PaymentWorks, the vendor identity platform for secure B2B payments, has introduced Payee Profile, a standardized, reusable credential that helps businesses manage the tax, banking and compliance information required to get paid.
Vendor onboarding at many organizations still relies on customer-specific forms, fragmented workflows and repeated verification of the same sensitive data. Suppliers face a high-friction process, while finance, procurement and payments teams are left with an ongoing governance challenge.
Payee Profile tackles that friction by giving payees a portable, authenticated profile they can securely reuse across business relationships. For payers, it establishes a trusted vendor record before sensitive identity, tax and banking data ever reaches ERP systems and payment workflows.
“The PaymentWorks Payee Profile is the next milestone in the vision that inspired us from day one, and it’s the foundation for what’s next,” said Thayer Stewart, CEO of PaymentWorks. “We’re building a trusted identity network that connects payers, payees and financial institutions, making B2B commerce more intelligent.”
The launch builds on PaymentWorks’ Vendor Identity Network, which pioneered automated vendor onboarding and now includes more than 1.5 million credentialed businesses. With Payee Profile, the company is moving that network beyond payer-specific onboarding toward portable vendor identity infrastructure for modern B2B commerce.
The result is stronger vendor governance, less manual exception handling and a more audit-ready payments environment. Suppliers also get a simpler way to manage and update the identity information their customers need.
“AI-enabled procurement and autonomous workflows require a new approach to vendor identity,” said Taylor Nemeth, vice president of product at PaymentWorks. “The processes organizations rely on today were built for manual review, not software agents executing transactions at machine speed. The PaymentWorks Payee Profile gives organizations a trusted identity layer that reduces risk and enables a more efficient procure-to-pay lifecycle.”
PaymentWorks backs its platform by assuming the risk for fraudulent ACH payments, with a $2 million guarantee on eligible domestic ACH payments made to vendors holding a Payee Profile.
Capabilities include guided workflows with visual progress tracking, tokenized banking details that guard against unauthorized changes, fraud and business email compromise, fraud liability offloading with potential qualification for better insurance coverage, and centralized management of W-9s, conflict-of-interest attestations and insurance certificates.
“The traditional approach to vendor data management creates unnecessary friction for both organizations and their suppliers,” said Bryan DeGraw, associate principal and senior research director, Finance Solution Intelligence at The Hackett Group. “In our research, nearly two-thirds of organizations in a recent study said payment delays or manual exception handling are recurring consequences of vendor data issues. Improving vendor identity has become a critical component of building resilient finance operations.”
Payee Profile is available now for PaymentWorks customers. The company serves more than 300 enterprise customers across every major industry, has stopped over $325 million in fraudulent payments, and partners with seven of the largest U.S. financial institutions.