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First of all, let’s explain the concepts of B2C and B2B. According to the Techopedia, Business-to-Consumers (B2C) is an Internet and electronic commerce (e-commerce) model that denotes a financial transaction or online sale between a business and consumer. B2C involves a service or product exchange from a business to a consumer, whereby merchants sell products to consumers. As for B2B, Wikipedia explains it as a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another business. So, in B2B entities work not for the end consumer but for another company. Nowadays, the world of B2B is rapidly evolving and thriving on a par with B2C.
BYOD Approach Fuels B2B
BYOD, Bring Your Own Device, approach, quite popular nowadays in enterprises, is the proof of how the industry can mimic its B2C counterparts. Increasingly, employees want to use their personal mobile devices in the workplace to perform work tasks. The recently published research from Gartner has found that the BYOD movement is fueling a new trend in B2B. Just as consumers have led the mass explosion of mobile apps, enterprises are similarly voicing their demands for such technology. Gartner has also found that the demand for enterprise mobile applications will outgrow market supply five to one in only a few years. By 2017, Gartner’s analysts predict, IT organizations will be unable to meet the high demand to deliver mobile apps to the businesses that want them. It can be said that this increased need of companies in the mobile applications derives from the boom of mobile applications in everyday life. Also, BYOD approach has led to the development by enterprisers of their own business apps. Separate research by Research and Markets released some weeks ago, agreed enterprises are beginning to voice their needs for mobile app solutions: “The rising penetration of smartphones and tablets is allowing companies to introduce BYOD policy in their work environment, which helps in increasing productivity and promoting innovation.”
The Rise in B2B Spills over into Mobile Payments
Companies want for their business the same features that ordinary consumers receive from their everyday mobile applications. In particular, due to the popularity of mobile payments apps among the consumers, enterprises are thinking about this service for themselves.
In a recent interview with PYMNTS, TSYS Senior Product Development Manager Christina Hall said that there are caveats to B2B mobile payments adoption. For example, “we need to consider the go-to market approach and how it may differ from the consumer launch,” she noted. Still, she said that as more sellers upgrade their payments systems, mobile commercial payments are likely to emerge with greater frequency. Issuers of travel cards, corporate cards, fleet, fuel and purchasing cards now have an opportunity to connect their payment solutions to a mobile app for employees to monitor corporate spending on-the-go. That said, Hall is convinced that mobile B2B payments will eventually become the norm. “Make no mistake about it,” Hall said, “mobile payments for commercial cards is coming. It’s not a matter of if, but when.”
