Thomas Priore and Priority at Forefront of Accounts Payable Automation With CPX

Traditional methods for business-to-business payment processing are fragmented, costly, time-consuming, and risky. Much to the delight of busy entrepreneurs everywhere, innovations in fintech continue to make old, time-consuming approaches obsolete by streamlining the payment process, including invoicing, billing, and settlement. Thomas Priore, co-founder and CEO of Priority, says these innovations are critical for business success in the future.

Priore believes that digital payments processing systems, such as CPX — offered by Priority — are one important part of a new financial ecosystem that will focus on moving cash faster through payment processing systems.

Priore reiterated that business owners — particularly small-business owners — now understand that they need to better manage the cash flow associated with their business. “Banks, historically, are not equipped to solve that. Certainly not for smaller customers. That’s why they don’t like their banking relationship to begin with. The rate environment today does not allow them to borrow money.”

Thomas Priore said the question for business owners then becomes, how do they find other assets within their business so they don’t need to borrow money? Or plug into better sources of embedded finance and just use their cash better?

Digital payments processing systems can help provide part of the solution. Thomas Priore and Priority have moved to the forefront in this area with CPX, one of many business-to-business payment solutions offered by his company. CPX has already been named a Top 10 Accounts Payable Solution Provider by CFO Tech Outlook and has integrations with many solutions to provide an agnostic partner for customers to plug into directly.

CPX Offers a Simple, Beneficial Business Proposition

Paying suppliers by check can cost over $30 per check, while the use of CPX can result in cash coming back to a business. That simple idea is made possible through the use of advanced technology applied specifically to managing B2B cash payments.

The traditional costs of cutting a check are well known. Invoices need to be entered and approved. Checks are cut, signed, sent, and tracked. There’s the cost of paper, postage, and any corrections for errors. There are also missed opportunity costs, such as losing out on early payment discounts, rebates, and incentives.

CPX can use a single payment instruction file to make payments to every supplier in a company’s system. The dynamic mapping tool in CPX maps the supplier spend file, no matter the format, in just five minutes. CPX then parses the payment to the appropriate recipient.

With Priority, a supplier activation team also works with a company’s suppliers, giving them the support they need to move them away from checks and into card solutions, automated clearing house payments, and dynamic discounting. Every type of payment is meant to drive savings, early pay discounts, rebates, and cash-back incentives, all of which are delivered back to the business, boosting the bottom line.

This type of support is needed. Tech research and consulting enterprise Gartner reports that while 64% of chief financial officers surveyed believe that corporate finance automation can become a reality within six years, half cite “difficulty shifting their mindset to achieve it.”

Digital Payments Processing Extracts Insights, Minimizes Errors

In addition to eliminating the need for time-consuming, manual entry of invoices and other accounting-related tasks, advanced technology offers insights into business operations that can’t be found through traditional systems.

When artificial intelligence-driven technology is integrated into accounts payable automation systems, it has the capability to analyze vast amounts of financial data, empowering businesses to predict trends and extract actionable insights in real time. These systems can develop models that forecast payment behaviors, enabling organizations to optimize cash flow management and strengthen supplier relationships, according to Forbes.

A pivotal application of technology in accounts payable automation lies in its ability to extract and process data from invoices. Traditional procedures involve manual input of information, a process that’s both time-intensive and prone to errors. By employing AI for data extraction, businesses can streamline this operation, mitigating the risk of human error while saving valuable time.

CPX also accomplishes this goal by integrating with an existing account payables system to eliminate manual processes and integrate all forms of payment such as virtual credit cards, ACH electronic transfer, wire transfer, and paper checks.

Priority’s CPX Is Part of a Transformation to Digital Payments Solutions

CPX is one reason Priority continues to grow rapidly, especially its services for small and medium-sized businesses. Priore added that systems such as CPX are just the beginning of what technology will offer small businesses. The idea driving many innovations is the idea of cash acceleration, something Priore said should be top of mind for every strategic step taken by a payments company.

“It’s starting to become very clear that modern delivery of payment solutions — and I would call them cash acceleration solutions, which is what we should be endeavoring to do as payment companies — requires a banking capability, requires banking expertise,” Thomas Priore said at the conference.

He noted that Priority has entered that area with nationwide money transmission licenses, giving them banking-as-a-service capability. “That’s where our competitive mindset is,” he shared.

For example, he explained Priority offers small-business clients a bank account that’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-insured. They can write checks with it and have a debit card linked to it through which they can make payments.

“That will be the future. It should be,” Thomas Priore said. “It just makes it a lot easier for SMBs to operate. It’s one of the reasons why we think there’s going to be a lot more competition in payments from banks. They’re starting to realize these are great potential deposit generators. A lot of them got out of payments in the past. We think they’re going to get back in.”

The beneficiaries of this competitive payments processing environment are businesses that can now skip the costs of traditional payments while also gaining from potential rebates, discounts, and the acceleration of cash into the accounts.