At its annual TransPay Conference, BAI unveiled new research into small business payment needs and opportunities. The most dramatic finding: More than half of small businesses (annual sales of $500k to $10 million) would be "likely" or "very likely" to switch banks for "better payment services." In comparison, only about 10% of businesses with sales between $50 million and $250 million felt the same way.

Obviously, there are some serious, unmet needs among small businesses. Some of the things they most wanted (percentages indicate how many small businesses desire each feature):

• Straight-through processing of payments from business to bank (70+%)
• Identity-management platform that safeguards the business identity and protects your accounts when conducting business electronically (70+%)
• Electronic payments package integrating accounts payables, accounts receivables, and expense tracking (65+%)
• Live intraday financial position (55+%)
• Bank services that can easily be integrated into your payroll and HR systems (60+%)
• Automated card-based, expense-processing system that ties in key partners (50+%)

Sizing the small business payments market
BAI Research also assembled an excellent summary of "payments by business size," shown below. It's interesting to note that the number of payments made by larger businesses is less than one-third of all business payments. The other two-thirds comes from small businesses, including almost 16% from the micro-business market (under $100,000 in annual sales).  While most of these businesses use consumer payment services, there is clearly an opportunity for more targeted micro-business payments. For more information, see Online Banking Report #107/108, Small and Microbusiness Banking 4.0.