How Covid Changed the Way We Pay and Get Paid

In March 2020, the world changed. The virus we’d all been watching with idle interest as it spread through China had jumped the ocean. It reached the western world, and in a matter of weeks, sent us all into a tailspin. Offices closed. People started to work online. We all went from in person grocery shopping to click and collect, and home offices were crowded places, where Zoom meetings fought to co-exist with home schooling.

Covid didn’t only change the way we live and work though. It’s had a profound impact on nearly everything, including business. Where we might have thought nothing about paying bills in person or dropping a cheque in the mail, these days, we’re doing it all online.

Even B2B payments have changed. So how are we paying our business suppliers and service providers these days?

It’s Not All Bad

Covid has changed the way businesses (including small businesses) pay for things. That’s not all bad though.

Fintech has been creating innovative solutions to digital payment problems for years. We were all just stuck in such a rut of how it had always been done, we weren’t embracing them.

Which meant that when the world turned upside down, there were lots of alternatives to traditional electronic funds transfers just waiting to be used. Companies changed their websites to be ecommerce driven. Everyone found new online credit card processors, and we all started treating our accounts payables as a digital problem.

We liked it too. In fact, research has shown that not only do about 80% of people embrace this “new normal” they don’t intend to go back to the “old fashioned way.” Even when the world turns right side up again.

Why Do We Love Digital Payments Now?

The last year and a half have been a global social experiment. We were surprised to find that many jobs can, in fact, be done completely remotely. Businesses who had been technology resistant quickly had to rejig their thinking and get their services online.

We were forced to make changes that we had been putting off for a long time, and you could argue that it’s been the most dramatic, sudden change since the industrial revolution.

But there are some good reasons we love fintech options for dealing with our payables, such as:

• There are no travel costs involved — because sending someone across town for a couple of hours to collect a cheque costs a lot of money!
• Payments can be scheduled easily and completed at any time of day or night. So, there’s no rush to deposit a cheque before the bank closes for the day!
• It’s much more secure. If you’ve ever tried to resolve a lost cheque issue, you know it’s not easy. But when payments happen with a click, there’s no risk of that happening!
• Everything is trackable in real time. You always know which account payables are taken care of, and what’s still in the pipeline.

Taking payments digital has saved us time, manpower and hassle. So, it’s no wonder we love the new system so much!

Access Anywhere

Businesses around the world have been doing EFTs for years — but very often, they were using their banks’ platforms. In many cases, those platforms required a physical “key” to enable a computer, and they often required more than one person to login on that computer to complete the payment.

While this method is secure, it does mean that even those kinds of electronic transfers were tied to a particular geographical location. Not ideal when someone is travelling. Or when the office is deserted during an airborne pandemic!

Newer fintech solutions for B2B payments have the same level of security, requiring multiple layers of approvals, using features like two factor authentication and more, but they’re also cloud based.

Which means that instead of waiting for the right person to be in the right place, you can schedule payments whenever, and wherever you like.

What’s Next?

No one really knows what’s next right now. We’d like to think the pandemic will end soon, but it could be a while before that happens. We’ve all got comfortable though, and it’s undeniable that some things will stick. Our bet is that people will continue to embrace the security and ease of digital B2B payments.

Know someone who is still struggling to go digital? Share this article and tell them about Simplypay’s easy B2B digital payments platform!