Both businesses and consumers alike made moves to cut down on their expenses in 2020 as the pandemic continued to impact the global economy. Many businesses, for their part, began to seek out ways to reduce the costs and inefficiencies in manual or outdated business-to-business (B2B) sales channels to respond to these pandemic-driven shifts.
This, in turn, has led to B2B firms' surge in interest surrounding online marketplaces, many of which are looking to participate in the B2B eCommerce space in higher numbers. More businesses are citing payments processing speeds as a crucial need, with a recent PYMNTS report finding that 48 percent of B2B companies indicated it as a concern. Another study found that only 20 percent of businesses had a desire to move away from digital and back to manual sales, something that shows virtual B2B payments and interactions are beginning to filter into the mainstream.
In the February edition of the Global B2B Payments Playbook, PYMNTS analyzes how the pandemic has accelerated the ongoing shift to eCommerce and digital payment tools for B2B firms worldwide. It also takes a close look at how this B2B eCommerce migration is impacting the overall role of B2B payments within consumer-facing commerce.
One market where B2B eCommerce transactions have shot up rapidly is India. A recent study found that growth within the B2B online sector rose 200 percent faster than that of the country’s business-to-consumer (B2C) eCommerce space in 2020. This indicates that B2B firms are already making significant moves in the eCommerce world, and to access the digital tools and resources that have been utilized by their B2C counterparts for some time. The report also indicated that both India’s B2B and B2C segments turned their attention to emerging technologies like automated or mobile tools that could provide them with speedier transactions, for example. Overall mobile orders within the country have since jumped by 8 percent, and it is likely that mobile will continue to rise in importance as a key channel both for B2B and B2C companies.
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