A Discover exec's mission to bring consumer tech to business

Discover payments executive Alisa Ellis is focusing on business partners in her new role, though there is a lot that can be gleaned from consumers' embrace of digital transactions over the past decade. 

"The people who work at our partners are also consumers," said Ellis, vice president of operations modernization at Discover. "The bar is being set by consumer interactions. It's Apple and Amazon, Google and Netflix that shape customer interactions." 

Business transactions are one of the last sectors of the payments industry to embrace automation, though the popularity of digital payments among consumers is increasingly influencing strategies to reach corporate users. 

"It's natural to think about consumer demands when designing a mobile app or a call center," said Ellis, who has been with Discover for more than ten years. "But it's less natural when thinking about B2B interactions." 

The financial institution recently assigned Ellis to start an innovation practice for Discover Global Network, which is Discover's payments brand. She was also tapped to oversee operations modernization, a post the Northwestern University graduate has been in for about six months. 

Ellis is taking on these new responsibilities as financial institutions and payment companies pay more attention to business payments, where automation is taking hold after years of B2B transactions remaining largely mired in checks and manual processing. 

A slowing economy is pushing businesses to add technology to cut processing costs, while businesses are minimizing relationships with technology providers. This is requiring financial institutions to think about which payment technology is resonating with consumers and how it can be applied for corporate partners and clients that want to centralize sources of payments and financial services technology.   

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While consumer-to-business technology migration has always existed, the time it takes for consumer technology's influence to spread is shortening, as is the actual gap between consumer and business technology, according to Erika Baumann, director of commercial banking, payments and health care payments at Aite-Novarica Group. 

"The time it takes to move from the consumer world into the business world is shrinking," Baumann said. "The expectations of the end-users are more highly considered as there is so much choice in the market to engage with, and the accessibility and acceleration of technology makes it possible. This acceleration is what is closing the gap."

Ellis oversees the modernization of Discover's payments network technology platforms, with a focus on client and user experience for partners. Part of this will be applying lessons learned from consumer technology to B2B transactions. 

This includes engagement with outside developers, modernizing application programming interfaces, which enable partners and clients to add new technology, and streamlining self-service interactions with Discover's partners. 

It's part of a broader strategy at Discover Global Network to develop software more rapidly and deploy it faster into the market. 

Thinking about how consumers use technology helps inform business uses, according to Ellis. By envisioning how staff at a business need automation and how they will engage with new technology, then working toward the tools that business will need, it's possible to come up with a new perspective and roadmap, she said. 

"It can unlock new possibilities of how to partner with emerging companies and other fintechs," Ellis said. "These businesses expect the same thing as consumers do from technology. To get information from as many channels as possible without having to deal with a lot of other people," Ellis said. "And to do it in their own time." 

Business payment technology has traditionally lagged consumer innovation. As mobile wallets, contactless payments and e-commerce advanced during the 2010s, checks still dominated business transactions, partly out of inertia and partly out of businesses desire to maintain a processing lag to help manage liquidity. 

But that is starting to change. Only 33% of business payments were made by check in 2022, according to Nacha, compared with checks accounting for more than 50% of business payments as recently as 2013. There's still room for more automation, as an estimated 80% of companies in the U.S. and Canada still use checks for some payments. 

During the pandemic more companies shifted to remote work, which made it more difficult to centralize functions like accounts payable, while at the same time consumer use of digital commerce increased. 

More recently, the economic slowdown has caused payment companies to get more aggressive in building business payment technology.  Payment processors like Global Payments and Rapyd, and banks such as BNY Mellon and Goldman Sachs, have enhanced business payment technology, bringing it more in line with consumer-facing products. Amex recently launched Amex Business Link, a B2B payments ecosystem designed for Amex's network of issuers and merchant acquirers who sell to businesses that are adopting digital processes, often after years of operating manually. 

And corporate downsizing could also accelerate B2B technology, allowing more consumer-style technology to infiltrate businesses.  

"This is an acceleration of adoption," said Baumann. "What starts in the consumer space will make its way into the commercial world."

An example of this influence can be found in products that improve user experience, or make it easier to access information or perform in a digital environment. 

Consumers first demanded user-friendly interfaces for online banking, shopping online and paying bills, Baumann said. "These then moved into the business world. The next example is real-time payments. Once they became expected in P2P payments, they moved into the business world."