Communicate with Buyers Using Comments on Payment Methods

You can communicate directly with your Coupa customers from the CSP using inline comments on your shared Payment Methods.

You can use inline comments directly from your shared Payment Methods on the Coupa Supplier Portal (CSP) to communicate with your Coupa customers (buyers). This eliminates the need to contact Coupa Support or rely on email and phone calls when you have questions or updates about payment account information.

Using inline commenting gives you these benefits:

  • Direct communication: Reach your buyers without intermediaries or offline channels.

  • Faster payment processing: Resolve payment account questions quickly to speed up approvals.

  • Secure collaboration: All messages are exchanged within the CSP platform, keeping conversations tied to the relevant payment method.

Before you can use the inline comment functionality from your payment methods, ensure the following:

  • Your CSP user account has the Payment Method Admin permission assigned, set up by your organization's CSP administrator under user permissions. For more information, see Manage Users in the CSP.

  • The linked customer's sharing status for the payment method is Shared Successfully.

Note: If a linked customer's status is Active, Failed to Share, Sharing in Progress, or Connection Issue, the comment feature is not available for that customer, and the Comments column shows N/A.

For more information, see Share a payment method with a customer.

Send a comment to a buyer

  1. Navigate to Business Profile > Payment Methods in the CSP.

  2. Click the name of the payment method you want to use for commenting.

  3. In the Linked Customers table, locate the customer you want to message.

  4. Click the comment icon in the Comments column for that customer row.

    • A blue View Message icon indicates commenting is available. You see a plus sign (+) on the icon, indicating you can now add comments.

    • If the icon is dimmed or the unread comments status is N/A, commenting is not available for that customer.

    Note: If a payment method is shared successfully with a buyer but the same payment account details exist on the buyer side (user-created) the status shows N/A. In that case the account is identical and linked in the system but not yet transferred to the supplier. Once the buyer transfers the account to you as a supplier, the comment icon turns active.

  5. A comment window opens. Type your message in the text field.

  6. Click Submit to Buyer to deliver the message.

Important: Do not share sensitive payment information, personal information, or passwords in comments.

See and reply to comments from buyers

Your buyer can also initiate comments on the shared payment method from their payment account screen on the Coupa Core Platform. You see notifications for the comments two ways in the CSP:
Tasks & Notifications workbench

You can click on the bell icon to open Tasks & Notifications to see if you have new comments. Then click on the new comment from the sidebar, and then click Open Payment Method to go directly to the Linked Customers screen, where you see a red dot on the blue chat icon, indicating unread messages. Use the comment functionality as described in Send a comment to a buyer.

Payment Methods screen

You can also check the Payment Methods screen for messages. If a buyer has added comments, in the Unread Comments column, you see a blue circle with the number of new comments.

  1. Click the name of the payment method to open Payment Methods, where you see the New Comments button with the number of unread comments.

  2. Click the button or scroll to Linked Customers.

  3. Click the chat icon with the red dot to open the inline comment window and respond to the buyer.

You also receive an email notification when the buyer adds comments. From the email, you are directed to the Payment Methods details, filtered for the linked customer's unread comment.