American Express Buyer Initiated Payments (BIP)

Improve Efficiency and Working Capital

Help increase Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) for your business and decrease Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) for your suppliers by consolidating payments to suppliers into one digital platform.

Turn your Accounts Payable process into an efficient source of cost optimization.

American Express® Buyer Initiated Payments is a digital payment solution that lets buyers quickly and efficiently schedule payments to suppliers. BIP can integrate into your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software without disrupting existing Accounts Payable (AP) processes.

 

 

Help improve your cash flow while controlling when and how suppliers are paid 

 

 

 

Buyer Initiated Payments: Benefits for buyers

 

 

Manage cash flow

Take advantage of early payment incentives from suppliers and extend your DPO without impacting your cash on hand.1

Improve control

Schedule and control your payments in one platform to help eliminate the cost and hassle of cheque payments and assist with paying suppliers on time.

Strengthen relationships

Support your suppliers with on-time payments. American Express will work directly with you on identifying suppliers that should be onboarded to the program and will liaise with our internal teams to help facilitate the onboarding process and enable vendors onto the platform.

Buyer Initiated Payments: Benefits for suppliers

Manage cash flow

Receive accelerated payment to help increase liquidity and reduce DSO.

Reduce risk

Gain security with an electronic payment solution that doesn't require your suppliers to swipe their card.

Build effective relationships

Demonstrate flexibility to help improve relationships and potentially gain more business.

Increase efficiency

Eliminate the cost and inconvenience of processing cheques with direct deposit of funds into your business bank account.

How does Buyer Initiated Payments work?

One

Payment initiated

The buyer uses the Buyer Initiated Payment (BIP) platform or their integrated AP/ERP system to schedule payments of approved invoices to suppliers.

Three

Funds sent

American Express processes the payment on the scheduled date and deposits funds into the supplier's designated account. Additional remittance information will be provided to suppliers to match the invoice to the payments.

Three

Payment confirmed

When you approve a payment, funds are deposited directly into the supplier’s account with full remittance information provided.

Four

Statement settled

The buyer pays American Express, extending their DPO1.

Case Study

Case study: a wholesaler optimizes working capital and increases DPO

The Challenge: A wholesaler, following standard industry practices, offered longer payment terms to its customers than those offered by its suppliers. As a result, cash was going out more quickly than it was coming in and they were unable to purchase optimum levels of stock for their customers without incurring hefty interest rates.

 

The Solution: By making use of American Express BIP, the wholesaler was able to take advantage of process efficiencies as both a buyer and seller.

 

As a buyer, they’ve increased their Days Payable Outstanding (DPO), resulting in optimized working capital. As a seller, they’ve taken advantage of earlier payments from customers. BIP’s electronic bill payments solution allows them to receive payments in as early as three days after the customer authorizes them, which is faster than conventional invoice terms and still allows their customer to pay only when the statement is due.

 

In this case, the wholesaler benefits from enhanced supplier relationships, as BIP enables them to pay their own suppliers more promptly than most traditional invoicing processes, while still increasing DPO on their end.

Start your American Express Buyer Initiated Payments application

 

Call 1-877-891-0821 and speak to a rep immediately. Or, fill out the form by clicking on the button below and a representative will contact you within 2 business days.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Terms and Conditions

 

1. DPO extension may vary depending on when in the billing cycle the payment is made.