Citi has deployed a piece of innovative payment technology to facilitate payments between businesses that use corporate credit cards and suppliers that don't have acquisition facilities allowing them to accept credit card payments.In what the bank claims is a first in the Asia Pacific, Citi is using UK company Invapay's payments platform, which sits between the payer and the payee and converts the credit card payment into an direct credit.The payer gets to use its corporate card and the attendant invoicing facility, payments terms and other cash management services. Payees get paid in a form they can manage and don't have to set up a merchant facility for card acceptance.The first user of the system is the building materials company Hanson, which has a number of suppliers, such as drivers, who do not accept cards.Head of treasury and transaction services at Citi Australia and New Zealand, Scott Southall, said even some large suppliers handled thousands of invoices without a merchant facility.