OpenText has announced a major new partnership with Mastercard which it hopes should take much of the pain out of business payments across the entire supply chain.
The software giant will work with the global payments firm across a number of new products and platforms to allow companies of all sizes to ensure their transactions stay safe and protected.
“We think this is an incredible partnership to bring new payment, new cash management, a new source of financing,” OpenText CEO Mark Barrenechea said at the company’s recent Enterprise World event in Toronto.
- Samsung and Mastercard team up on Digital ID
- OpenText: Prepare for the age of EIM
- Best document management software of 2019
Track
The partnership is at the heart of Mastercard Track, a new unified payment platform that will allow businesses more clarity into their partners, customers and clients.
Building a directory of 200 million companies across the world, Track allows businesses to search for their next big partnership. It will also serve as a single, secure and reliable place to manage bank accounts, view anticipated payments, and keep tabs on managing credit risks and even potentially negative media coverage that could affect payments.
The service will initially be available across OpenText’s automotive identity network, made up of around 200,000 automotive parts suppliers across the world, meaning that customers will be able to compile, pay and track invoices quicker than ever before, simplifying what is often an incredibly complex supply chain.
The partnership should also help to reduce the risk of transactions that go over the network, allowing for suspect payments or demands to be flagged by OpenText’s digital authentication and authorisation services.
Mastercard’s acquisition of Vocalink a few years across signalled its intent towards the B2B space, and the company says the OpenText partnership is the next step along in this journey.
“Over the last few years, we recognised that a lot of the things that are needed in the consumer space, such as reconciliation and identity, payment, facility, financing, etc, also exist in the B2B space,” Carlos Menendez, Mastercard president of enterprise partnerships told TechRadar Pro at Enterprise World.
“What we want to bring is the is the payments is facilitation and reconciliation, the directory of who you're dealing with, and join these two.”
“When we entered into the B2B space... we naturally started with payments, but as we got into it, and we got deeper and deeper, we realised there are so many other unmet needs, and B2B is still very fragmented,” Claire Thompson, executive vice president of enterprise partnerships at Mastercard added.
“There's a lack of interoperability and there's a patchwork of processes, making it so far from the consumer experience that we all enjoy today.”
“We quickly realised there's there's a lack of trust in the B2B space, because of this inefficiency, by then really understanding who you're trading with, who your trading partners are, and being able to trust them.”
“We saw a really natural opportunity and a great strategic fit to work with OpenText on this.”
The new platform is set to launch worldwide in January 2020.
- Best e-commerce platform of 2019: get an online store now
