank owners of digital payments network clearXchange—Bank of America, BB&T, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo—announced this week that their fraud prevention solution, Early Warning, will acquire the payments network in a bid toward greater security. The combination of the two systems is intended to create a more secure real-time payments network for consumers, businesses, and government. All banks and credit unions will be able to use the system and, as a result of the merger, PNC and U.S. Bank will join Bank of America, BB&T, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo as owners of the payments network (pending regulatory approval).
Combining these two systems is a bit of a no-brainer; businesses and government have practically been falling all over themselves to craft a system of real-time payments, and clearXchange already had a leg up in terms of adoption because of its large bank owners. Blending fraud prevention and risk management into a faster payments system can only help with that greater adoption, which can also help move the Federal Reserve faster payments plan forward.
A New Apple Pay Invention Covers Giving Business Associates & Employees Permissions for Online Purchases
Patently Apple reported last week that Apple had filed a patent for a technology that could create “guest profiles” on a single Apple Pay account, an innovation that could result in Apple Pay being used for business-to-business (“B2B”) transactions similar to how commercial cards are used today. Essentially, the patent allows for device owners to create guest profiles that use fingerprint images as authentication against the Apple Pay account. The guest profile would be created in such a way to force certain fingerprint images to be used as reference images and each of those reference images would need to be matched in a certain order for actions to occur.
This is a significant development in the world of mobile payments. The current state of most mobile wallets does not allow for sharing across devices, which means that individual employees would have to load disparate commercial cards into separate programs in order to use things like Apple Pay, Android Pay, or Samsung Pay. This patented technology could alter that paradigm, allowing individual business owners or managers to use one card account instead of however many the team would need. All in all, this is a very good patent win on Apple’s part.
EU Rules Bitcoin Is a Currency, Not a Commodity—Virtually
The European Union Court of Justice (“CJEU”) last week ruled that Bitcoin is a currency, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The ruling comes a mere six weeks after the U.S.’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) ruled that Bitcoin was a commodity, which gave the CFTC regulatory authority over the digital currency in the United States. The immediate result of the CJEU decision is that Bitcoins are now exempt from value-added tax (“VAT”) in the Eurozone, which adds an air of legitimacy to the virtual currency after the blow that the CFTC decision wrought in the U.S.
Bitcoin has struggled with perceptions about its legitimacy as a currency almost since its creation. The CJEU decision destroys that debate in Europe, and paves the way for intra-Eurozone trade to be denominated in Bitcoin in addition to using the euro and other national currencies for transactions. This could make it easier for European enterprises to choose Bitcoin for a variety of payments, including in the accounts payable process, because they do not need to worry about paying taxes on acquiring the currency.
How American Express is ‘Testing the Waters’ of Bitcoin and the Blockchain
CoinDesk last week reported that American Express had invested in the $12 million Series A funding round of Abra, a Bitcoin remittance startup, through its American Express Ventures arm. AmEx Ventures managing partner Harshul Sanghi told CoinDesk that it was too soon to say how American Express may leverage bitcoin, but they intended to use the investment in Abra as a way to more closely monitor the industry and the technology behind it.
Investing in a Bitcoin startup is a sensible move for American Express; numerous other financial services companies have studied the blockchain and digital currencies, so it makes sense that AmEx would do the same in some capacity. Doing it via investment in another company is comparatively lower risk than spending corporate funds to develop something in house. This allows AmEx to learn about the digital currency market while still focusing on its core business, which is overall a very good move.
Check out these related articles for more:
Payables News Weekly: Basware Launches New Product; New U.S. Bank Corporate Payments President Named
Payables News Weekly: Perfect Commerce Finalizes Acquisition; NACHA Unveils Mobile Wallet Initiative
