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?
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.
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.
Payment confirmed
When you approve a payment, funds are deposited directly into the supplier’s account with full remittance information provided.
Statement settled
The buyer pays American Express, extending their DPO1.
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
American Express Buyer Initiated Payments is an American Express payment solution that lets buyers quickly and efficiently schedule payments to suppliers. It can integrate into your ERP software without disrupting your existing Accounts Payable (AP) process.
Buyer Initiated Payments can have benefits for buyers and suppliers. For buyers, it can extend Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) offering additional cash-flow flexibility to help manage business operations. It can also help streamline AP processes by consolidating the bulk of supplier payments into one electronic payment system and improve relationships with suppliers by helping ensure that they’re paid on time or early. This may also allow buyers to take advantage of early payment discounts. For suppliers, BIP can help reduce Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), which may help increase liquidity by creating more cash-on-hand.
With BIP, processing costs can be assumed by the buyer or the supplier—or shared between them. While American Express sets the processing fee, it does not provide input into how this fee will be split between buyers and suppliers.
An American Express BIP program can help buyers save by reducing administrative costs associated with managing multiple payment platforms, helping you assess whether you’re in compliance with your company payment policies, and creating visibility into spending. Accelerating payments to suppliers can also allow you to take advantage of early payment discounts and create a strong position to negotiate volume payment incentives.
BIP Enterprise automates the delivery of a payment instruction file from the Buyer’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform to the BIP platform. On the other hand, BIP Express is designed for small- to mid-size business and companies that do not want to integrate a solution with their in-house systems. Reduce start-up time and system integration by choosing American Express BIP Express. Our password-protected portal keeps information secure while giving you online access to a single electronic payment tool.
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Terms and Conditions
1. DPO extension may vary depending on when in the billing cycle the payment is made.