“The phrase ‘it's better to be lucky than good’ must be one of the most ridiculous homilies ever uttered. In nearly any competitive endeavor, you have to be damned good before luck can be of any use to you at all.” ― Garry Kasparov, “Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins”

There was some recent shaming of some very large companies by the UK government that did not comply with the Prompt Payment Code (PPC). Seventeen large companies, including heavyweights such as Vodafone, Rolls Royce, SSE and British Sugar, were suspended pending promises to fall into line.

When we look at source-to-pay solutions, we tend to look at it from one side, that is, how this is going to improve the accounts payable department, reduce cost, be more efficient and improve supplier collaboration.

Funding has grown more sophisticated with supply chain finance programs to large companies, driving margins down in many cases. There are several interesting issues around pricing:

As we pointed out in our last post, payment companies are looking to convert paper checks to cards, and this is drawing interest from many firms, from private equity investing into payment companies to acquisitions (e.g., Fleetcor acquiring Nvoicepay, Visa buying Earthport).

We hear so much about how flush American companies are with cash. Pundits are out there talking about how much cash corporate America has.

“When an inflation regime shifts, there’s only one question that really matters for your business model: Do you have pricing power?”

Few source-to-pay platforms, payment processors or other networks have been able to develop early pay dynamic discounting management (DDM) or supply chain finance solutions that have added significant revenue to their enterprises. (See Why Platforms Need to Monetize Their Supplier Ecosystem.)

Has Off-Platform Lending’s Time Finally Arrived?   DAVID GUSTIN, Chief Strategy Officer, The Interface Financial Group January 15, 2019 8:00…

In my last post, Many Fintechs Still Rely on Bring-Your-Own-Bank Strategy for Supply Chain Finance, I discussed how source-to-pay platforms and other cloud software providers still rely on their clients’ house banks for supply chain finance and why that might not be the wisest strategy given the times.