This Week in B2B Innovation: Capturing Opportunity Across an Atypical Landscape

Business-to-business (B2B) payments are undergoing a period of upheaval and reinvention.

Businesses are seeking faster, more efficient and secure payment solutions, and a wide range of players are stepping up to meet these demands.

The winners in the market will be those that can leverage technology, partnerships, and an understanding of the needs of B2B transactions to drive growth and unlock opportunity.

While challenges remain, particularly overcoming institutional inertia, this week’s top B2B trends indicate a clear movement toward using technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to streamline bookkeeping, accounting and operationals, as well as optimize B2B payment workflows.

Payments Acceptance

Unlike their consumer-facing counterparts, B2B payments lack a standardized payment method. The sheer diversity of payment options is both a blessing and a curse. Each comes with costs, settlement times and risks, creating a labyrinth for organizations to navigate as businesses seek to best serve their B2B partners. That’s why PYMNTS unpacked how businesses can work to align their B2B payment acceptance policies with their corporate goals.

And the rising importance of payments acceptance is happening while, as announced this week, The Clearing House’s RTP® Network will allow individual transactions of up to $10 million, following increases in earlier years to $1 million from $100,000. The company said the new limit supports growth in areas like real estate, supply chain payments and B2B transactions requiring higher transaction amounts. (Same-day ACH transaction limits are $1 million.)

Joint findings from Ingo Payments and PYMNTS Intelligence have highlighted that as of October 45% of ad hoc payments are sent via instant methods, up from 36% in January — and ad hoc payments can make up as much as 65% of smaller firms’ accounts receivable activity.

Checks Hang On — But for How Long?

But the question remains: Will the higher instant payments limit take B2B share from traditional methods?

To get a sense of how entrenched traditional payment methods have been in B2B, roughly 40% of commercial transactions remain tied to checks.

Of course, the marketplace is already responding.

By 2030, the B2B payments market size is projected to hit over $170 trillion. Winning just a sliver of the paper-based 40% of B2B payments is still big business.

Even payment mechanisms like blockchain are looking to capture B2B share. On Wednesday, Nuvei launched a blockchain-based payment solution for merchants across Latin America, saying it enables these businesses to make faster cross-border B2B payments and settlements. The new solution allows businesses to use a Visa-supported physical or virtual card to make payments using stablecoins from a digital asset wallet anywhere Visa is accepted.

Stablecoins have surged north of a $190 billion market capitalization, jumping 46% year over year, and PYMNTS dug into why, for finance professionals, an understanding the benefits, regulations and implications is critical for integrating stablecoins into treasury operations.

Still, as it relates to checks, on Wednesday (Dec. 4), the Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) announced it was expanding the FedDetect Duplicate Notification for Check Services to include commercial checks as well as the Treasury checks it already included, helping financial institutions combat check fraud by enabling them to see deposit information and images of potential duplicate items for commercial checks.

Digital Transformation

Across B2B, digital transformation isn’t just a buzzword — it’s key to helping firms position themselves for growth.

On Wednesday, QuickBooks maker Intuit launched a collaboration with Dutch payments firm Adyen. The partnership is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) in the U.K. more easily manage electronic payments.

Elsewhere, Briefcase has raised $3 million in a seed round to grow its AI bookkeeping and accounting automation platform, it was announced Wednesday.

And working capital solution Clearco, focused on eCommerce firms, is expanding its collaboration with capital marketplace Boundless. In a Wednesday news release, the companies said they will integrate their technology to allow for a “seamless handoff” for eCommerce companies during the funding process.

Back across the pond, British payments technology firm PayPoint is expanding its partnership with U.K. bank Lloyds. The collaboration, announced Wednesday, is designed to provide banking and payments services to roughly 60,000 U.K. SMBs, combining PayPoint and Handepay’s merchant network, and Lloyds’ merchant services.

Transportation industry solutions provider Transflo has introduced a fuel payment/management solution for trucking companies. The Transflo Wallet Fuel Card, announced in a Tuesday (Dec. 3) news release, is being launched in collaboration with TransConnect Services (TCS) and is designed to help trucking companies save on fuel costs and streamline operations.

Compliance and Liquidity Management

In the digital-first economy, community banks and credit unions, often overshadowed by their larger counterparts, are turning to digital platforms to modernize their operations and meet the demands of valuable customer segments, such as SMBs.

“Today’s platforms provide financial institutions the ability to create new products and services in days versus months, allowing them to adapt and pivot quickly to meet the ever-changing needs in financial services,” Al Taylor, senior vice president of financial institutions at i2c, told PYMNTS.

PYMNTS unpacked how anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) concerns, among other compliance requirements, are not merely a regulatory obligation but a strategic priority for the year ahead.

And global corporations can have billions of dollars tied up in illiquid accounts, limiting their ability to reinvest, pay down debt, or optimize working capital. That’s why PYMNTS took a look at how, as industry standards like ISO 20022 create an interoperable system for payments and trade, and digital innovation continues providing real-time data, trapped liquidity may turn out to be a term of the past.