– Late payments currently costs the UK’s economy £112bn – 

Sage, the market leader in cloud business management solutions, today announced its partnership with Stripe, putting digital invoicing capabilities in the hands of businesses of all sizes.  Chasing late payments is an administrative burden that falls hard on the shoulders of UK businesses.  With invoice payments, companies can halve the time it takes to get paid and have unparalleled transparency of cashflow with full end-to-end reconciliation of accounts.

Small and Medium Businesses cite chasing payments as one of the greatest barriers to productive growth, with 17% of all payments in the UK made late and 9% eventually written-off as bad debt (Sage, The Domino Effect – The Impact of Late Payments, December 2017).

Users of Sage Business Cloud Accounting now have full invoice capabilities in addition to the payment services Sage offers. This partnership allows companies to fully digitise all invoicing and get paid through credit and debit cards in real-time, rather than spend time manually collecting and chasing down payments.  This will address the damaging, productivity-draining, impacts of chasing payments.

Digital invoicing services powered by Stripe allow invoices to be sent electronically, which the customer can view on any device (hosted in Sage Business Cloud) and pay from anywhere, anytime.

Sage is also launching an enhanced user experience where customers have the option to activate payment and invoice services in less than five minutes from within their software. From there they can take payment over the phone or online with a Pay Now button, as well as create personalised invoices on the go using the Sage mobile app. 

Iain McDougall, UK and Ireland Country Manager at Stripe said:

“Sinking resources into needlessly laborious tasks isn’t a good use of time for any business,” said Iain McDougall, UK Country Manager at Stripe. “Stripe develops tools and features that make running and growing an internet business easier. We’re excited to work with Sage to improve payments experiences and simplify payment reconciliation for their customers, all the while reducing pay out times for many suppliers.”

 Seamus Smith, EVP Payments and Banking at Sage, comments:

“Today’s launch is an example of innovation and collaboration in fintech, providing customers with world-class products that will revolutionise the way they work, no matter what stage of their business journey they are at.

“We know cashflow is the lifeblood of business – yet businesses in the UK spend on average 15 working days chasing late payments – this is unacceptable. These are problems that can be easily fixed with the right technology solutions, designed to make invoicing and other admin tasks seamless. Accelerating payments is an absolute priority for any business and I’m delighted to see Stripe’s integration embedded into the Sage platform to target this important issue.”