Corporates have been grappling with how to match incoming payments with invoices since the earliest days of modern business – it is a task that becomes more challenging with each new payment option that becomes available.
Incomplete remittance information necessitates an arduous and costly reconciliation process.
All leading transaction banks have, therefore, spent considerable time evolving their receivables strategies to address demand from clients for trade- and non-trade-related deductions management.
Earlier this year, Bank of America (BofA) introduced several enhancements to its intelligent receivables service in Asia-Pacific, marking the latest phase of the roll-out of this service to its global clients that started with North America in 2017.
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The service is available in 13 countries across Asia-Pacific, which have a combined total of more than 60 different clearing systems. This clearing infrastructure has gone through radical change during the past five years, with most of these countries adopting real-time payments, for example.
“While this is good news for clients in terms of the move from paper to electronic payments, it also comes with its own challenges because the information that comes through these various clearing systems is not always consistent,” says Babu Vaidyanathan, BofA’s head of Asia-Pacific receivables.
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