In business-to-business remittance payments, for example, firms need to link traditional payment information to information about the bills being paid in order to post and reconcile their accounts. Over the years, businesses have made significant investments to automate their internal accounting processes for check payments. As a result, checks are still very heavily used for corporate remittances.
After years of industry discussion, it is now clear that linking billing information to electronic payment instructions is a key to the greater automation of business payments. 10 Payments system operators, banks, and businesses must continue to cooperate on standards and encourage the necessary software changes to enable the broad-based automation of business payments.