How RITMO makes business payments simple

Find out how RITMO can help you simplify your eCommerce payments. RITMO removes the biggest challenges for B2B payments and makes your life easier.

Costs and transparency of B2B Payments

When speaking about offline B2B payments, we can think of local and cross-border payments. Local payments have operational implications but are typically offered at low or no cost. For that reason, we will speak about them a bit later but will focus on cross-border payments for the time being.

How much do cross-border payments cost? - When asking this question to several hundred SME merchants the reality is that most DO NOT know the answer. This is because there is a lack of transparency by traditional payment providers (mostly banks).

Particularly in Europe and the UK, more frequently than not, cross-border payments imply a foreign exchange transaction. Global commerce is mostly done in USD and if you are a European (including the UK) merchant, your base currency is either EUR or GBP. Banks, therefore, charge both on the fx transaction and on the payment. If the merchant doesn't have direct access to the fx market, it is easy for a bank to hide fees in the exchange rate. I have even seen transaction invoices from banks stating €0 fees but an exchange rate that included a 4% markup. Insane.

The reality is that banks charge anywhere between €15 and €150 for the execution of the payment and anywhere between 1% and 4% for the foreign exchange transaction.

For a merchant with annual sales of EUR 1M, payment and fx fees can easily reduce gross margins by 1% to 2%. Again, Insane!

Operational Implications

Payments are not fun (this is especially true for offline payments). Suppliers and service providers raise invoices that are sent via email. Worth mentioning that each supplier may use a different format. The information of the invoice needs then to be extracted and put on the payment platform being used to schedule the payment, and then separately uploaded to the ERP or accounting system. A manual process that typically requires several tools. Additionally, each transaction is treated independently and not in the context of business operations, other costs or expected sales.

From the supplier´s perspective, things don't look a lot brighter. They barely have visibility on when the payment will effectively be executed. Open receivables is a common practice and the lack of visibility reduces their capacity to plan and manage cash flows.

How does RITMO make these payments easier?

From the merchant´s perspective, invoices sent by the supplier are automatically uploaded to RITMO´s invoice management tool. The merchant only needs to accept the payment and choose the payment terms (outright payment or fractioned payment). Everything else is taken care of. Alternatively, the merchant can simply upload the invoice to the platform, choose payment terms, and the payment will be scheduled.

On top of easily scheduling payments, merchants can sync their invoices information directly with their ERPs avoiding countless hours of manual work.

Thanks to RITMO´s sales prediction engine, merchants can also easily spot cash flow needs over the coming weeks and months and choose the payment terms for each expense that better fit the business.

From the supplier´s perspective, invoices sent to RITMO customers show up on their own accounts receivables dashboard which allows them to easily track the status of the invoices raised on their clients. This facilitates cash flow planning for them and reduces uncertainty.

The best part? These payments are anywhere between 50% to 90% cheaper than with existing providers.

RITMO connects both sides of the transaction on the same platform, reducing operational burden and inefficiencies, costs, and uncertainty, allowing to better manage cash flows and freeing up time that should be spent making the business grow.

Open an account for free now