At Jeeves, we understand how much CFOs and finance teams struggle with inefficient work processes caused by a disconnected financial infrastructure.
As founders of international companies, we know this is especially true if you operate in 2 or more countries, where:
But managing your payments and cash flow doesn’t have to be complicated, which is why we built and added a new product to our all-in-one financial platform: Jeeves Pay.
In this post, we’ll cover:
Looking for a B2B payments solution for your global enterprise that works with you and not against you? Sign up for Jeeves Pay to discover the freedom of credit-backed business payments.
As business owners of global companies and teams, we know it’s hard to get a pulse on your cash flow when you’re managing payments and expenses in country-specific siloed systems.
You’re probably using different vendors in each country for your corporate expense cards and your financing, bookkeeping and accounting tools. You also use different solutions to make and keep track of your accounts payable. And, most likely, you’re dealing with a lot of manual processes you’d rather do without.
“The financial infrastructure global companies use is local and country-specific. This is the core problem Jeeves is solving.” – Dileep Thazhmon, Jeeves Co-founder and CEO, from Why Jeeves Chose to Build in Latin America
We initially solved the first issue by creating Jeeves corporate expense cards and then set out to solve funding with Jeeves Capital, our working capital loans (with a revolving line of credit), which is now available in 5 countries and growing.
But we still had to address the need for an effective accounts payable system to help scaling firms do business internationally with ease. So we did a deep dive into the common problems of financial stacks for businesses scaling internationally.
Here are the most common challenges companies face when handling their business-to-business (B2B) payments.
Using several vendors across borders creates inefficiencies in productivity, reporting and accounting.
With different tools for cross-border payments, you won’t have up-to-date data on your cash balance, global and local budgets, or spending and expenses. Your finance teams will have to pull data manually from multiple sources, creating less-than-accurate reports.
Reconciliation of expenses and accounts payable across offices will also be a hassle and require time and energy from your finance teams that they could put to better use in financial analysis, forecasting, and financial planning.
You probably don’t have very set payment cycles with your business partners and vendors, which means your accounts receivables settle at different times during the month. Some partners will pay you at the beginning of the month, others at the end, and the rest sporadically throughout.
This can wreak havoc with your cash flow, making it difficult to manage unexpected business expenses as well as the more stable operational costs, such as payroll.
Credit cards may not be the preferred B2B payment method of your overseas vendors, suppliers and contractors because they’ll want to avoid the extra fees that come with processing said payment method.
And while your preferred methods may be electronic payments (i.e., Automated Clearing House or ACH), debit cards, paper checks and cash payments, they’re limited to processing payments domestically. For example, you can only make ACH payments in the United States to U.S. financial institutions.
This means you’ll be forced to use your own funds for payments via bank transfers and slow down the payment process. International bank transfers can take days depending on the country you’re sending money to. Then there are compliance checks, which can unexpectedly further delay payment settlement.
Newer online payment methods and payment gateways can be faster, but they are also self-funded and won’t solve your cash flow problems.
Whether you choose traditional wire transfers or online digital payments, you’ll also run into the following issues:
In addition to the above, international transfers are slow, with settlement times often left open to interpretation. There’s little to no communication between you and the financial institution in charge of your B2B transfer, so it’s up to you to check your own account and follow up with the recipient to ensure your payment arrives successfully.
Jeeves Pay is the latest piece of the greater Jeeves ecosystem designed to help businesses succeed globally. You can manage all aspects of your financial activity (from closing your books on time to funding your business as fast as possible) by using several products within a single tool: Jeeves.
At Jeeves, we’ve built our own financial stack. This means our fintech can provide you with multiple forms of credit and financial solutions for your different business needs, all from one platform.
Now with Jeeves Pay, you can streamline all your domestic and international B2B payments through a single centralised account that is fast, reliable and more transparent than traditional (and even newer) solutions.
Above all, you’ll never have to touch your cash flow, because Jeeves Pay is credit-backed. That means that you can pay all your expenses at the same time at the end of each month, you can avoid expensive FX fees and payments happen almost in real-time.
With Jeeves Pay, you can get fast access to capital to pay your overseas invoices. Since we own our financial stack, we can underwrite you in as little as 24 hours in the 24 countries we operate. Companies with a minimum monthly revenue of 100k are welcome to apply and it takes less than 5 minutes to sign up.
“Other business-to-business payment services aren’t credit-backed because you've got to be really great at underwriting and risking the funds on behalf of the customer. At Jeeves, we pride ourselves on focusing very heavily on doing a great job of underwriting our customers in all the countries we operate so customers can use their Jeeves’ balance instead of actually using their own funds.” – Anish Bhatt, Jeeves VP of Product
Once approved, you’ll have access to a credit line, which you can use to pay your B2B transfers.
In just a few minutes, you can:
Your credit automatically resets every month – use all of it for your B2B payments or for Jeeves’ free corporate credit cards to cover your business expenses or both. Then, manage all your spending, payments and expenses in our free spend management software.
Let’s say you’ve just found a business partner that can provide you with the best raw materials on the market to make your product. However, they require full payment on their invoice before the release of goods. If you don’t have the cash available, what do you do? You know you’ll have account receivables paid, but you won’t have the full amount on time.
Do you dip into your cash balance to cover the amount and risk not making payroll?
These are the kind of all-too-real nightmares Jeeves Pay can solve. With a credit-backed approach, you’d be able to pay your new business partner, receive the materials you need to manufacture your product on time, get it out to market quickly and continue making revenue.
We designed Jeeves pay to automate your accounts payable while stabilising your cash flow at the same time.
Here are the benefits of using Jeeves Pay as your B2B payment solution:
Jeeves Pay makes a traditionally disjointed system into a seamless single-source solution because Jeeves is an all-in-one financial platform.
When you use Jeeves Pay, you get immediate access to Jeeves’ global spend and expense management software, corporate credit cards, and the possibility of applying for financing, too.
This means you can unify your accounts payable into one platform for all your business units and country offices. It also means you can make business purchases on company cards that tie into the same financial system.
We can integrate with your ERP and accounting software too. Currently, we sync daily with:
And more integrations are coming soon!
With Jeeves Pay, you can manage and keep track of all your payments, spending and expenses so you can get more visibility on budgets and, above all, your cash flow.
We designed Jeeves Pay as an accounts payable solution to help you manage the irregularities of cash flow, with its natural ups and downs.
Our credit-backed approach means you’ll get a billing statement at the end of the month, which brings you stability. With clear payment terms, you’ll know when you have to pay and exactly how much, based on the credit used and reported in your Jeeves Dashboard.
“Instead of having jagged moments where 10,000 US dollars are flowing out of your account on Monday, and then another $17,000 goes out five days later, it's easier for you to just manage one payment at the end of the month. When you know this one payment is coming, it makes your cash flow much more rhythmic.” – Anish Bhatt, Jeeves VP of Product
Having a more rhythmic accounts payable cycle makes it easier for you to predict your cash flow month after month.
Jeeves Pay allows you to pay by credit even when your international vendors and suppliers don’t accept credit cards.
Jeeves Pay uses your credit to send payment via a bank wire. We can do so because, as owners of our financial stack, we send the money from our Jeeves’ remitter account directly to your business partner’s bank account.
So, you’ll have the same benefit of using a credit card to keep your cash flow alive, while your recipient will have the same benefit of a bank wire to avoid the additional costs associated with credit card payments.
We designed Jeeves Pay to be quick and simple to use. Just add the essential details of currency, the amount and your recipient's information and click send.
Since we process payments through our Jeeves' remitter account, the know-your-customer (KYC) checks happen instantly. You'll know immediately if there is an issue with your payment instead of having your funds returned to you after days.
Jeeves Pay can send your money instantly in real-time, the same day or up to 3-5 days, depending on the locations involved. For example, transfers within North America can settle between 1- 3 business days.
With Jeeves Pay, you’ll receive:
With Jeeves Pay, you’re always in control because you can decide how much capital you need and for how long – you can use your credit anywhere from 1 to 30 days. And you only pay for the amount of time you actually utilise the credit, not for the transfer service.
Let’s say you need to make B2B payments from your business in Canada to a business partner in Mexico during the month of April. The one-time fee is 3% for your country. The daily rate for April (30 days) would be 0.001%. This means:
We send you an email as soon as the money leaves our remitter account. We’ll send you a second email when the money settles in the recipient’s account. The fund transfer time between Canada and Mexico is the same day, so in this example, you’d receive 2 notifications within a 24-hour period.
Then, at the end of the month, you’d settle your Jeeves bill of $20,450 and your credit automatically resets for next month.
You’ll have our support every step of the way because, here at Jeeves, we consider you our financial partner.
You can communicate with us via live chats and email. Or you can call your personal account manager whenever you need help or have any questions. We’re always here to support you as you grow your business.
Our Jeeves clients love using Jeeves Pay. We have a range of different industries adopting Jeeves Pay as their payment platform alongside their current Jeeves product, whether they’re using Jeeves corporate cards, Jeeves Capital, Jeeves spend management software or all three.
These sectors include:
Whatever industry you’re in, know that Jeeves Pay is ideal for rapidly expanding and high-growth corporations and startups with operations in more than one country.
You can avoid the accounting inefficiencies, cash flow irregularities and transfer limitations of your B2B payments when you use Jeeves Pay.
Just think of how much easier your financial infrastructure can become with Jeeves Pay as your B2B payments solution. You can streamline your spending, payments and expenses into one platform. You can expect a more rhythmic cash flow. You’ll enjoy increased clarity and flexibility. You can grow your business with the support and efficiency you deserve.
Sign up to Jeeves Pay today to turn your B2B payment dream into a B2B payment reality.
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