The Vodeno company interviewed 2,004 European companies to conduct research on the status of international payments.
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Vodeno's new research on international payments
The report was drawn up by Vodeno, a BaaS (Banking as a Service) financial institution that aims to revolutionize the offer of services dedicated to retail customers and businesses.
Thanks to the innovative native and cloud-based platform, one of the main objectives is to make the finalization of payments between two parties faster and cheaper.
Indeed, the study takes this aspect into consideration and aims to understand the general situation in Europe.
The data was collected thanks to an anonymous survey addressed to 2,004 SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises), or small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), operating in the European area.
Specifically, 504 come from the United Kingdom and the remaining 1,500 from Belgium, France and the Netherlands, respectively 500 for each country.
All respondents are in senior management positions, in order to collect data from those who directly make business decisions regarding payment management.
Damage caused to the company structure due to the current management of payments
Most companies say they are not comfortable in the current payments ecosystem. Especially the international ones, are slow and not convenient , thus causing damage to the organizational structure of the company's cash flows.
This type of problem, of course, occurs in both sending and receiving money.
Consequently, this flow limits the quality and timeliness of the management of the operational activities of a company, thus slowing down the entire production chain of a good or service, until the payment is collected.
In short, a dog that bites its own tail. This, however, helps to highlight some shortcomings, despite the technology present on the market today, and therefore to underline the importance of this process.
Furthermore, we are currently in a general macroeconomic state characterized by restrictive and very aggressive monetary policies , aimed at combating the excessive level of inflation.
Having said that, it is easy to understand how for SMEs, especially those that do not enjoy high capital quality, the management of net working capital and short-term liquidity is like oxygen.
Nikhil Sengupta , Global Sales Director of Vodeno, said:
“Speed, ease and cost of payments are of the utmost importance to SMEs and our research highlights how high costs and long delays in receiving payments are seriously hampering their day-to-day operations and growth plans.
Instant payment processing is now on the radar for most European SMEs, but the question is whether they can find the right partner to finalize it, efficiently and without exorbitant fees.
Today there is a wider choice for SMEs when it comes to payment processing and BaaS providers are leading the market to give access to faster, safer and cheaper payment options. "
Analysis of collected data and performance of international payments
In a perfect world, all funds would reach the counterpart instantly. The survey shows that only 10% of respondents have access to instant payments.
Then there is a further 11%, who still manage to stand out from the crowd, who claim to finalize payments within an hour.
It must be said, however, that many blockchains , with their native tokens, come very close to this type of reality.
Some solutions, such as Bitcoin's Lightning Network , turn out to be even better than traditional ones.
35% of the businesses that participated in the survey say that international payments take two to three days to reach their business.
Fortunately, the future appears to be brighter. 68% of the interviewees, in fact, intend to implement, within the next 12 months, an infrastructure capable of processing payments in real time.
In this way, all companies would be able to strengthen their availability of cash flows. Suffice it to say that, precisely due to delays in processing transactions, 54% were forced to apply for a loan to meet their payment commitments.
Thanks to solutions offered by the blockchain or by innovative BaaS such as Vodeno, today it is possible to solve this type of problem almost completely. This type of approach will be able to significantly improve the health of a company, large or small, thus making the quality of payments better, with much faster, safer and cheaper transactions.
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