Enabling B2B e-Commerce: Can Banks Strategic Alliances Help Overcome the Implementation Barriers?
Internet-based trading among corporations is universally predicted to amount to trillions of dollars in commerce in just a few years. Behind these aggressive growth projections, however, is the assumption that certain enabling technologies will make the “e-procurement” and “e-supply” processes sufficiently secure, automated, flexible, and advantageous to both buyers and sellers for adoption to be rapid. To date, the overwhelming bulk of effort in the B2B e-commerce space has focused on prepayment aspects, while automation and integration of the payment function has been largely neglected. This neglect is due primarily to the complexity of orchestrating all of the necessary activities and information systems of the buyer, seller, trade exchange, and the banks used by each of them. Despite the complexity of the B2B e-payments world, numerous initiatives have been announced within the last year to build the capability to seamlessly payment-enable online B2B trade.
