Net Terms for New Customers? Here's the Problem

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• Caleb Schmitz, CRO at Anchor Group
• Mark Regal, Head of Partnerships at Resolve
• Alec Berkley, Strategic Advisor at Resolve
• Anchor Group (Company Page)

Podcast Recap:

How B2B Merchants Can Stop Being the Bank for Their Customers

In this episode, Caleb from Anchor Group sits down with Alec Berkley and Mark Regal from Resolve to tackle one of B2B's most overlooked cash flow problems: net terms. If your business is manually underwriting credit, chasing late payments, or losing deals because onboarding takes weeks, this conversation breaks down how automated net terms financing changes the equation.

The hidden cost of being the bank

Most B2B merchants offer net terms because buyers expect it—but that means fronting cash for 30, 60, or even 90 days while hoping customers pay on time. Resolve flips this: merchants get paid upfront (minus a fee comparable to credit card processing), while Resolve takes on the credit risk entirely. It's non-recourse financing—if the buyer doesn't pay, that's Resolve's problem, not yours. The result is better cash flow, less AR overhead, and no more being the bad guy chasing payments.

Instant credit decisions, not weeks-long approvals

Traditional credit onboarding involves PDF applications, trade references, and manual underwriting—a process that can drag on for two to three weeks per new account. Resolve reduces this to minutes. With just four data points (business name, address, AP phone, and AP email), Resolve can approve a credit line in about 10 seconds. For a sales rep on the phone with a new $75K prospect, that's a deal-closing superpower.

How it fits your stack

Resolve integrates directly with BigCommerce and NetSuite through a pre-built bundle—no custom data integration work required. Customer records, invoices, and payment reconciliation sync automatically across both platforms. Whether an order comes in through e-commerce, a phone call, or in person, Resolve can be applied. Merchants can offer flexible terms (Net 30/45/60/90, or installments up to six months) without rebuilding their tech stack.

You don't have to roll it out to every customer

Resolve is modular. A practical starting point is applying it only to your highest-risk accounts—new customers with no history, sole proprietors, or contractors who are structurally cash-poor. Long-term buyers you've worked with for 30 years? Keep them on existing terms. As confidence grows, expand from there. Resolve also handles credit line expansion, stepping in when a customer needs $75K–$150K in terms that an in-house team can't reasonably float.

The agentic commerce angle

Alec raises a forward-looking point: as AI agents begin handling B2B procurement—placing orders and managing accounts without human involvement—the need for fast, automated credit approval becomes critical infrastructure. Resolve's model positions it as a natural risk layer in that future: approving an AI-driven purchase the same way it would a human one, removing the merchant's hesitation to trust an order from a non-human buyer.

Bottom line

Net terms aren't just a billing detail—they're a growth lever. Slow approvals, manual AR, and unpaid invoices cost real money and real time. Resolve automates the riskiest parts of that workflow, from onboarding to collections, so merchants can close faster, protect cash flow, and scale without adding headcount.

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Podcast Transcript:

Caleb (00:00)

In this episode, I speak with my friends over at Resolve. They've created a new solution to help acquire B2B customers more cleanly and with less risk—especially those customers you want on net terms but aren't quite sure about their risk profile yet. Stay tuned to learn how it solves a problem that's been around in the space for a long time: offering terms to customers while navigating that risk.

To start, Alec, I wanted you to give a rough outline of what Resolve is as a whole and what it's trying to solve—because it solves something unique and sometimes takes a little extra explanation. Where does it fit into the NetSuite ecosystem and the e-commerce system?

Alec (01:18)

That's a great starting point. Certain B2B companies are indexed on e-commerce—about 20% of their business comes in through pre-authorized e-commerce orders. But a lot of NetSuite clients are doing their business straight out of NetSuite. For those companies, Resolve is more comparable to an invoice financing tool. You've got a customer with net terms—maybe Net 60—and you want a 50% or 100% advance on an invoice. You send that invoice to Resolve, it syncs through your customer and invoice data, and you reconcile the payment after receiving the advance.

That within itself isn't a unique value proposition—there are plenty of working capital and invoice financing companies. But when you layer in the e-commerce component, a lot of businesses don't want to send every new account into underwriting, or maybe they don't even have underwriting teams, or they're tired of being the bank for potentially risky new clients from the internet. That's where Resolve comes in and automates your onboarding flow for new customers. If you want to take an advance, you can—it's in line with a credit card fee. Or you can take a lower advance or none at all, and just benefit from the underwriting automation, which on its own can take two to three weeks per new company. You could send someone a text at a trade show and next thing you know, they're a customer in NetSuite and the whole thing works.

Caleb (03:09)

So it's primarily piggybacking off the invoicing process, specifically for customers who have terms—not necessarily B2C customers.

Alec (03:19)

Correct. It's really for customers in NetSuite that are on terms, where the merchant is already acting as the bank and doesn't want to anymore, or their underwriting team is overwhelmed with new applications. That's a lot of manual work for the one person responsible—manually looking up credit scores and calculating risk. Mark can probably expand more on the underwriting engine. The point is that to be agile and have velocity with an e-commerce solution without letting manual processes hold you back, having that connector on both sides is what truly differentiates Resolve. It's not just "go add this payment method to your checkout and let your ERP consultants figure it out." They've built the bundle, they manage and maintain it, and they version-control it.

Caleb (04:46)

So the default future without Resolve is you have customers on terms who may or may not pay on time, potentially going into collections where it's hard to get that money back—higher risk of someone not paying the invoice like they're supposed to.

Mark (05:03)

Yes, that's correct. The biggest pain points are on two sides. The operational side: the finance team that has to underwrite, make sure it's not a risky buyer, then do all the collections follow-ups and payment chasing. And on the sales side: salespeople want to know if new customers can get terms as fast as possible so they can offer it as a competitive advantage.

There are really four reasons to use Resolve, and you can use them together or separately—it's pretty modular. The biggest one for most businesses is that they are the bank, and they're the ones who have to be the bad guy. With Resolve, you don't have to be the bank. It's non-recourse financing—whether the buyer picks Net 30, 60, 90, or even installments up to six months, there is no recourse for the money advanced. Resolve takes on all that risk. The biggest value prop is not being the bank—opening up cash flow and handing off reconciliation to Resolve. And it can come from an offline purchase, a phone call, or e-commerce. We don't try to determine how your flow should be—that flexibility is the benefit.

Caleb (06:58)

Let me give an example. Say I'm selling a trailer—maybe $5,000 to $10,000. A small landscaper wants to spread out that purchase going into summer after a slow winter. They want to be on terms. Normally the merchant either says yes and takes on the risk of someone they've never met, or the customer has to pay by credit card in full upfront—which isn't attractive on a larger ticket. With Resolve, the merchant can say yes without taking on that risk.

Mark (08:40)

Exactly. You touched on seasonality too, which we see a lot. With Resolve, buyers can go up to Net 90 or six-month installments, so they can plan ahead—buy what they need now and pay when their business is actually generating revenue a few months down the road. We solve those types of problems for the buyer as well.

Caleb (09:24)

So you're solving problems for the buyer by giving them a path to spread out payments on a higher ticket item. But there are other payment solutions that do that—why is Resolve different?

Mark (09:36)

Resolve is actually the sister company of Affirm—the BNPL you see in stores. But that's a direct-to-consumer transaction with different rates, liabilities, and risk. Resolve only does B2B, which means our fees are much closer to rack-rate credit card processing. And instead of just splitting things into four payments, you can offer Net 30, 60, 90, or monthly installments over six months. The biggest difference is we're B2B-only, and most BNPL or split-payment players are direct-to-consumer and underwrite risk very differently.

Alec (10:50)

Once you look at all the players and the Venn diagram of NetSuite plus a front-end e-commerce solution, Resolve rises to the top because very few solutions have invested what they have in both the e-commerce checkout experience and the ERP customer-invoice-payment layer. It ends up being more value-driven because the merchant or partner doesn't have to invest in a lot of data integration work on either side.

Caleb (11:50)

Explain what ETL means—explain it like I'm two.

Alec (11:53)

Sure. A customer comes in through e-commerce—how does that customer get into NetSuite? Have they purchased before? Are they an additional buyer for an existing company account? What are you checking them against? If NetSuite is your source of truth but your e-commerce solution doesn't communicate with it, how does your checkout even know that customer's history? Resolve would know because they've already synced the customer records through the NetSuite bundle. So if a buyer comes in not knowing their parent company already has a terms account set up, Resolve can identify that. Having that understanding of the source of truth is where Resolve differentiates—most BNPL or installment players haven't paid attention to it, and they put the burden on partners or developers to figure it out.

Caleb (14:04)

Let me simplify the ROI. In B2B, customers prefer paying by check or ACH to avoid credit card fees. If Resolve's fees are similar to credit card processing, I wonder about presenting Resolve as a checkout option and passing those fees to the customer—"if you want to spread out payments, it costs 3% more; otherwise, pay ACH upfront." Have you seen merchants offset your fees that way?

Mark (16:06)

Yes. Resolve has functionality to split fees—push 1% or 2% to the buyer, push it all to the buyer, or eat the cost completely. We also see people pay via ACH to auto-pay invoices quickly. In an e-commerce experience, credit card is still the most common. And with Amex, fees are typically 4.5% or higher. People also run into credit card limits when spreading credit across many businesses. A lot of this comes down to educating the merchant on how to talk about the net terms program and frame why it's beneficial.

Alec (17:40)

Caleb, what you described—collecting a deposit upfront and capturing the balance later—requires a fair amount of orchestration with the payment processor and reconciliation. I've heard that use case a hundred times and seen it implemented successfully only a fraction of the time. You're going to rack up development hours trying to pull it off. And once you scale to a $150,000 credit line, you're talking about a $75,000 ACH upfront—which is hard to ask of a buyer.

Caleb (19:11)

The more you ask a buyer to pay upfront on a larger ticket item, the harder it is to close. Let's say someone doesn't have e-commerce at all and is just taking phone orders. Tell me about that process.

Mark (19:24)

Let's say it's a new customer asking if you do terms on a $75K order. The sales rep can ask for their information right there on the call. Resolve only needs four pieces of information for an instant credit check: business name, business address, AP phone number, and AP email. Within about 10 seconds, we can approve someone for a credit line—up to $25K, $50K, and up, depending on the business and publicly available information. That entire process—which normally takes weeks with PDFs and trade references—could take minutes with Resolve, especially on a sales rep call.

Alec (21:13)

In short: send a text or an email, fill out four pieces of info, and they can order right then without paying immediately.

Caleb (21:25)

Got it—so it helps move through the application process quickly to determine if terms are available.

Mark (21:35)

Correct. And for an existing customer already on Resolve with a $150K credit line, the sales rep can load the order and deduct the invoice directly from their existing credit line on the call—even faster.

Alec (21:56)

With the NetSuite integration, if the customer is already active in Resolve, you just go into Resolve and apply the credit to that invoice. The sales order-to-invoice flow in NetSuite stays the same. If the customer wasn't pre-approved, the instant check comes in. If they're not approved instantly, there's an additional step—like a Plaid connection to verify bank balance relative to the purchase—and then a determination is made.

Caleb (22:45)

I see Resolve as really useful for businesses that have their foundation in place and are asking: how do I fine-tune cash flow and risk management? A CFO or owner saying, "I'm losing money trying to collect from customers I couldn't properly vet" or "I'm losing customers because it took too long to get them on account." That's where Resolve helps fine-tune the business.

Alec (23:36)

A lot of it is having enough data to do the math equation for your customers. If your customers are on terms and some don't pay on time—which just happens—solutions like these help. We were on a podcast with Jake from SS&SI, and he said Resolve helped him sleep at night. He's running a $10 million distribution business and inventory turnover is a real challenge. The interesting part is you don't have to take a 100% advance. If you know a set of customers will pay but don't want to wait, take a 25% advance across that group. That frees up cash and you might pay a lower fee. It's a math problem—customers will always pay late and always want terms. If you have that data in NetSuite, you can easily identify the accounts where a solution like this makes sense, even if it's just a cash flow play.

Caleb (25:41)

That's interesting—people don't have to use Resolve for every customer on terms. They could start small: which subset of customers do I consider high risk? Use Resolve there first, because it gives a path to terms while decreasing risk. Then expand from there.

Alec (26:27)

That's ultimately the easy path, even if Resolve wouldn't want that framed as the opening pitch. Instead of calling them "risky customers," let's call them contractors—because by default, they're cash-poor. They're constantly fronting money for their clients and getting paid later. For that use case, a solution like this makes a ton of sense.

Caleb (27:18)

Exactly—a business owner would say: who are my highest-risk people? The ones I don't have a history with. That's where I'd start with Resolve. And I'd expand as I start seeing risk in other customer segments too. Even someone with a good payment history can change—if your main contact leaves and the new accountant doesn't pay on time, your risk profile shifts just from turnover.

Mark (28:34)

Sometimes people have been working with their buyers for 30 years—they're basically family. We're not going to touch those. But the pre-application flow is a good starting point for sole proprietors or customers where you'd normally just say no. Enter a few pieces of information, run a soft credit check, and see if they can get terms through Resolve. The other common entry point is late payers—if you want a 100% advance, your finance team can cross it off as done and let Resolve handle all the payment chasing and collections.

Caleb (29:39)

Labor is expensive. Collections is expensive. Paying your accountants to go chase money—that's a lot of cost that people don't realize.

Mark (29:47)

And it can burn bridges. Resolve isn't like factoring companies that make money on late fees and treat buyers badly. It's about expanding average order size and having buyers continue to repeat-purchase—so the service has to be good and communication has to be consistent. Some teams don't have an AR team at all, or their AR team is underwater. They just want to pass off new accounts or growing accounts that want larger lines—$75K, $150K—that the business can't float internally. That's when Resolve comes in the most. You can quickly expand lines with Resolve.

Caleb (31:06)

That makes sense. This was really helpful having you guys walk through everything. Do you have any final thoughts?

Alec (31:19)

I just wanted to put you in the hot seat for a second, Caleb—I've been thinking about the whole "agentic commerce" topic. Everyone assumed ChatGPT was going to be the next Amazon and then they walked it back. But on the B2B side, where do you see this landing? A procurement agent sourcing products from a merchant—what are the barriers to that happening?

Caleb (31:52)

On the B2B side specifically, I think it's going to come down to customer support chatbots first—bots that can surface ERP data so customers can ask about their open invoices, work orders, and sales orders without needing a human. That's the primary component I see taking hold.

Alec (33:06)

And what if that agent isn't approved for an account yet but is ready to buy? The barrier is fast onboarding and fast approval, right? That's exactly why I joined Resolve. If I'm a B2B brand owner, why would I trust some agent placing an order on my site? It's not even a human. But if that agent represents a business that's already been approved through a third party, I can get paid right then. It becomes Resolve's problem—you approved the digital worker to place this order.

Caleb (34:29)

That's a good point. Without human vetting, you need some automated way to de-risk it. Resolve could be that layer—approving a purchase from an AI-driven buyer the same way it would a human.

Alec (35:22)

That's why I'm bullish on Resolve. It hasn't fully played out yet, but solutions that help de-risk the initial touchpoint with a business—even when it's not a human asking to source a product—are the ones that will matter. The agent submits the information, Resolve says this looks good, here's a $15K line. The merchant doesn't need to care if it was a human or not.

Mark (37:19)

The other touch point is RFQ processes—most are still just forms, which is a terrible experience. Engineers looking for a specific part with a specific time window will go to the first website that can answer them fastest. Most of the time they still have to call someone. But now you can automate the search, the credit approval, and the RFQ generation—really quickly. B2B e-commerce is still only 20% of transactions and isn't growing fast because of old processes. Agentic commerce can solve a lot of those pain points way better than direct-to-consumer.

Alec (39:25)

The irony, Caleb, is it all ends up being like an EDI transaction in the end.

Caleb (39:29)

Right—there's no interface. It's just a workflow via integration.

Caleb (39:46)

AI agents could really solve a lot of pain points for B2B e-commerce—bypassing the need for a traditional interface entirely, doing the transaction, setting up the customer, and letting the procurement team get on with their day.

Caleb (40:16)

I want to thank you both for walking me through what Resolve does. It's genuinely unique. At the start of this episode I wasn't sure if this was a meaningful problem, and by the end of our conversation I was completely convinced that it is. Thank you both for helping me think outside the box.

Mark (41:04)

That's what we're here for.

Alec (41:04)

You've earned a $100 Visa gift card, Caleb.

Caleb (41:08)

Ha—just for people to know, I have not received that yet.

Alec (41:14)

That was a joke. We're not sending him any money—he's genuinely being sincere about the problem.

Caleb (41:22)

It's a really unique problem to solve and a unique approach. I love it for fine-tuning a business's cash flow. Thank you both, and I'm excited to see how Resolve—and agentic commerce—continue to evolve together.

Mark (41:45)

They're coming.

Alec (41:46)

Let's finance some burritos, Mark.

Mark (41:51)

I'll give you a fourth of a burrito. Later.

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