Beyond The Transaction: Key Takeaways
Best of Beyond the Transaction highlights the strongest, most impactful themes across B2B payments.
By TreviPay
Themes from Beyond the Transaction
- AI that enables teams to act proactively
- Payments as a growth lever
- Experience-led embedded payments
- Working capital driven orchestration
- Enterprise controls and segmentation
- Fraud, compliance and invoice integrity
- Global scale, speed and localization
- Leadership, trust and partnerships
Trend 1: AI is moving finance from reactive to proactive
AI shows up as pattern recognition at scale, early warning signals and decision support across credit and order-to-cash.
“We can now predict to a really high percentage, I think, it’s 88 or 89% likelihood that an account can go dormant based on the data that we have.”
“Our credit team is leveraging 9,092 data points over a single account. When we underwrite, that’s impossible to do manually.”
– Inez Berkhof-Hollander, TreviPay
Trend 2: Payments are Entering the Growth Conversation
What to Watch:
- Strategy shifts from efficiency to growth outcomes
- Payment terms and experience showing up in commercial strategy discussions
Payments are being positioned less as an operational afterthought and more as a lever tied to loyalty, retention and competitive advantage.
“Embedded payments are sort of quietly become very strategic.”
– Kevin Permenter, IDC
“Don’t think of payments as some back-office function, think of payments as a strategic growth lever.”
– Inez Berkhof-Hollander, TreviPay
“Loyalty begins at the payment is a critical component”
– Brandon Spear, TreviPay
Trend 3: Enterprise Buyers Expect a Simple Flow from Purchase to Payment
Buyers’ expectations for B2B transactions are rising. The trend shows up as consolidation: fewer clicks, fewer handoffs and one consistent workflow.
A consistent experience can improve adoption, reduce workarounds and lower exception volume across order-to-cash.
“Where our payments are going to be automatic and embedded in, you know, that’s that’s where I see the future going.”
– Bob Cohen, Mastercard
“It’s no longer a back-office upgrade. It’s becoming, as you could call it, like, the connective tissue or sort of the bridge”
– Kevin Permenter, IDC
Trend 4: Working Capital Goals Are Shaping How Payments Get Routed
Treasury priorities are moving closer to the transaction. Orchestration shows up to align payment execution with cash flow goals.
When routing reflects working capital priorities, payments decisions can support cash predictability and supplier strategy, not only processing speed.
“And if we can help suppliers get paid faster and then buyers will, you know, enable buyers to hold on to their money longer.”
– Bob Cohen, Mastercard
Trend 5: Controls and Segmentation Define Enterprise Readiness
Enterprise payments rarely fail because teams do not want innovation. They fail when controls, governance and buyer variability get underestimated.
“You need to make sure that your processes are flexible and smart enough and can be configured well enough to be able to take care of the buyers that need, you know, PO processes ... purchase controls ...”
– Martha Salinas, TreviPay
Segmentation shows up as a practical requirement: different buyers, different transactions and different policies.
“We definitely are seeing a ton of excitement around virtual cards, being embedded into A/P and procurement platforms, being able to do instant issuance with those, those cards. But mainly it was the control, being able to dictate merchant category when it comes to payments, even location, these are all things that really get, A/P managers and expense teams, and Directors of Finance really excited.”
– Kevin Permenter, IDC
Trend 6: Fraud, Compliance and Invoice Integrity are Product Requirements
Risk is becoming inseparable from payments strategy. The pressure shows up in fraud conversations, compliance expectations and the quality of invoices entering the workflow.
“Fraud is going to be a big topic, especially tied to AI”
– Martha Salinas, TreviPay
“There's a lot of buzz around compliance. And how can we make it a competitive advantage.”
– Inez Berkhof-Hollander, TreviPay
Scaling checks manually becomes a constraint at enterprise volume.
“That’s a massive undertaking, if you need to do those checks manually.”
– Inez Berkhof-Hollander, TreviPay
Trend 7: Global Scale Rewards Speed
Global expansion adds complexity fast, especially in regions where requirements vary by country and enforcement evolves. Enterprise teams are prioritizing scalable deployment across markets.
“To come back to your question how do I find a solution that is scalable and that’s easy to deploy in different countries. . . So that you can pivot quickly. Because I think speed is also something that distinguishes companies.”
– Inez Berkhof-Hollander, TreviPay
Speed becomes a differentiator when opportunities are time bound, but localization remains part of the roadmap.
“But I think the key thing is going to be how we offer localized payment methods to support local preferences.”
– Paul Rodgers, Vendorcom
Trend 8: Leadership, Trust and Partnerships are Measurable Advantages
The finance role is widening, and partnerships show up as a practical requirement for resilience, scale and execution.
“CFO Plus really means for me that I get involved in a lot of things outside of what a traditional CFO does.”
– Joel Campbell, TreviPay
The leadership framework conversation lands on trust, automation and localization as an operating model.
“TAIL stands for trusted partner relationships, adaptive order-to-cash intelligent automation and localized strategy.”
– Joel Campbell, TreviPay
Trust is described as economic, not abstract.
“It leads to hard financial advantages like for a CFO, improved cash flow, reduce transaction costs, reduce friction, lower customer acquisition costs, improved working capital efficiency”
– Joel Campbell, TreviPay
Partnerships show up as an ecosystem requirement.
“I think finding the right partners, understanding what you still continue to need to do on a global scale, what you can do domestically and what you can do in region”
– Paul Rodgers, Vendorcom
And trust extends to customer relationships.
“I am going to give you my best customers, and I want you to look after them on my behalf.”
– Brandon Spear, TreviPay
Payments trends are converging around a few enterprise priorities: growth outcomes tied to buyer experience, treasury goals embedded in workflows, governance that scales and risk controls that keep pace with AI-driven threats.
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