This fireside chat recap is from Day 1 of FreightWaves’ Future of Supply Chain live event in Rogers, Arkansas. For more information and content from the event, click here.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: The importance of payments technology in the freight industry.
DETAILS: In the freight industry, plenty of emphasis is placed on things like speed, accuracy and flexibility. But at what cost? Payments have traditionally been something of an afterthought in the freight space, at least when it comes to innovation. However, new technologies are opening up a world of possibilities for faster, more streamlined payments to carriers, brokers and anyone else in the industry.
SPEAKER: Paulo Fernandes, VP of strategic partnerships at Mastercard, and Mark Brousseau, product marketing consultant of Transcard
BIO: Fernandes has over 20 years of international experience in the payments industry. Prior to joining Mastercard, Fernandes developed payment solutions for global financial entities and governments in the U.S., Europe, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with Visa International, RedRock Consulting, Mercantile Bank and the Bank Of Lisbon. Fernandes has an MBA from the Edinburgh Business School in Scotland and an economics degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Brousseau has established himself as a thought leader on accounts payable, accounts receivable, payments and document automation over the past 27 years. A popular speaker at industry conferences and on webinars and podcasts, Brousseau advises prominent end users and solutions and services providers on how to use automation to improve document- and payments-driven business processes.
KEY QUOTES FROM PAULO FERNANDES AND MARK BROUSSEAU
“Freight is something that was a frequent area that now becomes a huge strategic emphasis for companies. In the U.S., it’s a $790 billion payments opportunity, and it’s a payments opportunity that has been changing over time. In the last two to three years, it’s just been galvanized by a push to automate payments.”
Paulo Fernandes
“Really what we’re doing is we’re eliminating all of those hand-off, manual processes and disjointed systems that create friction in your payments life cycle. … We’ve created an application [FreightX] that can be launched from your system of record, and you’ll be able to see in one place all of the payments ready to be made.”
Mark Brousseau
“We’re talking about payments automation, we’re talking about embedded supply chain finance where you actually are opening up to a digital supply chain finance marketplace. Where to next is really, how do you leverage distributed ledger technology? And the word is event-driven payments — in other words, the ability to go to different intermodal payments within the freight space.”
Paulo Fernandes
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