Stampli Launches Payments Product | Invoice Management

Stampli, an organization specializing in collaborative invoice management software, has announced the release of its new payments solution, Stampli Direct Pay.

The company was founded in 2015 with the goal of streamlining invoice management through enhanced collaboration and the application of artificial intelligence. Initially, Stampli expressed no interest in developing a payments product, preferring to concentrate on optimizing the procure-to-pay process.

This recent announcement signifies a change in the company’s strategy. According to Cofounder and CEO Eyal Feldman, discussions with clients highlighted widespread dissatisfaction with the existing B2B payments environment.

Businesses generally have a few choices for making payments: issuing and mailing physical checks, utilizing ACH transfers, or partnering with a payments provider for ‘e-payments.’

The practice of writing and mailing checks is outdated and inefficient for modern business operations. While ACH transfers are inexpensive, they often consolidate multiple transactions into a single amount, which can complicate reconciliation for accounting departments.

“Many payments providers advertise “e-payments” while offering AP departments rebates and promising vendors quicker payments,” Feldman stated in a blog post. “However, vendors must accept payments as virtual credit cards to receive funds, incurring credit card fees of up to 3.5% per transaction.”

Furthermore, numerous payments providers withhold invoice and transaction data from organizations, limiting data accessibility.

Stampli’s clients brought these challenges to the company’s attention, leading to a shift from a payments-agnostic stance. The introduction of Stampli Direct Pay maintains payment flexibility, allowing organizations to continue using their current or preferred payments providers. However, Stampli now presents an alternative designed to address many of the common issues within the industry.

Since Stampli’s primary product already captures all pertinent information for each transaction, this data is easily accessible during the payment approval stage. Direct Pay also incorporates ACH as a payment method, separating individual transactions for simplified reconciliation. Additionally, for organizations that prefer checks, Stampli Direct Pay provides a service that enables digital check approvals directly from the customer’s bank account, complete with their signature; Stampli manages the printing, stamping, and mailing processes.

Stampli also provides a vendor payment portal that extracts the necessary data for each vendor, giving the customer ownership of that data, which can be downloaded and used with other payment solutions.

The company has dedicated the past four years to resolving a distinct challenge within the financial process.

Typically, when teams acquire products or services, the resulting invoices arrive in the finance department lacking essential context, initiating a lengthy process of information gathering and approvals from various departments to facilitate vendor payment.

Stampli, having secured $32 million in funding, has developed a collaborative platform that empowers individuals outside of accounting to participate in invoice management in a clear and accessible manner. Each invoice functions as a central communication point, enabling cross-departmental collaboration to complete information and address questions regarding purchases. Stampli also leverages machine learning to identify patterns in cost allocation, approval workflow management, and data extraction from invoices.

Each invoice serves as a dedicated communication hub, allowing team members across departments to provide necessary details and answer questions, ensuring efficient payment processing. In addition, Stampli utilizes machine learning to recognize patterns related to cost allocation, approval workflows, and data extraction from invoices.

The launch of Direct Pay positions Stampli to compete with a range of new rivals, offering a clear advantage. The company currently processes over $13 billion in invoices annually.

The team has also expanded to over 100 employees. According to Feldman, 56% of the company’s US workforce identifies as non-white, and women comprise 33% of the executive leadership team.