What happened: The digital bookkeeping provider Dext has announced a strategic partnership with Airwallex to launch Dext Payments (Dext). Dext Payments will be launched later this year, offering a seamless, integrated payments solution within the Dext platform. This completes the accounts payable workflow, offering full automation from invoice upload through to payment.
My comment: Dext focuses strongly on receipt collection, automation, and expense management services. It is not an accounting tool itself, but it is connected to these providers and financial institutions. With such a pure focus on receipt collecting, the move into payments for accounts payable seems logical. However, it also removes this step from one of the underlying providers and transfers it to Dext. Will users prefer to make payments within Dext or stay with their existing workflow (depending on the setup, this could also involve Embedded Payments)? While it may not be a significant strategic shift at Dext, it will be interesting to see how the underlying providers react, as some of them have their own accounts payable solutions.
