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Let's start with the good news: the rapid growth of electronic payments and transaction processing in recent decades has made it easier than ever for businesses to streamline their operations. Complex processes that once took days or weeks to transact are increasingly conducted in an instant—allowing for faster, more accurate settlement and reconciliation for all parties involved.

While there is no question that the faster payments revolution has been beneficial for businesses, it has led to a proliferation of tools and platforms focused primarily on monetizing payment streams, with little regard for helping businesses build strong and trusted relationships with vendors, partners and payees. What's more, the sheer number of available options out there has created confusion in the marketplace; businesses looking to streamline and simplify their payments process face a sea of options that require extensive set-up time, often promise more than they deliver in terms of return on investment (ROI) or create downstream negative impacts for payees.

Fortunately, the path to faster payments is easier than one might think. In most cases, a business needs to look no further than its bank to implement a faster, more efficient payments solution. For one thing, a business' commercial bank already handles its transaction flows in and out of its accounts. It also has a deeper understanding of the underlying business than a third-party fintech vendor.

Finally, having a single provider serve as both bank and payments provider is just…simpler. The desire to work directly with their bank on payments processing is the strong preference among businesses. According to research from Datos Insights, 60% of businesses indicated a preference to work directly with their bank on payments as opposed to a fintech provider. In another related study, more than one-third (34%) of businesses believed that the bank better understood their payments needs than a fintech provider.

A Winning Formula: Easy Integration, Payee Choice, Fraud Protection

Synovus Bank recently launched Accelerate Pay, which offers a new take on payment processing, applying a unique, payee-centric approach to business payments.

The novel idea of focusing on the payee side of the transaction is at the center of Accelerate Pay's functionality. The platform enhances the payee experience with intuitive controls and self-servicing functionality via a convenient payee portal, which allows payees to choose how and when they prefer to be paid.

"Many inefficiencies in the payments process result from technological incompatibilities between payor and payee, which can contribute to costly bottlenecks on both sides of the transaction," said Katherine Weislogelhead of treasury and payment solutions at Synovus Bank. "By empowering payees with a more flexible range of payment options, key barriers and points of inertia are removed from the process, resulting in reduced friction and a smoother experience for all parties."

Accelerate Pay also solves for another key issue in payments–namely the clunkiness associated with onboarding a new payments system and waiting days or weeks for the process to get up and running.

Accelerate Pay's unique functionality allows it to readily integrate into a business' existing payments infrastructure .

"The Accelerate Pay experience is literally as easy as clicking a button or flipping a switch," Weislogel said.   "This allows businesses to move to electronic payments instantly, from day one, upping efficiency and reducing organizational risk without the need for costly, time-consuming payee enablement."

Regardless of their size, the majority of businesses do not have the luxury of time or budget to undertake complex bank integrations.  Accelerate Pay offers easy integration options whether a very simple payment origination file minimally containing payee address, payment amount and optional remittance data or an out-of-the-box pre-integration to QuickBooks Online with other industry leading enterprise resource planning/accounting applications in the near future.

Accelerate Pay's functionality recognizes that trust is a two-way street—and protects businesses' bottom lines with integrated safeguards, including fraud screening, payee validation and monitoring for electronic payments and built-in positive pay protection for check payments.

"Accelerate Pay offers near immediate return on investment (ROI)  for our clients as it eliminates costly and time-consuming manual processes related to producing and mailing check payments, complex reconcilements and even delayed payments and late fees," said Laura McGortey, director of  payment product management at Synovus.

She added, "Converting to all-digital business payments has never been easier, and there is no shortage of payment options from which our client's payees may choose. That said, not all solutions are created equal. With its payee-first focus and unmatched functionality that includes superior security, speed and ease of use, Accelerate Pay from Synovus is the industry's gold standard for improving the payments experience for all participants."

For more information or to schedule a demo of Accelerate Pay, please contact: synovus.com/AcceleratePayNow