AI and the New Era of B2B Payments

Narrator: 0:08

This is PYMNTS ON AIR, a PYMNTS podcast. In-depth conversations, expert panels, and exclusive research brought to life by PYMNTS Intelligence. Last year, Karen Webster said B2B payments were losing the boring label. Now that Payments has kicked off its month-long virtual series, B2B.AI: The Architecture of Intelligent Money Movement, Webster says the shift towards AI marks a critical turning point for CFOs and finance teams.

John Gaffney: 0:38

Hi everyone, John Gaffney here. I'm Chief Content Officer, and I'm here with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster to get her take on our exclusive B2B event. Now in its sixth year, PYMNTS October live event series returns with a focus on AI. Discover how Gen AI and intelligent agents are redefining how businesses move money, guided by the leaders using it today and the innovators building what's next. Karen, welcome.

Karen Webster: 1:04

Hey, thanks, John. It's a pleasure. And I I love the fact that this is year six. It's amazing. We just keep getting better and better. And the topics and the participants more interesting and insightful this year in particular, I'm excited.

John Gaffney: 1:18

Yeah, me too. You know, last year when we had this conversation, it was all about how B2B payments aren't boring anymore. And even with your predictive abilities, that has come true at an amazing level. So because this year we're connecting to AI, my first question for you, Karen, is what is the general connection between AI and B2B and what do the individual touch points look like?

Karen Webster: 1:43

Well, what's interesting about this year's focus is not necessarily because AI is new in the B2B payment space. It's it's certainly been a tool that CFOs, heads of payments, and stakeholders across businesses and trading partners have used for years, but mostly focused on very narrow tasks like fraud, using patterns to predict risk scores and just general trends across the business, who's paying on time, who isn't. But I think the opportunity now with Gen AI is to take those specialized, even point solutions and models to general intelligence across the business. So there's a contextual aspect and a reasoning aspect that Gen AI and agents bring to the office of the CFO and B2B payments more specifically, that I think creates a whole nother level of excitement and opportunity for businesses. You know, we we used to think in terms of dashboards, but but we still have dashboards, but we have digital copilots that help to populate them in real time with different levels of data across the business that inform better decision making. And I think the real potential, which we'll talk about, I think, with agents, is to move from automation, which is just moving from digital to something that is analog, that is something that is digital, to autonomy when agents are making decisions based on what they see has historically happened and what they predict will deliver a better outcome, obviously, with input from key stakeholders and users. So I think you know, the potential, and we're seeing this in our own data, is to think about the application of this advanced AI to create growth opportunities, to really accelerate innovation, to do basic things in more in a more contextual fashion faster, which I think not only improves productivity, but it alleviates the time that would otherwise be spent on things that can be redirected to innovation.

John Gaffney: 3:58

So there have been some new developments last since last year, um, Agentic AI being probably the biggest. Um, you had a great Monday conversation recently with Miracle CEO, who was talking about their new B2B marketplace agentic solution. But as these use cases keep coming up, I'm reminded of a recent report that we did that shows CFOs are curious but cautious. What's it going to take to close that gap?

Karen Webster: 4:24

Well, trust for one thing, right? I mean, when you start um really turning over the keys and the wheel to um to agents, you really have to trust that they're going to be acting in the best interest of the business. And I sort of um uh I'm reminded of the evolution of self-driving cars. I mean, back in the day, cruise control, you sort of set the the speed, but your hands were still on the wheel. Your foot just wasn't on the accelerator, but your hands were on the wheel and you could you could take it off at any time. You know, autonomy is you're asleep in the car and the car is driving itself. There are very few people who are willing to uh to do that just yet, although early adopters are curious and they'll try it in certain situations. And I see, I see the application of agents in B2B payments following that same trajectory. CFOs and heads of payments have to trust that agents will in fact do what is necessary to be done. There also needs to be use cases where they can experiment, test, and learn. And I think that's what we're starting to see, and I think that's what we'll see more of as uh as time goes by.

John Gaffney: 5:32

But let's be clear, you you're pretty bullish on the future of agentic AI.

Karen Webster: 5:36

I am. I I think just just Gen AI and advanced AI in particular is transformative. I think there's, you know, a lot of people, even this morning, I was listening to someone talking about um, you know, is is there too much hype around AI? Is it a bubble? And clearly it's not. It is a transformative technology, and I think we need to really look at its potential to change not just B2B payments and how trading partners engage, but every aspect of every business and accelerate the innovation trajectory of every business because the technology is so accessible and it gets better literally every day because these models are learning from our engagement with it every day.

John Gaffney: 6:22

So we've covered some of those, some of those use cases and some of the um experiments that are going on. Um but what does the the intersection with AI look like in some of the other use cases you're watching closely? I mean, we've covered a lot about back office functions, supplier relationships getting better. Um, what's your take on use cases?

Karen Webster: 6:45

So I think there are so many areas where when we look at our survey results across the business, we've been we've been talking to enterprise and middle market, CFOs, chief product officers, and COOs for gosh, the last um year and a half, probably a little bit more since January 2024. And and we've seen the evolution, the steady evolution of the application of Gen AI, not so much agents just yet. We're still playing around with that, at least most people in B2B payments payments are. But we've seen the evolution of basic stuff, writing emails, producing reports, synthesizing competitive intelligence to the application of things that are more strategic to the business, like reinventing risk profiles, optimizing working capital, which I think is such an amazing opportunity because Gen AI and these tools provide more cash visibility to CFOs and the treasurers. So when you think about the impact to an organization using these tools to get a better handle on their cash position, it does make a difference in terms of how those businesses operate, the resiliency of those businesses, and how they apply both the cash on hand and the working capital they have access to to support their business and grow and expand.

John Gaffney: 8:20

So let's get into the CFO and treasurer office a little bit here. Um, in the working capital report that you just mentioned, one of the things that really jumped out to me was this concept of the adaptive CFO. Did that land for you as well?

Karen Webster: 8:33

It's interesting. This is year three of the work that Payments Intelligence and Visa do to measure the efficiency of working capital. This year, that particular survey, we spoke with more than 1,400 CFOs and treasurers in 23 countries and 12 different industry sectors. So we got a pretty good perspective on how CFOs and treasurers are doing a lot of things to optimize working capital. And in particular, their use of AI, which we which we spoke about earlier. But interestingly, this year, and you know, after three years, you can start to see trends. Um, we noticed that the macroeconomic environment created a different type of persona. We call it the adaptive CFO and treasurer. And that is the persona who saw what was going on with tariffs and disruptions to supply chains and could use working capital to support unplanned growth, which is very different than what we saw in years past. There was the strategic CFO. I have a business plan, I've aligned my working capital with those plans that we've all agreed as an organization, represent our priorities and we're going to proceed accordingly. There's the tactical CFO and treasurer that has unplanned gaps, and working capital needs to fill those unplanned gaps to keep the business going. But this adaptive CFO was able to tap into working capital and do things that put their business in a better competitive position because of the opportunities that they were given to accelerate the purchase of inventory, to pay suppliers faster in order to get a better advantage with suppliers that they valued. So I think it's really interesting. It shows the resiliency of businesses and certainly the opportunity that financial institutions have in providing working capital tools to these CFOs and treasurers who are using it to really keep their businesses in a much better competitive position.

John Gaffney: 10:42

We have a lot of CFOs, a lot of treasurers on the agenda and in our audience this year. What's your take on the office of the CFO? It's been all about strategy last year. What is it this year?

Karen Webster: 10:55

I think it's it's certainly all about strategy always, right? I mean, you think about the CFO as a partner in strategy across the business because they do have a good understanding of what the business can support and what capital is available to fund business growth. I do think that we see an enormous appetite to apply these new tools to making their perspective on the business and the macro environment even more sharp, even sharper and more and more intelligent. And I think we're seeing that in the application of these use cases for things like I just talked about, which is which is less about the more mundane functions of the office of the CFO and things that are much more strategic in being able to apply working capital and the cash assets of the business in a more in a more prescriptive way.

John Gaffney: 11:51

So we're going to focus on AI the next few weeks, but it's not the only issue we're going to focus on. I wanted to know, Karen, what are some of the things you're looking at beyond AI, if there is anything beyond AI?

Karen Webster: 12:02

Well, there is. There is. I mean, AI is a is a horizontal. I mean, I think about it as, you know, this enabling technology that that doesn't just touch payments, but it touches every aspect of the business. But but clearly in the B2B payment space, the topic of conversation is stable coins and the role of tokenized assets and how money to lose, that is a massive discussion that is happening in every aspect of payments. Traditional players, new players, and sort of stable coin native players are all having conversations because of the Genius Act and the relaxed regulatory infrastructure here in the United States that really provides more of a feeding ground for those kinds of conversations to happen. So certainly that's an area that we are focused on and covering more exciting things to uh to come there. Cyber and security, obviously, is very, very important. You know, there is the other side of Gen AI and how it's being applied in business against business by those who have access to tools and technologies that can trick businesses into doing things that they shouldn't be doing. So certainly that's an area of importance, fortifying the defenses as the threat vectors expand and become more pervasive. You know, and scams, which are not just about consumers being scammed, but about businesses being compromised, not because business people are being tricked, but because of the relationships they may have with vendors who may be tricked, and that third and fourth party compromise of vendors and partners can seep into organizations as well. So I think that there's a really interesting slate of issues that we're going to be focused on from a B2B perspective. Um AI is certainly just one of them, but a very important one.

John Gaffney: 13:57

So let's bring it back to AI for the last question, Karen. When we're having this conversation next year, would you like to take a stab at what we'll be saying about AI?

Karen Webster: 14:06

Larry dust off my crystal ball, which I have right now. Um, you know, it's it's certainly it will continue to be a topic of conversation. But you know, I wonder, I wonder when we'll transition from having every press release emphasize AI, which I think many people feel they have to do in order to be considered relevant. You know, if you're not talking about AI, does it mean you're really doing it or you're not doing it? So I think a year from now, I hope that AI becomes an embedded part of the business and not just B2B payments, but across the business, how businesses are becoming more efficient, more productive, and how it's creating new environments for innovation and creative thinking. I wrote a piece not long ago where I hypothesized that because the lack of dependencies for Gen AI has allowed it to accelerate so much more quickly than other important technologies, that the application of Gen AI to business will allow their own innovation curves to steepen as well. And I look forward to not so much talking about the technology, but the outcomes of the technology next year and in the years to come.

John Gaffney: 15:27

All right. Thank you so much, Karen. That was PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster talking about our upcoming B2B.AI event. Karen, thanks so much for joining us today.

Karen Webster: 15:36

Thanks, John. Everyone should tune in. It's going to be a great month. Thank you.

Narrator: 15:43

That's it for this episode of the PYMNTS Podcast, the thinking behind the doing. Conversations with the leaders transforming payments, commerce, and the digital economy. Be sure to follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can also catch every episode at pymnts.com/ podcasts. Thanks for listening.