JPMorgan Chase to Acquire Xign
JPMorgan Chase Bank and Xign Corporation have announced that "they have signed an Agreement and Plan of Merger whereby Xign, a leading provider of business-to-business on-demand financial settlement solutions, will be acquired and combined with the Commercial Card and Procurement businesses of JPMorgan Chase’s Treasury Services unit. Under the Agreement and Plan of Merger, JPMorgan Chase will acquire all of the capital stock of Xign, as well as the company’s technology, services and Order-to-Pay domain expertise. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2007, subject to regulatory approval. Terms have not been disclosed."
JPMorgan Chase has partnered with Xign to offer its Order-to-Pay solution set since October 2003, enabling customers to automate electronic purchase order delivery, invoicing and payments across Xign’s global settlement network of more than 40,000 suppliers. The acquisition will further JPMorgan Chase’s leadership in the Order-to-Pay space as Xign capabilities are more fully integrated into JPMorgan Chase’s existing suite of payables solutions and future products are developed. With Xign, organizations transform their financial settlement operations from an inefficient, paper-bound activity to a streamlined, electronic process. In addition to dramatically reducing financial settlement processing costs and cycle time, Xign's capabilities expand early payment discount opportunities, strengthen supplier relationships, and deliver a rapid return on investment.“JPMorgan Chase is committed to delivering best-in-class financial automation solutions to our clients,” said Paul Simpson, senior vice president, Treasury Services business executive for Trade, E-Payables and Card Solutions. “The Order-to-Pay space in which our two companies operate is dominated by paper processes that lock up large amounts of working capital to the detriment of both buying organizations and their supply chains. After successfully partnering with Xign for more than three years, we look forward to delivering compelling new offerings with this market leader.”
“We already had an extensive working relationship with JPMorgan Chase providing Order-to-Pay solutions, and now we are able to build on that relationship as part of the same firm,” said Tom Glassanos, president and CEO, Xign Corporation. “Joining an organization that has a global infrastructure and already is the clear market leader for electronic payments and trade will bring tangible benefits to our clients.”
Richard Erario, senior vice president and business head for Commercial Cards and Procurement, adds that "JPMorgan Chase's Order-To-Pay has evolved and now can be offered in a standardized version or in modules to deliver great value to organizations of almost any size, from middle market companies to large multinationals. In addition to this broad suite of capabilities, we have leveraged our domain expertise in purchasing cards so that we now offer a buyer-initiated card solution with straight through processing characteristics significantly more advanced than anything in the market today.”
Electronic invoicing and supplier payment automation has finally made it to first base and is quickly rounding to second. The events of the past six months – including the acquisitions of both Harbor Payments and Xign Corporation by financial titans American Express and JP Morgan Chase, respectively – give strong reasons to begin looking at home plate.
“We see these acquisitions as a broader sign that Dynamic Discount Management (DDM) will be a ‘home run’ for the financial services industry,” said Henry Ijams, managing director of PayStream Advisors (www.paystreamadvisors.com), a Charlotte, NC-based financial research and consulting firm.
What is a home run in the Financial Supply Chain arena? For many bankers, it’s the intersection of transaction management with financing. After all, banks earn upwards of 30 percent of their fees from lending activities. Technology investors once thought that the financial supply chain was about extending Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) into the Internet to eliminate paper in the purchase-to-pay cycle. But what really delivered value for system users were accelerated approval, improved transaction visibility, and access for financiers to lend money for trade payables (i.e. open account). Dynamic Discount Management (DDM) has propelled this once fledgling “dotcom” invoice network technology into the mainstream.
Posted by: Henry Ijams/PayStream Advisors | April 21, 2007 at 08:59 AM