Best of Beyond the Transaction

Payments strategy is changing fast. Best of Beyond the Transaction highlights the strongest, most impactful themes across B2B payments.

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 9092 data points over a single account. When we underwrite, that’s impossible to do manually. That’s impossible."

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.”

“Don’t think of payments as some back-office function, think of payments as a strategic growth lever.”

“Loyalty begins at the payment is a critical component”

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.”

“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”

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.”

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 ..."

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."

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”

"There's a lot of buzz around compliance. And how can we make it a competitive advantage."

Scaling checks manually becomes a constraint at enterprise volume.

“That’s a massive undertaking, if you need to do those checks manually.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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”

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”

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.”

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.

Want to experience full episodes of Beyond the Transaction? Explore the complete library and hear how leaders describe what is changing across embedded payments, order-to-cash and enterprise risk.

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