Following this announcement, as businesses look to drive development and growth in 2025 amid a dynamic market environment, the new research from American Express reveals about 8 in 10 (78%) are planning to enhance their business payments process, with almost two-fifths (39%) doing so as part of strategies to drive growth.
The study is entitled `The Amex Trendex: B2B Payments Edition`, and it surveyed 500 UK business decision makers, revealing a shared recognition that optimised payments are key to strong commercial relationships that underpin sustained business success.
According to the official press release, the survey found that almost all (94%) of business decision-makers agree that easy, streamlined, and secure payments create an optimised customer experience and 89% believe they drive growth. Where payments are not improved, this creates friction and can impact relationships. At the same time, almost a third (30%) of respondents cite late or slow payments as a common reason they have stopped working with a specific business, while four in five say that a single fraud incident relating to payments could significantly impact trust in their relationships with buyers (79%) and suppliers (80%).
In addition, with over a quarter (27%) of respondents admitting they spend too much time managing payments, a significant proportion recognised the overall benefits that automation can deliver in process improvement, chiefly highlighting faster payments (49%), as well as reduced errors (34%) and time savings (25%). Over a quarter (28%) of respondents also mentioned worrying over their payments being on time and accurate. However, despite acknowledging the benefits, the research found a mixed picture when it came to automated payments in their own business. Just one in seven of those surveyed have fully automated their payment processes, while the same proportion have not automated at all, with cost and security ranked as the chief concerns for failing to do so.
Included in the list of benefits coming from automated payment solutions are automated AP (accounts payable) and AR (accounts receivable) software solutions (which were developed to improve the way businesses save time and money, reduce errors, and improve efficiency and cash flow), straight-through-processing of static and Virtual Cards (representing automated systems that allow card details to be processed electronically from start to finish without any manual steps), as well as digital push payments (services that improve control over the payment process as transactions through which a payer initiates a transfer of funds to a payee), and EIPP (Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment), representing automated systems through which AR teams can send invoices to and accept payments from customers electronically.
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