Banks just have to

Technorati Tags: e-invoicing

start offering e-invoicing as a part of payments. A few simple reasons:

1. it is a huge value for enterprises - highest savings estimate in EU 243bn€ per year (EACT) - only in b2b and only in processing efficiency - many more similar categories waiting

2. only banks have the ready infrastructure (payment systems, e-banks, security)

3. only banks have the necessary wide sales force and economy of scope as this adds an extension to existing payment and cash management products

4. only banks can use this to make "ipod"-like invoice financing and foreign exchange risk cover available

5. all invoices should lead to payment - automation of this and later account reconciliation are central elements in the total savings

6. banks' legislated role as defense against money laundering is needed here as well - less fraud risk in invoicing saves considerably - both time and money

7. ECB and EU more or less want to force banks into this - also to make SEPA a business case for them

8. this is true customer value - earning money from "good-for-society-at-large" is quite different from earning money from junk-mortgages and junk-bonds

9. and it only one step - but the broadest possible - that enables the next step - for the corporate mass market to use the same tool for e-orders and e-confirmations

10. the staircase leads to the Real Time Economy - real time transfer of invoice information, real time payments and real time accounting and less store&forward based costly IT-processing in the background.

SIBOS in Boston - next week is good place for this discussion - anybody still in doubt - and if not - how to get there fast.
I will be there.