Mass Payments to Fuel the Digital Economy

Tipalti’s global payout platform enhances the effectiveness of cross border payments to 196 countries, in 120+ currencies, using 6 different payment methods. Popular cross border payment methods include:

• Global ACH – SEPA payments (Europe), BACS payments (UK), and other bank transfers via local networks 
• PayPal – payments to PayPal eWallets
• Wire Transfer – SWIFT payments
• Prepaid Debit Cards – card issuance via Intercash 

In addition to international global payments, available domestic payment methods also include US ACH and paper check.

Global payment processing is important because it gives payees the ability to receive their money on time, in their local currency, using their preferred method. Managing all of these payments manually can be a headache for any business owner, but finding the right payout platform makes the job easier.

A business needs multiple global payment methods because international payees are looking for a flexible payment experience that suits their needs. 

The best global payment methods typically depend on where the recipient is located and their expectations. Each payment type has benefits and drawbacks that can impact both the satisfaction of payees, as well as the workload of your finance and payables teams.

Giving people a wealth of global payment processing methods tells payees you are making their comfort and security a priority. Mass payment platforms such as Tipalti allow for thousands of payments to be made in minutes, while keeping the payer in full tax and regulatory compliance.

Tipalti supports online marketplaces in a variety of ways, including:

• Payee Onboarding – payment method selection, banking and tax information collection and validation, custom branded experience
• Fraud and Risk Controls – tax ID validation, OFAC and sanctions list screening of all payees
• Vendor Payout Processing – payment approval workflows, multiple payment methods, currency and payment thresholds
• Payee Communications – branded instant payment notifications, issue resolution processes, self-service portal for checking payment statuses
• Payment Reconciliation – real-time reporting on past and pending transactions, audit trails of all transactions
• Manageable Infrastructure – updates for changing bank dynamics, ongoing diligence on tax and regulatory compliance issues, integration to ERP, accounting, and GL systems

Online marketplaces need to payout a growing stream of global service providers and vendors. Automating online marketplace payments requires a comprehensive approach that covers the entire span of the payout engagement.

There are a few things to consider when managing freelancer payments and choosing how to pay contractors. 

1. How many freelancers or contractors do you plan to hire?
2. How frequently (and how much) will you be paying your contractors?
3. Where are your contractors located?
4. How will you handle taxes?

The more freelancers you hire, the more complexity there is in freelancer payment terms and payment methods. Tipalti helps to centralize all payment methods and terms in a single platform for easy contractor payouts management.

Different forms of payment have different cost structures, so the frequency in which you process contractor payouts can have a significant impact on your costs as well. 

Tipalti allows you to set minimum payment thresholds for contractor payouts to help you save on transaction fees. Tipalti also has fee splitting capabilities that allow you to incent contractors to select the most cost effective payment methods.

As you hire more contractors, you may also need to work with people abroad. In this case, foreign exchange rates come into play. Tipalti offers advanced currency management features to help you save time and money on FX conversion payouts with highly competitive exchange rates.

Lastly, Tipalti’s tax solution simplifies the freelancer payment process and helps your company comply with IRS tax provisions. Digitally collect and validate W-9 and W-8 tax forms and TINs, generate 1099 and 1042-S preparation reports, and simplify your annual 1099 filing with Tipalti’s e-Filing service.

Tipalti helps you to provide a best-in-class affiliate payouts experience by offering self-service affiliate payment and tax onboarding, verification of identity and fraud protection, choice of preferred payment methods and currencies, and complete visibility into payment statuses.

There are two main models for affiliate payouts – Revenue Share (RevShare) and Cost Per Action (CPA). 

One of the best ways to track the performance of your affiliate network is using a performance marketing platform like Everflow. These platforms have affiliate marketing management capabilities that include partnership management, performance tracking, attribution, and analytics. 

Tipalti integrates with performance marketing systems to directly tie analytics and data to affiliate payments, and to provide visibility into the performance-to-pay lifecycle. 
In addition to affiliate payouts, you can also sync onboarding data, such as bank and tax information, from publishers, affiliates, influencers, creators, or other affiliate network partners.

Tipalti’s tax solution helps your company comply with IRS tax provisions and simplifies the AP process. Our guided tax form wizard assists suppliers in choosing the correct form based on the country and business structure. 

For non-US payers, local and VAT tax ID collection is available. If the foreign entity comes from a country with a U.S. tax treaty, they can fill out and submit a W-8BEN-E form. All data collection is done through digital capture during the onboarding flow, which ensures information is validated before payment is ever processed. 

Tipalti facilitates IRS AP tax compliance with KPMG-approved tax form data validation and withholding calculations.

Yes, Tipalti offers PayPal mass payment. With Tipalti, you can schedule bulk payments in 6 different methods, including US ACH, global ACH, wire transfer, PayPal, paper check, and prepaid debit card, to 196 countries, and in 120 currencies.

Based on Tipalti’s real-world payment method activity, PayPal is one of the most popular payment methods selected by payees in digital industries, including verticals like ad tech, the creator economy, online marketplaces, the gig economy, the sharing economy, and more. 

Tipalti has a PayPal “mass transaction” (MT) license for PayPal mass pay or PayPal bulk payments. This removes restrictions around payment and funding limits, provides access to more favorable FX rates and payment speeds, and allows Tipalti customer service and support for troubleshooting any PayPal payment issues. 

Many other solution providers use a PayPal “account direction” (AD) model where a payer’s existing PayPal account is used to facilitate PayPal mass payment, foregoing the benefits listed above.

Influencer payments involve any form of compensation awarded to a freelance marketer with a niche social media audience, for content creation and/or promotion.

Tipalti addresses concerns around how to pay influencers by offering them a choice of payment methods and currencies when onboarding into our influencer payment platform.  

Influencers can get paid however they want, via PayPal, global ACH, prepaid debit card, and more. 

The self-service onboarding experience is white-label, so your brand takes center stage. It can also be securely embedded into the HTML of your website via iFrame. 

Additionally, Tipalti offers a guided digital tax form collection process during onboarding, validation of payment and tax details, verification of identity and fraud protection, and complete visibility into influencer payment statuses.

Tipalti offers several advanced solutions, like FX hedging, to help your business save time and money, and reduce foreign exchange risk. 

We give your business access to live foreign exchange rates and enable full transparency to track currency conversion statuses. We also help you avoid expensive, complex, and tedious bank conversion and transfer processes across multiple bank accounts by enabling self-service execution of transfers. 

Get highly competitive rates for conversions that leverage Tipalti’s $43B of throughput on our platform annually, as well as support for over 30 currencies.

If you’re an international company with multiple subsidiaries, chances are you’ll need to make payments in local currency for those entities. Managing multiple banking relationships for entities that don’t generate revenue and are strictly cost centers can add unnecessary complexity to a global financial operation. 

Tipalti eliminates the need to maintain regional bank accounts solely for payouts, and provides one central virtual account to manage payments across all subsidiaries, currencies, and payment methods.

A payment rail is a platform or network infrastructure that facilitates digital money transfers between payers and payees, regardless of country, currency, digital payment method, or whether the payer or payee is a business or consumer. 

Each payment rail differs in how it carries out this process based on the payment type, speed, technology, or geographical location. 

Examples of global payment rails include: 

• Automated Clearing House (ACH) Network
• Card rails such as Visa and Mastercard
• PayPal and other payment platforms
• Clearing House Real-Time Payments (RTP) Network
• Blockchain and cryptocurrency
• The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT)
• The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)

Royalty payments are payments received through license agreements or royalty agreements that compensate owners for the use of their intellectual property, creative works, and more. 

Royalties provide cash flow to owners through a legal contract for a royalty-based license that pays a percentage of gross revenue, net sales, or another negotiated rate during the license term. 

Because royalty payments are made to many payees at once, using a system for mass payment automation is essential. This is especially critical for companies that deal with digital creative services like song or music royalties, book publishing royalties or digital content and social media influencers. 

Streamlining the royalty payment process with global payment automation software significantly increases business efficiency.

An international wire transfer (also called a cross-border or global payment) is a financial transaction that involves multiple parties. These payments are normally made using an international standard called the SWIFT network. This institution allows money to travel globally between banks and assigns every bank a unique identifier code. 

International wire transfers require information like:

• Recipient’s name and address
• The amount of transfer
• Name and address of the recipient’s bank
• Recipient bank’s SWIFT or BIC code (when applicable)
• Recipient’s bank routing number
• Recipient’s bank account number and account type

When making a cross-border payment, intermediary banks also play a crucial role. 
An intermediary bank is required when making global transfers between the originator bank and the beneficiary bank. This only happens when banks don’t have an established relationship, such as the SWIFT network.

Global ACH is also referred to as an international ACH transfer. Unlike the Automated Clearing House (ACH) which handles transactions in the United States, a global ACH involves a financial agency outside of America. 

An international ACH transfer is typically managed by the National Automated Clearing House Network (NACHA) and must follow all NACHA rules. All necessary identifying data for the sender and receiver must be provided. That is so gateway operators can classify payments coming to and from financial institutions outside of the United States.

A clearing entity (also called a payment rail) must be used for international transfers. In the United States, this is NACHA. In Europe, it’s the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and consists of 35 participating countries (with specific exclusions). 

Each payment rail differs in how it carries out transactions based on the payment type, speed, technology, or geographical location.

A local bank transfer is a cross-border payment method where a deposit is made into a foreign bank account. Also called an international ACH or global ACH, a local bank transfer is a form of EFT (electronic funds transfer). The process by which local bank transfer payments are made varies from country to country.

Every country must take steps to protect its finances from sanction-targeted governments and criminal actions in foreign affairs. The U.S. Department of the Treasury has established an Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for this exact purpose. 

OFAC has created a sanctions list against targeted individuals, groups, and entities to control international transactions and contribute to national security. Basically, OFAC administers and enforces economic sanctions based on U.S. foreign policy.

US payers need to comply with IRS tax provisions and non-US payers need to collect and validate local and VAT tax IDs. 

Global payments software can help you to digitally collect VAT/local tax IDs and tax forms like W-9, W-8BEN, W-8BEN-E, W-8EXP, W-8IMY, W-8ECI, W-4 or Form 8233, as part of an online self-registration process for payees. It’s also a way to quickly and easily automate corporate tax compliance.

Once tax details are collected, TIN matching can help to ensure the proper data has been provided. 

At year-end, 1099 and 1042-S tax preparation reports, with auto calculated withholdings, can be generated based on the payments you made to payees throughout the year. 
Finally, these solutions can help payers streamline the e-filing of tax reports like 1099s to get them out the door before the IRS’s deadline.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) play an essential role in connecting different software systems and allowing them to exchange data and functionality. Payout APIs, also known as payment APIs, or accounting APIs, are essential tools for businesses that need to distribute mass payments to recipients such as contractors, freelancers, creators, streamers, affiliates, publishers, suppliers, and more. 

Payout APIs can perform various functions, depending on the specific needs of the business. Some of the most common functions of payment APIs include:

• Mass Payouts: Payment APIs can be used to disburse payments to multiple payees or recipients at once, streamlining the payout process and reducing the amount of time and effort required to manage payouts.
• Automatic Payouts: Payment APIs can also automate the payout process, ensuring that payments are disbursed on a predetermined schedule, such as weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.
• Payment Status: Payment APIs can provide businesses with real-time information on payment status, including details such as the amount paid, the date of payment, and the payment method used.
• Payment Reconciliation: Payment APIs can help businesses reconcile payments with their accounting system, ensuring accurate financial reporting.

Compliance: Payment APIs for payouts can also help businesses comply with regulatory requirements, such as Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and other legal requirements.