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Vendor invoices in the financial services industry are complicated, with some listing over 500 line items. Further, annually auditing these invoices is a time-consuming task and, in the face of that kind of resource drain, many financial institutions tend to compare one month’s invoice to the last. If the amounts are similar, the invoice is approved. 

This may sound rather casual, but even when banks and credit unions commit the time required to manually review vendor invoices, human error compromises the value of that effort. Further, human errors made during the manual review process can become self-perpetuating, compounding over time without the institution’s knowledge.

When we weighed in on FIS’ March acquisition of Worldpay, I predicted that a TSYS/Global Payments combination might be in the cards. Two months later, a “merger of equals” announcement between those leading players has me wishing I had spent a bit more time in Vegas.

The payment processing landscape has shifted dramatically in the past four months, with four of the major acquirer/processors making moves this year (Fiserv kicked off the action by joining forces with First Data in January). Traditional payments providers are pursuing greater scale and a broader suite of services in their quest to achieve profitable growth and stave off competition from fintechs entering the market with disruptive models.