The last mile in payments innovation: Bringing intelligence to the speed of payments

The conversation around innovation in B2B payments has historically been around speed of the payment. Instant payment networks like FedNow and Real-Time Payments (RTP) have made it possible to make payments faster than ever before, reshaping the expectations of how both businesses and consumers make and receive payments. Michael Chubb, Executive Director of Product Development and Engineering at Deluxe, points out, “The real opportunity is to combine money and data together, intelligently. That’s the next wave of B2B payments innovation.”

Enter the “last mile” problem in payments: The critical point where transaction speed alone isn’t enough. Businesses still face significant friction when remittance data fails to accompany the payment, leaving accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payable (AP) teams manually matching transactions, posting information, handling exceptions and attempting to reconcile fragmented data. The payment may have arrived in seconds, but if the transaction can’t be automatically posted or closed out, the process remains slow, expensive and manual. 

Tackling data, not just speed

Deluxe’s mission goes beyond the payment rails: It’s a commitment to helping payments be truly usable by businesses. As Chubb states, “We represent the ‘rails + intelligence’ side of payments for AR/AP.” While the industry largely celebrates faster rails, Deluxe is tackling the bottleneck of enabling clean, consolidated and actionable data.  

Deluxe helps empower financial institutions to offer the latest innovation to their business customers by embedding robust receivables technology into its platform—without those banks needing to build everything themselves. 

Intelligence leads to true B2B payment value

Innovation is about more than payment methods. Most importantly, it’s about the intelligence of those payments. “Faster payments are only as valuable as the information that travels with them. Deluxe’s AR/AP technology closes the loop by making payments actionable, automatable, and, ultimately, valuable,” adds Chubb. When data and payments are matched together, receivables can be automatically posted and reconciled, which improves the overall efficiency and value of the cash application process.

Collaboration over competition

This transformation is not something any single player can achieve alone. The future of B2B payments lies in collaboration, not competition. By working together, technology partners like Deluxe, fintechs, corporations and banks can deliver holistic, end-to-end payment solutions that benefit everyone along the value chain.

“The real opportunity is making money work for the business faster, combined with intelligent data," says Chubb. “We believe this is the next wave of B2B payments innovation, and we invite our partners and customers to join us on this journey toward true payment transformation.”