Dive Brief:
- Carpinteria, California-based construction software firm Procore has announced a new payment service for contractors, Procore Pay, in partnership with Goldman Sachs Transaction Banking, signaling its interest in the increasingly competitive fintech space.
- The Nov. 8 announcement came during Procore’s annual Groundbreak conference in New Orleans, where it also unveiled two other new services in preconstruction and analytics.
- Citing the significant amount of time that contractors spend tracking down payments, Procore’s new service is designed to automate and accelerate that process. The feature will fit into its suite of other products and is expected to launch in 2023.
Dive Insight:
The new service aims to, according to the release:
- Reduce payment friction with expedited invoice review and payment options.
- Save time by removing a point solution and associated data entry, integration and payment process friction.
- Streamline lien waiver collection via an automated lien waiver exchange.
Procore CEO Tooey Courtemanche, in the release, cited the cumbersome process that contractors often face when looking to collect payments. Contractors can wait weeks for money to come through or spend significant amounts of time chasing money down. The construction industry reported $208 billion in losses due to late payments in 2022 through the chain of work.
In an August interview with Construction Dive, Courtemanche outlined the payment service’s ideal route, where Procore pays a subcontractor up front, providing it money to purchase materials and cover other expenses. Then, the general contractor is scheduled to pay Procore through a lien.
“If a large entity is building the building, they are the ones that are ultimately on the hook to pay us,” Courtemanche told Construction Dive.
The company revealed two other new services at the conference. The first, Procore Connect on Drawings, enables teams to securely connect to projects in other stakeholders’ accounts and synchronize data to reflect the most up-to-date drawings, according to the release.
Procore also increased the usage of predictive analytics on its platform, which provides information on process aspects such as bidding and budgeting.
Responses