It’s common these days for businesses to pay their suppliers using a virtual credit card through an accounts payable (AP) program - an alternative to check and wire payments that helps companies earn a portion of revenue, or rebate, on each processed transaction. Not only do virtual card payments help reduce the number of checks a business writes per month, they turn a historically focused “payments out” department into a revenue generator. Revenue that hits an organization’s bottom line. Even the time savings employees gain add up through the reduction of manual tasks like signing, mailing, and printing checks.
Like nurturing a garden, a virtual card program requires dedicated enrollment to ensure growth is constant. What happens if one of your top suppliers mandates they will only accept ACH payment from now on? When that happens, you may not always have another large supplier to fill the void. Without allocating more resources to call vendors who have yet to accept card payments, you’re left with a withering program. Program stagnation is even worse when your AP program provider has vowed to do all the heavy lifting for you, and promised to contact suppliers on your behalf, only to drop all efforts after the first year. We’ve heard it from customers time and time again – after the first-year supplier registration initiative, their previous AP program provider stopped all efforts to enroll new vendors and left them to handle future on boarding themselves.
We get it. In fact, we see it a lot with clients who hire us as their complementary program provider.
Program stagnation is a real issue many businesses face with virtual card programs becoming the norm. If you’re seeing any red flags with your current provider, it’s a good time to assess what else is out there.
Adopting a complementary program to capture funds that have been left on the table shouldn’t be daunting. We’ve put together some questions to ask other providers to ensure you’re finding a provider who can meet your enrollment needs.