Why Is CheckAlt Investing in Integrated Payables?

While CheckAlt remains firmly focused on developing the best in class integrated receivables (IR) solutions, we’re also making significant investments in the payables space by hiring Rob Snyder, formerly of Mastercard’s Commercial/New Payment Group. During his tenure, Snyder played a key role in driving Mastercard’s growth through the development of industry specific use cases for virtual credit cards.

We sat down with Snyder at the end of 2018 to get his impression of how CheckAlt, known in the industry as an integrated receivables company, will succeed in offering a payables solution directly to businesses.

Q: What was your experience at the conferences you attended in 2018, including AFP? Describe the conversations you had and feedback you received.

A: I received great feedback from receivables clients and prospects regarding their interest in working with CheckAlt to handle their payables. The market is truly moving toward integrated payments as opposed to separating accounts payable (AP) from accounts receivable (AR).

While in a certain sense AP and AR are different worlds, CheckAlt’s Virtual Card program brings these two sides of the house together. Because of the sensitivities associated with supplier (vendor) acceptance of cards, we at CheckAlt can speak the vendors’ language, which has proven helpful.

Q: Why did you join CheckAlt from Mastercard?

A: There’s so much opportunity in terms of capturing B2B spend on card. Many financial institutions (FIs), and the networks to some extent, have given up on getting spend on card and instead have focused on non-card payments like RTP (real-time payments) where the vendor incurs little or no transaction cost. With the exception of a few, these FIs simply haven’t been able to find the sweet spots in B2B to really hone-in to understand where virtual card payments make the most sense for both buyer and vendor. 

Working at Mastercard, or any network, there’s only so much that you can do to get the FIs to go to market differently. Again, with the exception of a few, most issuing banks have too many competing priorities. At CheckAlt, I have the ability to execute a lot of the great ideas for payables solutions like virtual card that I have discussed with colleagues and folks in the industry over the last few years.

Q: What unique value do you bring to a company like CheckAlt?

A: Obviously there’s the value that I bring just based on my knowledge of AP and payables alone which, to be frank, is what anyone from that side of the business would bring to a receivables company. More importantly, however, my network experience (i.e. at Mastercard) has given me visibility into what all issuing banks are doing to help grow CheckAlt’s Virtual Card business. As such, I have a pretty good sense for what works and what doesn’t.

Q: So, on a high level, how do integrated receivables and epayables/virtual card come together?

A: I think that there are few ways to think about it. First, over the last several years companies have been tapping into the unique value-add that fintech providers bring to bear in contrast to the traditional FIs. However, very often they’re using a disparate set of vendors which—while necessary in many instances—is not ideal when it comes to payments. It’s all about combining integrated payables and receivables solutions so that we’re talking about integrated payments. Second, in a word, the holy grail of virtual card adoption is understanding how you can improve the value proposition for the vendor. CheckAlt understands that better than others might, simply because we’ve been living and breathing receivables for years.

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