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game by making commerce more secure, intelligent, agile Buy now, pay later
and transparent.
Rice said he expects ACH transactions to become as
I explored this theme in "Digital Commerce in 2022," a seamless and fast as credit card transactions, giving
two-part series in The Green Sheet, published in January consumers more payment choices at checkout. He also
2022, sharing perspectives from industry experts on how stated that popular buy now, pay (BNPL) later schemes
these foundational concepts are shaping present and provide consumers with short-term access to funding and
future commerce methods. may soon deliver benefits to SMBs.

Today's innovations bear little resemblance to payment "To date, the focus has been on consumer-facing businesses,
technologies from 30 years ago, but their foundational and it has not done anything to help SMBs establish a credit
principles have remained consistent from the start. Some history for their long-term health," Rice said. He also said
payments industry veterans may recall a time when he expects BNPL solution providers to expand to the B2B
merchants took paper receipts to the bank. Back then, this sector in 2022 while continuing to eliminate lending risk
was an agile alternative to 30-day house account billing and predatory rates found at the B2C level.
cycles. Imagine how merchants would have reacted in
those days if you'd told them about instant payments. To Rice's point, global receptivity of BNPL reflects how
far consumers and merchants have evolved from layaway
Jed Rice, CEO at Aliaswire, pointed out that ACH rails plans and revolving credit. I'd even go as far as to say
supported 30 billion payment transactions in 2020, with a that BNPL is neither a trend nor a logical next step but an
predicted rise to 33 billion in 2021. "ACH transactions are inevitability, like real-time payments, instant account on-
popular because they are both cost efficient and secure," boarding and secure authentication. I'd say BNPL is the
he said. "The only thing holding ACH back these days is a next iteration of credit card processing.
lack of speed due to its time-intensive account validation Dale S. Laszig, senior staff writer at The Green Sheet and managing
process." director at DSL Direct LLC, is a payments industry journalist and content
strategist. Connect via email dale@dsldirectllc.com, LinkedIn www.
linkedin.com/in/dalelaszig/ and Twitter @DSLdirect.