Did you know your accounts payable - historically a cost center - can actually drive your organization's cost savings? By shifting from resource-intensive approaches to more efficient, effective and secure payments, your AP can move from cost center to a profit center.

Bank of America has estimated that a B2B payment made by paper check cost between $4 to $20 per transaction, factoring in paper costs, postage, and the staff hours spent disbursing, collecting and reconciling the payment. More streamlined, less high-touch payment platforms like electronic virtual payments dramatically reduce the manual work needed to process a check - enabling your employees to work more productively - while also eliminating paper and postage expense.

One of the most brilliant aspects of an AP process like virtual card is that it actually pays organizations a rebate to use it for their payments. These rebates are significant: The more you pay, the more you get back. And if your organization is upgrading or investing in a new enterprise resource planning system for the first time, one very tangible impact of the rebate is that it can defray the purchasing cost of that ERP, while ensuring more timely, more secure and more efficient payments. 

Of course, your rebate can offset any number of corporate expenses, not just those related to your accounts payable department. The funds are yours to do with as you see fit. In this way, virtual card represents an incredibly powerful cost-savings tool, for both for- and nonprofit organizations.

Not all of your vendors are going to accept virtual payments - for a variety of reasons, some suppliers will always prefer paper checks, distributed payment cards, ACH or wire. Nevertheless, outsourcing these activities to an organization that specializes in these printing, mailing and processing activities can bring significant efficiency.