{"id":12498,"date":"2016-10-20T11:35:44","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T11:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projecthermes.wpengine.com\/creating-new-experiences-for-small-and-medium-sized-businesses\/"},"modified":"2023-06-05T15:16:49","modified_gmt":"2023-06-05T19:16:49","slug":"creating-new-experiences-for-small-and-medium-sized-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovation.interac.ca\/fr\/creating-new-experiences-for-small-and-medium-sized-businesses\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating new experiences for small and medium-sized businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interac<\/em> e-Transfer\u00ae has become a remarkably successful and useful product for Canadians. According to projections, in 2016, the platform will be used 150 million times and will transfer $62 billion in value. It\u2019s not just individuals capturing the benefits of faster payments through Interac<\/em> e-Transfer. Last year, payments were also sent from individuals to businesses, from businesses to individuals, and from businesses to other businesses.<\/p>\n

All of this business activity has taken place on a platform that started out as a product designed for retail banking customers, and it\u2019s been clear to us for some time that additional business-focused payment services would widen the range of the platform\u2019s possible uses. A new generation of such business services will be coming next year.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, however, it\u2019s important to recognize that Interac<\/em> e-Transfer is a platform with business benefits that can, and should, be captured today. Businesses and other organizations spend enormous amounts of money and time processing paper-based payments. To collect money from customers, a business prints, folds, seals, and mails thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of paper invoices every month, and then as payments come in, the business opens, sorts, and processes thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of paper cheques. What’s more, while the business is waiting for all of this to happen \u2013 a time span that also includes mail transit time (both ways) and cheque clearing delays \u2013 there is no money going into its accounts. Managing through these traditional time lags, month after month, requires close attention to cash flow and often significant amounts of credit or working capital, neither of which is free.<\/p>\n

For financial institutions with valuable portfolios of small and medium-sized businesses who want to start helping their clients transition to a future of fast paperless payments, Interac<\/em> e-Transfer already has the capabilities they need to capture much of the value on the table:<\/p>\n