The following is a lightly edited excerpt from a note sent by Patrick Bermingham, CEO of digital payments specialist Adflex: "Complying with continuously evolving industry regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is crucial for B2B merchants. Unless their payment systems are up to standard, they risk data breaches and fraud which can do irreparable damage to their brand and buyer relationships – not to mention heavy fines.
"Compliance with these ever-changing regulations, however, is complex and expensive, requiring extensive penetration testing, hours of skilled developer time and ongoing changes to internal payment infrastructure. But as data breaches continue to cause national security concerns in the U.K. and across the world, such as those that have led one of the world’s leading communications services companies to remove equipment from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei after concerns were raised about the Chinese firm’s presence in critical telecoms infrastructure, it’s simply not worth the risk.
"Instead, integrating an independent, stakeholder-agnostic payments platform that meets these requirements ‒ and accepts responsibility for maintaining them ‒ significantly minimizes these risks.
"Interoperable IoT payments with baked-in security also enable merchants to strengthen their client offering in two key ways. First, best of breed systems combine end-to-end data encryption with tokenization, replacing sensitive data with meaningless information. Second, by placing the burden of payments interoperability on an independent platform provider, companies can scale quickly. Agnostic platforms enable acceptance of a large variety of payment methods. This means suppliers can work with more buyers, regardless of these clients’ payments infrastructures.
"A connected payments network can improve financial processes. That’s why more buyers are looking for innovative ways of paying their suppliers. But for B2B merchants, ensuring they are accepting IoT payments as quickly, cost-effectively and securely as possible is a tricky path to navigate alone. Tried and tested third-party payment platforms can bridge the gap between buyers and suppliers, reducing costs, improving efficiency and enhancing corporate relationships."
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