Overdue Invoices Do Not Have to Block New Orders for Days. Open Banking Cuts It to Minutes

In B2B distribution there is a repeating bottleneck. The customer has an overdue invoice, so their trade credit limit is locked. A new order stalls, and when the goods rotate fast (fresh food, short-shelf-life products), every hour of delay is a real cost.

What is interesting is where the delay actually sits. It is rarely a matter of the customer not having the money. Usually the issue is more mundane. The customer forgets about the transfer or puts it off, so you have to remind them, sometimes chase several times, occasionally push hard before they actually sit down and pay. When they do, they make a plain transfer, retype the account number, amount and title, and sometimes make a mistake. And then your company still waits for the funds to post before you can safely release the order. Added up, these small frictions stretch the whole thing from a few hours to a few days, and often longer, because the process gets stuck at "I will pay tomorrow".

Open banking (PSD2) changes two things in this process: who prepares the transfer, and when you know with certainty that the money will arrive. Below we show it on a simple widget example, but the principle is general and works regardless of the specific solution.

It is a component that gives the customer a ready "pay and unlock" flow - an A2A pay-by-link pattern repurposed for outstanding B2B receivables, and it can be delivered in two ways. First: as a view embedded in the B2B panel where every customer sees their outstanding invoices, ticks what they want to pay, and executes the transaction on the spot. Second: as a link with the payment already pre-filled (specific overdue invoices, or an agreed partial-repayment amount) which the customer only opens and approves. Instead of another chase-up message, you send a transfer that is ready to approve. In both variants the data is prepared upfront, and the customer's part is only the approval.

Instead of hunting down transfer data, the customer just ticks the overdue invoices they want to settle. The system already knows the amounts and titles, so the total is ready instantly. Current invoices not yet due are greyed out.

The payer picks their bank. The amount and the transfer title are already set, no one is retyping the account number.

The payer logs into their online banking and sees a ready transaction: recipient, account number, amount, title. The data is filled in automatically through the API (Payment Initiation Service, PIS). The human role reduces to reviewing and approving. Worth noting: this screen is just an example - every bank has its own interface.

Authorization runs through the bank's usual method: mobile app, SMS code, or the local equivalent. This is Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), required by PSD2.

The payer approves the transfer with their usual method - Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). The recipient gets an initiation confirmation in real time, so the credit limit can be released immediately, without waiting for the posting.

Because the system prepares the payment and the customer is not hunting down transfer data, there is room for flexibility. Instead of framing it as all-or-nothing ("pay everything or do not order"), you can hand the customer a specific set of invoices or an agreed partial repayment for now - enough to unlock the credit limit and let the next order move. The rest can be scheduled over time. Instead of a debt-collection-style push, the customer gets a ready, easy-to-approve move that also unblocks them.

Three differences versus "send a reminder and wait for the transfer":

The same pattern fits anywhere a B2B customer runs a balance with a supplier: wholesalers, distribution, franchise networks, marketplaces. The label for the problem varies (trade credit limit, past-due receivables, order block), but the mechanics of the fix are the same. The repetitive, manual part of the process is taken over by technology; the human is left with the decision and the approval.

The important takeaway is this: it is no longer a vision of the future or a project sized for a big rollout year. Open banking has been live in Poland for a long time (Poland has one of Europe's most mature A2A payment infrastructures via BLIK), and plugging this kind of flow into an existing B2B panel or ERP is a one-API integration, not a system rebuild.