Thinking of Deploying a Payment Factory? Here's Everything You Need to Know Before You Do…

Improving payments and cash management is a constant challenge for organizations, one that grows exponentially more complicated with the rise in globalization. The implementation of a payment factory can go a long way towards easing these issues and streamlining the management of enterprise payments, but many organizations aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of payment factories and the benefits they provide.

Well that’s about to change -- here are the benefits of deploying a payment factory…

First let’s start with the basics, like what exactly is a payment factory? On its simplest level, a payment factory is a flow tool used to improve the control and efficiency of payments. It essentially centralizes payments into a single process, bringing together:

• All payment and collection types (e.g. treasury, supplier payments, payroll, direct debits, checks etc.)
• All balance and transaction reporting
• All other corporate to bank exchanges (e.g. deal confirmations)
• All transaction bank relationships

By bringing all of these resources together, payment factories significantly streamline the multi-faceted business processes related to global payments and cash management, delivering numerous benefits to organizations, such as improved control over funds, increased visibility, cost savings, future-proofing and risk mitigation.

Not all payment factories are created equally, however. There are a number of key characteristics that a payment factory should offer:

• Secure, standardized interfaces
• Standardized processes
• Scalability across the enterprise
• Centralized controls, with segregation of duties
• Pan-enterprise visibility for treasury
• Reformatting capabilities
• Segmentedvisibility by units of their local / regional activity
• Full audit functionality
• Validation of payments
• Standardized bank connectivity

Corporations can maximize the benefits of a payment factory by employing best practices in five critical areas:

1. Secure controls and standardized processes
2. Streamlined global payments
3. Robust multi-bank connectivity
4. Effective liquidity management and cash flow forecasting
5. Preventing fraud and financial crime

For a complete look at the benefits, a payment factory can provide, check out this whitepaper, “5 Best practices for Improving Payments and Cash Management.”