Fraud and compliance breaches rarely announce themselves in advance. By the time irregular transactions are flagged through manual reviews or monthly audits, the damage is often done. The financial risk is serious – but the reputational cost and regulatory exposure can be even more damaging.

For compliance officers and risk managers, staying ahead of threats requires more than strong policies and post-incident reporting. Real-time fraud detection systems are now essential. They help teams identify suspicious activity as it happens, respond instantly, and meet stringent AML and KYC obligations with greater confidence.

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Why Manual Risk Monitoring Is No Longer Enough

Traditional fraud detection relies heavily on batch processing, manual reviews, and static rules. This approach might catch anomalies eventually, but often after the fact. In today’s high-speed transaction environments, delayed responses expose businesses to fraud losses, regulatory penalties, and eroded customer trust.

Manual methods struggle with:

• High transaction volumes across multiple channels
• Complex fraud patterns that evolve over time
• Limited visibility into customer behavior in real-time
• Inconsistent compliance documentation and audit trails

These gaps increase both operational risk and regulatory scrutiny.

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The Power of Real-Time Fraud Detection for Compliance Teams

Real-time fraud detection systems monitor transactions continuously, using AI, machine learning, and dynamic rules to flag anomalies the moment they occur. This shift allows compliance teams to focus on decision-making rather than firefighting.

Key advantages for compliance teams include:

• Instant alerts on suspicious activity or threshold breaches
• Automated case creation with contextual data
• Real-time AML and KYC checks triggered by specific transaction events
• Fewer false positives through adaptive learning algorithms

This level of immediacy supports both proactive fraud prevention and responsive compliance management.

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Fraud Detection and AML/KYC Compliance Go Hand in Hand

Fraud detection and regulatory compliance are deeply connected. Anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations require not just proper onboarding, but ongoing monitoring of customer behavior. Real-time tools make this continuous oversight practical and scalable.

With integrated fraud and compliance workflows, businesses can:

• Verify identities during onboarding using dynamic data sources
• Track unusual transaction patterns over time
• Flag activity inconsistent with user profiles or risk scores
• Generate automated reports for suspicious activity filings (SARs)

This continuous feedback loop strengthens regulatory compliance while minimizing business disruption.

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Real-Time Risk Management Improves Operational Efficiency

A major benefit of real-time risk tools is that they free up time. Compliance and risk teams are often small, stretched, and dealing with rising demands from regulators, auditors, and executives. Automation reduces the manual burden while increasing accuracy and speed.

Efficiency gains include:

• Centralized dashboards for monitoring fraud and compliance risks
• Automated report generation for audits or internal reviews
• Fewer hours spent investigating false alerts
• Role-based controls for faster escalation and resolution

This allows your team to operate more strategically, spending less time chasing problems and more time preventing them.

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Common Use Cases for Real-Time Fraud Detection

Across industries, real-time fraud detection is becoming a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Here are just a few examples of how it adds value:

• Gaming : Identify account takeovers or suspicious bets before funds are moved.
• Marketplaces: Detect fraudulent seller activity and prevent unauthorized payouts.
• Lending platforms: Spot synthetic identities or abnormal repayment behaviors early.
• Payment providers: Monitor velocity limits, IP geolocation mismatches, and payment reversals.

Each use case benefits from the same underlying capability: seeing risk unfold in real time and responding before it turns into a loss.

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What to Look for in a Real-Time Fraud Detection System

Not all tools labeled as “real-time” offer true instant detection. Some simply offer frequent batch updates. When evaluating platforms, look for:

• Transaction-level monitoring that runs continuously
• Integration with your onboarding, transaction, and disbursement flows
• Rule engines that can adapt and evolve with new threats
• API support for triggering workflows and updates across your systems
• Audit-ready reporting with timestamps, resolution logs, and escalation history

These features ensure the system not only catches threats but supports your entire compliance lifecycle.

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How Payframe Helps You Stay Compliant and In Control

Payframe is built for organizations that need to scale payments without increasing compliance risk. Our real-time fraud detection and compliance toolkit is tightly integrated into every transaction flow – so you’re protected from onboarding through to payout.

Payframe’s compliance and fraud prevention features include:

• Continuous monitoring of all transactions for suspicious activity
• Tokenization and secure data handling
• AML and KYC integration with automated identity verification
• Adaptive rules engine for flagging unusual behavior
• Dashboard for compliance oversight, reports, and case management

With Payframe, risk and compliance teams gain the visibility and automation they need to stay ahead of threats, meet regulatory requirements, and protect their business with confidence.

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Get Ahead of Fraud and Stay Compliant with Payframe

Fraud is moving faster. Your detection tools should too. Payframe helps you spot suspicious activity in real time, automate compliance workflows, and reduce operational risk – all without slowing down your business.

Talk to our team today to see how real-time fraud detection from Payframe can give your compliance strategy a measurable edge.

Manual payout processes are a hidden cost in many organizations. From payroll to vendor settlements, finance teams spend hours each week chasing spreadsheets, reconciling transactions, and correcting payment errors. These inefficiencies not only consume time but also increase the risk of delays, miscalculations, and compliance breaches.

Automated payouts and scheduled disbursements offer a faster, more reliable alternative. For CFOs, controllers, and payment operations leads, investing in automation is not just about cost savings – it’s about creating a resilient, scalable financial infrastructure.

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The Real Cost of Manual Disbursements

Finance leaders know that inefficiencies compound. A small delay in payroll can trigger employee dissatisfaction. A misrouted vendor payment can disrupt a supply chain. And missed reconciliation deadlines can create audit red flags.

Manual disbursements often involve:

• Exporting data from multiple systems
• Formatting files for banks or payment processors
• Manually scheduling transactions
• Tracking payment statuses across different tools
• Dealing with failed payments and reversals

These workflows increase the likelihood of errors, late payments, and lost productivity. More importantly, they limit finance teams from focusing on higher-value strategic tasks.

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Automated Payout Systems Improve Accuracy and Control

Automated payout platforms take repetitive, rule-based tasks out of the equation. By connecting directly to your ERP, payroll, or invoicing systems, they streamline the entire process of making payments, scheduling them, and tracking their status.

Benefits of automated payouts include:

• Fewer human errors through system-driven validation
• Scheduled disbursements that ensure on-time payments
• Real-time visibility into payment status and exceptions
• Automatic retries and notifications for failed transactions
• Easy reporting for finance and compliance audits

When disbursements are automated, finance teams can move faster without compromising on control or accuracy.

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Why Scheduled Disbursements Improve Cash Flow Planning

Predictability is essential for effective cash flow management. With manual payouts, timing varies based on resource availability or approval bottlenecks. Scheduled disbursements ensure consistency.

This consistency helps with:

• Planning for weekly or monthly cash outflows
• Avoiding overdraft situations or liquidity issues
• Aligning disbursement timing with revenue collection cycles
• Smoothing out vendor and contractor payments

Finance leaders gain better insights into working capital and can make informed decisions without waiting for end-of-month reconciliations.

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Automated Payouts Across Use Cases

The value of payout automation extends across multiple business scenarios:

• Payroll: Ensure employees and contractors are paid on time without HR or finance teams uploading spreadsheets every cycle.
• Vendor payments: Set up rules-based disbursements tied to invoice approvals or contract terms.
• Insurance claims: Speed up settlements to customers with automated validation and instant fund transfers.
• Marketplace payouts: Pay sellers or affiliates automatically based on performance metrics or schedules.
• Gaming and gig economy: Push funds instantly to digital wallets or bank accounts after milestones or gameplay achievements.

Each of these use cases benefits from reduced processing time, lower costs, and better recipient satisfaction.

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Reducing Payment Errors Through API-Driven Disbursements

APIs play a key role in modern payout infrastructure. By integrating directly with your existing systems, APIs remove the need for manual file uploads or separate batch processes.

Benefits of API-triggered disbursements include:

• Instant initiation of payments upon specific events (e.g., invoice approval)
• Seamless reconciliation with real-time status updates
• Dynamic routing of funds based on payout type (bank, card, wallet)
• Error handling logic to catch invalid entries before submission

For developers and finance automation teams, this means more control with fewer headaches.

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Compliance and Transparency in High-Volume Payouts

With growing regulatory scrutiny, businesses must ensure that every disbursement is traceable, compliant, and audit-ready.

Automated payout platforms help by:

• Embedding AML and KYC checks into payout flows
• Flagging anomalies based on transaction patterns
• Logging every action taken for audit purposes
• Encrypting sensitive data and following PCI and SOC 2 standards

The ability to generate real-time reports and maintain an immutable audit trail builds trust with regulators, partners, and customers.

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How Payframe Helps Finance Teams Automate and Scale Disbursements

Payframe’s payout automation tools are designed to support high-volume disbursements with maximum control and transparency. Our platform simplifies every step of the process—from scheduling to compliance reporting—so finance teams can operate with confidence.

Features include:

• Bulk and scheduled disbursements via a user-friendly dashboard
• API-triggered payouts tied to ERP, CRM, or custom logic
• Multi-channel delivery: bank transfers, digital wallets, or cards
• Real-time status tracking and exception alerts
• Full compliance support with embedded AML/KYC workflows

Whether you’re disbursing payroll, vendor payments, or customer refunds, Payframe gives you a faster, smarter, and more secure way to do it.

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See Payframe in Action

If your team is still relying on spreadsheets and batch uploads to manage disbursements, it’s time for a change. With Payframe, you can reduce errors, save time, and ensure every payout is on time, every time.

Schedule a demo with our team and see how Payframe can simplify your disbursement workflows and support your finance operations at scale.

Compliance is not just a regulatory checkbox. It is a core component of business resilience, customer trust, and operational control. As payment volumes grow and regulations become more complex, legacy fraud detection tools built for slower environments are falling behind.

Modern payment systems require real-time fraud detection to meet regulatory expectations, reduce operational risk, and support seamless compliance. For financial operations teams and compliance leads, implementing real-time tools is no longer optional—it is foundational.

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Why Compliance Teams Need Real-Time Fraud Detection

Regulators now expect instant reporting, tighter internal controls, and more proactive monitoring. Yet many organizations still rely on batch-based fraud detection systems, where alerts come after transactions are processed. These gaps expose businesses to unnecessary risk.

Real-time fraud detection systems allow compliance teams to:

• Monitor transactions continuously
• Flag high-risk behavior as it happens
• Detect mismatches or anomalies in KYC data
• Identify blacklisted accounts or sanctioned entities immediately

The ability to stop or pause transactions before they are finalized significantly reduces risk exposure and gives compliance teams room to act before damage occurs.

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Fraud Detection in Payments Supports Regulatory Compliance

Regulations like PSD2, FINTRAC, and OFAC mandate ongoing risk monitoring and quick response times. A delayed fraud alert can result in compliance failures, fines, or reputational damage.

Integrating fraud detection into your payments system helps by:

• Shortening the time to detect suspicious activity
• Reducing false positives through context-aware analysis
• Generating automated alerts that align with your internal protocols
• Ensuring your compliance reporting is both real-time and audit-ready

For regulated businesses, this shift is not just about preventing fraud but about ensuring smoother audits and reducing the burden on compliance teams.

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Integrated Fraud and Compliance Systems Drive Efficiency

Too many businesses use separate tools for fraud monitoring, AML, and compliance reporting. These siloed systems require duplicated data entry, manual reconciliation, and create confusion during audits.

A unified platform that connects fraud detection with compliance workflows leads to:

• Faster collaboration between risk, finance, and product teams
• Centralized dashboards for performance and regulatory metrics
• Consistent rule updates across both fraud and compliance layers
• Better alignment between internal policies and external regulations

This integration also simplifies communication with regulators and auditors, who increasingly ask for evidence of real-time monitoring and cross-functional coordination.

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Operational Benefits for Finance, Risk, and Tech Teams

Real-time fraud detection is not just a tool for compliance teams. It adds value across multiple departments:

• Finance gains better visibility into exceptions, disputes, and chargebacks, which improves forecasting and cash flow management
• Risk teams can respond faster to high-priority threats with configurable alerting and escalation
• Engineering teams benefit from APIs and pre-configured workflows that reduce development effort
• Executives get peace of mind knowing that reputational and regulatory risk is being actively managed, not just tracked

Proactive fraud tools reduce manual work, improve decision-making speed, and support organizational scale.

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Real-Time Alerts Prevent Reputation Damage

Fraud is not just a financial loss—it is a reputational risk. Even a single missed incident can erode customer trust, trigger regulatory investigations, or delay business expansion plans.

A real-time fraud detection system helps by:

• Catching unauthorized activity before it escalates
• Preventing suspicious payments from clearing the system
• Supporting more transparent incident reporting with stakeholders
• Allowing public-facing teams to respond faster and more clearly

The businesses that succeed long-term are the ones that prevent rather than react. Customers and regulators alike take notice.

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How Payframe Embeds Fraud Detection into Compliance

Payframe offers built-in real-time fraud detection as part of its risk and compliance infrastructure. You do not need a patchwork of external tools or extra integrations. Everything is embedded, secure, and scalable.

Key capabilities include:

• Real-time behavioral scoring on every transaction
• Intelligent monitoring of KYC and AML data across systems
• Configurable fraud thresholds aligned to your sector and geography
• Pre-integrated ID verification and tokenization
• Visual dashboards and audit trails for compliance teams

With Payframe, compliance and risk management are not just support functions—they are embedded into your operations from the start.

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See How Payframe Can Strengthen Your Compliance Infrastructure

The pace of fraud is accelerating, and regulators are watching more closely than ever. Businesses that rely on manual reviews and delayed alerts are at higher risk of non-compliance, reputational harm, and operational inefficiency.

Payframe gives you a modern solution for modern risk. Our platform brings together fraud detection, compliance automation, and transaction visibility into a single system that scales with your business.

Book a demo today to learn how Payframe can help you reduce risk, strengthen compliance, and move with confidence.

Monitoring and measuring customer metrics is crucial to business growth and revenue generation, but where do you start? Read on for examples, and why a payments analytics dashboard can help.

Any business that involves taking payments online should be tracking customer metrics. If your business doesn’t, why not?  There’s a lot to be said about trusting your gut and your instincts when it comes to business decisions, but add solid data to those instincts, and you’ll boost revenue generation even more.

If online sales are the lifeblood of your business, you should be aiming to make the most of them. And with up to 40% of online sales lost due to reasons that are within your control, doesn’t it make sense to use facts and data to get a better view of customer experience and sales performance?

Why Customer Metrics are Important

Data shows you how well your business is doing. Without key metrics, you’ll have a more challenging time knowing how to improve results and revenue. By understanding your customers and their actions, habits, and preferences as much as possible, you can make sure you align your actions and decisions with business objectives for greater success.

And it’s more than just knowing when and how customers act in specific ways. On top of drilling down the ‘why’, you should be monitoring and measuring metrics so you can make the necessary improvements and then measure just how well those improvements are working.

Using the facts and data you glean from analyzing customer metrics, you can pinpoint problem areas, look at possible causes and solutions, and monitor how well any solutions you implement are working.

Which Customer Metrics Should You Track?

You could come up with countless complicated customer metrics to track, but not all of them would be relevant or helpful to your business. You need to think about the metrics that really tell you something about your customers, something that can actually help drive revenue.

Here are some examples:

Authorization

Online card payments require authorization from the customer’s card issuer, and tracking payment authorization data lets you monitor how successful (or not) they are. It might be that certain issuers have difficulties, and analyzing the data means you’re more equipped to find out why that might be.

Sales

Sales are the central part of your business, so being able to measure and track metrics that relate to sales can be key to improving your bottom line. There are various types of things you can track here over and above simple sales figures. For example:

Conversion rate

How many visitors to your website go on to actually buy? If there’s no sale, is that because they leave after browsing? Maybe they’re just browsing and don’t find what they’re looking for, or maybe there’s something in your site design that makes it difficult for them to complete their purchase or signup. Perhaps they get to checkout and bail.

With the average cart abandonment rate for ecommerce sites a whopping 69.57%, it’s a big problem, but something you can work on if you know it’s an issue for your business.  

Transaction value

Another valuable metric to track relating to sales is transaction values. How much are people actually spending on your website?  Analyzing these data findings can help you make smarter business decisions. Is the average transaction high or low? If it’s low, do you need to look again at your pricing structure? How can you get customers spending more?

Refunds and chargebacks

Refunds often end up costing you money, and monitoring the causes of refunds gives you more clarity when resolving them. What reasons are your customers giving for wanting refunds? If you notice frequent customer returns because the customer received the wrong item, for example, you know what you have to work on. And as chargebacks may be down to fraud, part of the expected $20B+ lost to ecommerce fraud in 2021, it’s good to have the data you need to help prevent chargebacks and disputes.

Use Technology to Unlock Valuable Insights

By using technology to gain insights into the payments and customer information at your fingertips, your business can generate more revenue while cutting costs and boosting profits. A customizable analytics dashboard can highlight the figures and metrics that most matter to you and give you so much valuable insight into your payments environment. You’ll be able to identify trends and issues, and drill down into the data to get the insight you need to drive revenue and profits.

To find out how PayFrame’s payments analytics dashboard can help you turn data into revenue, get in touch today.

Choosing the right payment service provider is key, especially in an increasingly digital world. Here’s what to look out for.

 

The Federal Reserve’s 2020 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice survey found that over 40 percent of consumers had changed from in-person payments to online or telephone payments.  With cash payments on the decline since the pandemic accelerated the need for digital transformation and reduced people’s desire for too much in-person contact, it’s even more important for businesses to offer a seamless payment experience.

And the answer for many is to use a payment service provider, or PSP. While some businesses prefer their bank to handle payments, a traditional bank doesn’t always offer everything you need to make and receive payments in this increasingly digital-led age. PSPs, however, have more to offer.  

The Benefits of Choosing the Right Payment Service Provider

Working with the right payment service provider offers countless benefits. Your aim should be to work with a PSP that will partner with your business, not just give you the technology to meet its payment requirements.

A PSP that’s flexible, adaptable, and offers customized payments solutions will be able to support your business in unlocking new revenue, preventing fraud, and giving your customers exactly what they want, a smoother digital experience.

Here are some of the best—and worst—practices when picking a PSP.

Do: Make sure you understand the fees and charges involved

You’ll almost certainly pay a transaction fee—likely a percentage of each transaction—but the exact percentage may vary between providers. There may also be other processing fees, such as set-up costs, monthly fees, and more. 

Look for a PSP that’s transparent when it comes to fees. Be wary of hidden charges, and compare fees between providers. While cost shouldn’t be the only consideration, it’s important to find a provider that suits your budget. 

Do: Confirm Your PSP offers the most up-to-date payment capabilities

If a PSP doesn’t support the payment types and features that your customers prefer, you can lose business unnecessarily. Today’s consumers require convenient, fast, and cost-effective payment capabilities. To meet those needs you need to offer a variety of online payment methods from credit and debit cards to Electronic Fund Transfers (EFT), and choose the right payment instrument service provider.

Do: Ask plenty of questions

A good PSP will have a team of experts who can answer most if not all of your questions. And if it’s a particularly complex question, they will be happy to go away and find out the answer for you. As with any potential provider or partner, an unwillingness to answer your queries is a red flag. So be wary if you’re not getting straight answers or they try to skirt round the question.

 

Payments Practices to Avoid

Don’t: Limit yourself to a PSP that isn’t scalable

Growth is crucial to business success, whatever industry you’re in. You may be a small business now, but if you’re like most businesses, you’re planning to grow in the future. You’ll need technology that can scale and grow with you. If the solution you’re looking at is already limited, you may end up having to switch providers in the future at extra expense and hassle. You may not want or need an all-singing, all-dancing solution if your current business doesn’t warrant it. But going for a PSP with a modular payments infrastructure will let you start with just what you need, and scale up in the future. For example, while you might currently only make online sales, in the future you might add a physical location to your business. In that case, a PSP that can provide in-person payment terminals as well as supporting your digital offerings will be key.

 

Don’t: Disregard potential ‘add-ons’

Make sure you fully understand all the potential functionality a potential PSP has to offer. And even if there’s something that may not fit your business now, that doesn’t mean you should discount it. Card issuing, for example, might not be something that you’d previously considered, but it could have valuable benefits for your business.

Don’t: Skimp on costs and risk missing out

If you’re making your selection purely based on price, you’re likely to end up regretting your choice—unless you’re very lucky! While your budget is extremely important, just going for the cheapest without fully examining everything a PSP has to offer could mean you miss out on features or functions you really need. Plus it will probably end up costing you more in the long run if you have to add extra functionality or go to other providers for the features you’re missing. 

For example, is your existing payment system capable of integrating with other core business functions you have? If they are, this adds another manual, time-consuming, and potentially non-compliant process to your plate. Payments integration on the hand, can make your life much easier by speeding up your processes while observing payment card industry (PCI) compliance. Cutting corners can make your life difficult in the long run.

 

Partner With Payment Specialists

Armed with the right questions and an understanding of what’s essential for your business from a PSP, you’ll be able to make the right choice. 

PayFrame offers scalable, customizable design built by specialist payments architects, so you know you’re working with a provider that offers the most valuable support. To find out more about partnering with a payment service provider that works for you, get in touch with our team of specialists.

Savvy CEOs and managers understand that the systems they choose are a key component of revenue generation. A smarter payments system makes it easier for businesses to improve efficiency, drive innovation, and maximize profits.

There’s more to payments than you might think, and here are the features you need to increase revenue.

Digital is the Future

Offering the ability to make online payments is the number one way to increase customer revenue. We know that most shoppers prefer online shopping, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic increased the public’s desire to shop from a safe distance.

And let’s face it, it’s the easiest way to shop. They don’t have to leave the comfort of their couch, and returns are just as easy. If you’re not offering a digital payment option for your customers, you’ll without doubt be losing out on revenue.  

Real-Time Payments

If online payments are the present standard, real-time payments (RTP) are the future. Taking payments a step further, RTP offers benefits to both consumers and vendors. People want faster payments, and what could be faster than real-time?

While RTP technology may still be in its infancy in the U.S., businesses at the forefront of the trend will make themselves infinitely more attractive to consumers, contractors, and partners alike.

Powerful Analytics

For any kind of business software or system, being able to access and analyze data is immeasurably valuable. On its own, data can either be worthless or worth its weight in gold. It’s whether you know how to analyze and use it that makes the difference.

A payments system that offers in-depth analytics and reporting takes the guesswork out of raw data, making it easier to review and control your business’s cash flow, as well as giving you ideas for future innovation and revenue generation.

Can you see a trend in terms of the customer experience (CX) you provide? Are there any improvements you can make that can boost revenue? Maybe you might spot where you’re leaving money on the table, and resolve it. 

A revenue-generating payments system should enable you to drill down into your payments data, letting you achieve more and make more.

Brandable Payment Cards

The global prepaid card market is predicted to be $6.87 trillion by 2030, so it’s no wonder smart businesses look to capitalize on the potential revenue these cards can bring. By choosing a payments system that lets you issue white label cards that are branded to your business, you can influence cardholders and encourage loyalty to your brand. They also look really slick.

First-Rate Security Features

Anything to do with money comes with potential headaches in terms of compliance, as well as the potential for fraud. These risks are even greater if your payments ‘system’ is actually a clunky mix of multiple legacy systems that you try to fit together.

How can you make sure that system A’s security features run smoothly with system B’s? 

Juggling the features and protection of more than one piece of software is a headache in and of itself. That’s why a payments system with powerful, automated security features is one of the best ways to avoid revenue loss through fraud and non-compliance.

Payments Support When and Where You Need it

No matter how many advanced, revenue-generating features your payments system offers, without the right support, you’ll struggle to reap the benefits. You should be using a system powered by people who are not only technical experts when it comes to functionality, but who understand the world of payments inside and out.

The payments landscape is ever-evolving, and businesses need to be able to evolve with it. But what if your organization doesn’t include the specialist knowledge and skills needed to not only keep up, but forge ahead of the competition? 

It’s not a problem—when you have the support of a payments solution provider that does.

As you can see, using a payments system that offers a comprehensive set of features and functions that actively bring value to your business is key to generating revenue. The right system does more than just help you accept payments, it lets you shave inefficiencies, scrutinize processes, and actively bring in revenue.

To learn more about how PayFrame can help you turn payments into a revenue generator, get in touch with one of our payments specialists today.

Businesses have been leveraging technology to improve their processes for some time, and even more so in the current economic climate where much of the B2B world is going digital. So why, then, are so many still using paper invoices? What was once conventional is now laborious, inviting wasted time and effort.

Invoicing is Critical for Cash Flow

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the face of business in many ways. It accelerated the need for digital payments solutions, and highlighted how crucial it is for supply chains to remain strong when health and economic conditions are less than ideal.

Businesses in all industries need to get paid for their products or services, and for B2B transactions, it’s actually unusual for payment to be made up front. Generally, the amount owed is billed via invoice, which includes the amount that’s due, when it’s due, and any payment instructions.

For many businesses, the process is still a manual one, or is at least manual in parts. While much can be done to improve an invoicing system, it still often means creating and collecting paper invoices.

Even before the pandemic, invoicing was a critical business process. Mistakes, omissions, or any less-than-optimum way of invoicing can impact a business’s cash flow. And with 48% of small businesses only one missed payment away from bankruptcy, anything that helps avoid missed payments at all—like smart invoice management—can make a real difference.

The Problem with Manual Invoicing

As with most manual processes, there are some major challenges that come with manual invoicing.

Time and Heavy Lifting

The most obvious challenge is the time that has to go into preparing, printing, sorting, and sending hard copy invoices. If invoices are printed, someone, somewhere within your business is responsible for sending them. 

Bigger businesses have dedicated  Accounts Receivables (AR) teams, but smaller businesses often have only one person responsible for AR—or even one person responsible for a few business functions including AR. The effort and personnel required  to manage an entire invoicing process on a monthly basis will definitely have an impact on productivity. This is only assuming monthly invoicing, your business might produce invoices even more frequently!  

‘Lost in the Mail’

Though invoices really can get lost in transit, it’s also a good excuse for late payment. After all, you can’t prove otherwise.

Invoices not received can hold up your payments even further because you won’t even know that you need to re-send an invoice until it’s overdue. And even then, when your AR contacts their Accounts Payable (AP), the investigation process may take some time (depending on the size of their business) .

If your process includes scanning and emailing invoices to try to avoid mail going astray, this can be time-consuming, and there’s still the chance of human error leading to invoices not being received.

Invoices Getting Lost Once Received

Even if they do arrive in the mail, you’re then relying on your customers to process and pay them properly. Filing errors, mail getting misplaced, can (and do) happen. Typically the step-by-step process at your customers’ end will be:

1. Invoice received in the mail
2. Invoice goes to AP
3. Invoice goes to whoever needs to approve it (either manually or electronically)
4. Invoice approved and ready to start their payment process

As you can imagine, there are plenty of opportunities for the invoice to get misplaced.

Cost

When you’re thinking about the cost of manual invoice processing, you have to account for paper, toner, and ink, the electricity used to print hard copy invoices, and postage costs themselves. Plus, your employees’ time is money, so the time it takes for an employee/employees to go through the invoicing process once a month (or more frequently.) It’s estimated that printing costs are about $725 per employee, per year.

How Smarter Invoicing Technology Solves These Issues

The global e-invoicing market is expected to grow by an incredible 80% from 2018 to 2027—from $4.6 billion to $24.7 billion. Those figures aren’t exactly surprising when you think about the benefits of smarter invoicing.

E-invoices make everything easier for both sides of the transaction. You can see the current status of outstanding invoices at a glance, with easy access to all the information you need. This means invoice queries can be dealt with more effectively and approval is faster.

Digital invoice processing alone means a much faster process. Plus, you can set up digital reminders to take even more of the pressure off your AR team in terms of chasing payments. The process is streamlined and more efficient, leaving less room for human error and a higher chance of accuracy.

While it’s hard to estimate the exact cost of a manual invoicing process compared to a smarter invoicing process, research estimates that just one digital invoice costs, on average, 81% less than one paper invoice, and the processing time is 77% faster.

More Efficient and Faster Invoicing

All of this leads to one thing for your business—getting paid faster. 

And, ultimately, faster invoice payments mean a healthier cash flow and more success in your industry, whatever that may be. PayFrame currently services over a thousand businesses in a wide variety of industries, helping them get paid faster thanks to smarter invoicing. 

To find out how we can help you do the same, get in touch with one of our specialists to start the conversation.