Shopify Adds Melio’s B2B Embedded Finance Offering to Commerce Platform

Shopify has added Melio’s B2B embedded finance offering to its commerce platform.

This collaboration has created an integrated accounts payable (AP) solution called Shopify Bill Pay that enables merchants to pay and manage bills from vendors and contractors through the same Shopify admin they use to run their business, the companies said in a Monday (April 24) press release.

“Shopify is committed to making commerce better for everyone, which is why we teamed up with Melio to power Shopify Bill Pay and free up our merchants’ time and resources, so they can focus on growing their business,” Shruti Patel, global head of merchant services partnerships and monetization at Shopify, said in the release.

PYMNTS research has found that businesses increasingly care about offering online payment methods, tools and channels in the B2B space that embedded finance can easily enable.

This move has been driven in part by the growing number of millennials and members of Generation Z who are involved in their companies’ buying decisions and have brought their payment preferences into the B2B payments ecosystem, according to the “Embedded Finance Tracker®,” a PYMNTS and Galileo Financial Technologies collaboration.

Consequently, merchants are looking to “consumerize” their B2B ecosystems — shaping greater opportunities for embedded finance in the B2B payments space.

With the new Shopify Bill Pay, merchants can specify both the method they use to pay bills and the way the vendor receives the payment. They can pay via credit, bank or wire transfer, and have the vendor receive the payment via check, bank or wire transfer, according to the press release.

As Melio supports payments to 100 countries, Shopify merchants can use the new embedded finance offering to pay invoices both in the United States and abroad, the release said.

“Shopify Bill Pay will bring a whole new experience to merchants who are overwhelmed by managing their cash flow and inventories, preparing their stock for busy seasons and keeping track of each vendor’s payment requirements,” Melio CEO and Co-founder Matan Bar said in the release.

With digitization becoming more firmly entrenched among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), companies find positive ripple effects in the form of time saved (no more going to the post office to mail checks) and cash flow flexibility, Bar told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster in an interview posted in July 2022.

“Being digital means you have more payments choice, and having more choice means you are able to manage your cash flow in ways that can smooth financial volatility,” Bar said at the time.