Fast and Furious

Coupa Fulfilling Wish List for Cross-Border Payments

Fast, traceable, transparent and TMS-integrated cross-border payments on a worldwide basis are a wish-list item for many corporate treasury functions. Achieving speedier payment turnarounds, complete end-to-end tracking and full transparency along the entire payment chain globally is precisely what the Coupa/SWIFT gpi for Corporates solution delivers. For meeting the needs of many treasurers in such a convenient package, Coupa (formerly BELLIN) is the well-deserving winner of TMI’s 2020 Technology & Innovation Award for Solution Innovation.

Traditionally, cross-border payments can be hugely problematic for treasurers. It can take several days from a payment being released to its being credited. Additionally, treasurers rarely know where their payment is at any time, how much longer the process might take, and who might be charging them along the way.

This represents a significant business risk, leads to time-consuming queries, and is a barrier to efficient and successful cash management. This situation is made worse by security and compliance concerns as treasurers have no control over and insight into which banks are involved in the process.

While the need for faster and more transparent cross-border payments has been clear for many years, industry players have struggled to implement this in a framework that is easily accessible and widely available.

Coupa has been co-operating closely with both SWIFT and interested partner banks not only to lay the technological groundwork of a TMS-integrated solution but also to drive adoption in the market. The vendor has been actively piloting the solution and dedicating considerable efforts to the development of suitable TMS functionality, helping to deliver the SWIFT gpi for Corporates (g4C) concept and approach to the treasury world.

At the end of 2020, with all banks now supporting g4C, this innovation is ready to take off. It marks a success story largely formed around the joint effort and cooperation of key industry players, and Coupa has proven to be a vital element in meeting a long-standing requirement on the corporate treasury side.

Making plans

Coupa, at the time still BELLIN, became one of the early adopters of g4C in January 2019. Development in Coupa Treasury (formerly tm5), Coupa’s TMS, had been completed in advance, ready for testing communication between the platform, the SWIFT network, and customers’ banks. This stage was followed in April 2019 with the first customer go-live with g4C, the vendor becoming the first TMS provider to enable SWIFT gpi within a Lite2 for Business Applications framework.

With the official product launch taking place in June 2019, integrated g4C functionality was made available to all users of the Coupa SWIFT Service, becoming an option for all users of Coupa Treasury. To start using the g4C technology, these users simply require their own SWIFT BIC to be registered with g4C and connected financial institutions.

Benefits multiplier

Coupa’s work has immediate benefits in that TMS-integrated g4C functionality enables faster, traceable and transparent cross-border payments through one platform. But these advantages also boost efficiency and security, helping treasurers optimise their cash management and planning, and even avoid compliance issues.

In fact, Coupa has created an environment where the system actively tells treasurers where a payment is and whether or not it has been credited. This new-found transparency enables users to act on the fullest possible evidence and make informed decisions.

Corporates and enterprises around the globe have long struggled with cross-border payments risks, especially with uncertainty preventing them from taking timely action or offering guidance to others.

SWIFT gpi for Corporates is an innovative and pioneering response to these needs, but in order for this solution to become available to the wider treasury community, it needed TMS vendor pioneers, such as Coupa, that were willing to test concepts and functionality in close cooperation with clients and banks.

For its efforts, Coupa Treasury has been certified by SWIFT as meeting every technical and functional requirement. In fact, it achieved the industry mark of distinction, the ‘Compatible Application SWIFT gpi for Corporates’ label, as of September 2020.

As Karsten Kiefer, Senior Product Manager, Coupa, says: “With SWIFT gpi for Corporates, our clients now benefit from faster payment turnaround, complete end-to-end tracking and complete transparency along the entire chain of cross-border payments”.

With players of this calibre supporting it, the project ushers in a new era in corporate payments, speeding up processes and making decision-making much more reliable. It is already transforming the payments landscape; it may yet see users conducting data-driven performance reviews of payments partners, facilitating further change in an increasingly competitive market.