The impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) global pandemic is forcing businesses to modify their behaviors and look for innovative ways to streamline and automate processes that often require a physical presence. For example, many businesses still process invoices and payments manually through checks, wire, and ACH, but since most of the country’s workforce is now working remotely, no one is in offices to manage them.

Beyond that, the complete lack of clarity with respect to the duration of the global business shutdown has caused many businesses to explore alternative sources of working capital to build up cash reserves. For these reasons, the time is right for businesses to transition to commercial card payments and acceptance.

To speak in more detail about how businesses can benefit by digitizing and shifting to commercial card acceptance, PaymentsJournal sat down with Dean M. Leavitt, Founder & CEO of Boost Payment Solutions, Inc., and Steve Murphy, Director of Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group.

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COVID-19 Highlights the Need for Digitized Processes

Businesses have been forced to change their organizations to accommodate a virtual workforce, which has highlighted problems in outdated accounts receivable processes. According to Leavitt, Boost has been inundated with a strong spike in interest from its existing and prospective customers looking to digitize their payments.

This makes sense. After all, the simple logistics of companies not being able to go into the office to write and mail checks or receive mail and deposit incoming checks, has created “a bit of a nightmare.” “For companies that have not digitized their payments—and there are a lot of companies that are not fully or at all optimized—it’s a big wake up call for them to realize they need to be able to both send and receive checks in the digital environment,” noted Leavitt.

As a solution, businesses can transition their accounts payable spend from check, wire, and ACH to a commercial card product to enable a completely automated process.

Commercial Cards Aid Working Capital for Businesses

Beyond eliminating the need for a physical presence to initiate payments, the use of commercial card products over check, wire, and ACH gives buyers and suppliers the opportunity to have greater and faster access to cash on hand.

The chart below explores the dual benefit of using the payables process to aid working capital. As Illustrated, switching from an ACH to virtual commercial card payment increases buyer days pay...