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5 Reasons BILL + QBO Together = A/P VictoryAt Bill.com, we are grateful to partner with accounting firms and businesses that trust us to process over $70 billion of their payments each year. Our objective is to eliminate manual work and optimize your payment methods for faster, more secure, digital payments.
And we’ve been doing that throughout 2019 with the introduction of our intelligent business payments platform and expanding our payment capabilities with the introduction of more international countries and the topic of this blog: Vendor Direct.
Simply put, Vendor Direct is a Mastercard single-use virtual card payment. This new digital payment method is secure and faster than check payments. Plus, BILL will not charge you a fee to send Vendor Direct payments.
How it works
If your vendor confirms that they accept credit card payments through Vendor Direct, payments to that vendor from you will be Vendor Direct payments.
Vendors who participate in the Vendor Direct service will receive a set of instructions via email to help them get started with processing Vendor Direct payments.
Vendors who participate in the Vendor Direct service can choose the email to which they want the Vendor Direct payments sent.
You can see which vendors are able to receive Vendor Direct payment in their vendor profile within BILL.
Your AP workflow and payment process stays the same, but no transaction fees.
Funding for your payments is debited from your designated bank account just as they like for paper checks, ePayments, or international wires today.
Payment approval processes are the same as for paper checks or other BILL payment methods.
Your vendor will receive an email for each Vendor Direct payment
When you schedule a payment via Vendor Direct, the system sends your vendor an email containing a unique virtual card number.
The virtual card number is single use and authorized only for the amount of your payment.
Vendor processes payment
As soon as the vendor receives the email with the virtual card number, they can process the payment using the information provided in the payment email combined with a code previously provided to the vendor.
Why Pay with Vendor Direct
1. Faster, more convenient payments than checks
Vendor Direct payments can be processed immediately. Virtual card payments are more convenient for vendors, who no longer need to wait days for a check in the mail that then must be deposited at their bank before funds are available. Faster payments are better for vendor cash flow and reduce their efforts spent on investigating late payments and collections.
2. More secure than regular checks or credit card payments
Vendor Direct payments are a secure form of payment. Compared to checks, Vendor Direct payments avoid common check payment issues such as lost checks and check fraud. Vendor Direct payments can be tracked at every step in the payment process. Vendor Direct payments are also more secure than having a card on file because the virtual card number is a single-use number that can only be authorized for the amount of the payment.
3. Same process, no fees for you
Vendor Direct payments are provided to you with no fee, saving firms and clients money on each payment by eliminating check costs. Your AP process stays the same - Vendor Direct adds an additional widely-accepted electronic payment method to the same BILL workflow you use today.
4. The intelligent business payments platform
BILL will keep your payment methods optimized, automatically updating vendor payment methods if your vendor prefers a different method of payment. Our intelligent platform is built to optimize payment methods over time based on payment activity.
Vendor Direct payments provide speed and convenience for firms, businesses, and vendors, helping BILL fulfill our goal to help our customers and their clients move away from paper based processes. We are committed to creating many efficiencies for your firm and clients and want to hear from you to ensure that Vendor Direct meets your business payment needs. Firms, clients or vendors who have questions or feedback about Vendor Direct can contact us at the BILL Support center.
