This Week in B2B: Entering an Age of Cross-Border Intelligence

In 2025, B2B payments are no longer just transactions but a strategic asset. But despite ongoing innovation and the acceleration of digital growth, one of the payment industry’s biggest challenges remains: how to handle global payments efficiently.

For decades, cross-border B2B payments have been plagued by inefficiencies: long settlement times, high costs and a lack of transparency. While consumer payments have undergone a revolution with real-time transfers, digital wallets and frictionless experiences, B2B transactions have lagged behind, constrained by legacy infrastructure, regulatory complexity, and inconsistent global standards.

Different jurisdictions impose distinct regulatory requirements, compliance obligations and banking standards, making it difficult for businesses to scale their payment operations globally. The lack of interoperability between payment networks further exacerbates inefficiencies, forcing enterprises to navigate a complex web of financial institutions and third-party providers.

But businesses increasingly want transactions, both domestic and international, to happen effortlessly in the background, embedded within supply chains, procurement platforms and enterprise systems. And as the B2B news this week shows, the marketplace is responding.

Read more: Two-Thirds of Banks Team With FinTechs on Cross-Border Payments

How Cross-Border Innovations Are Reshaping Finance

The modern enterprise is no longer satisfied with slow, opaque payments. In response, financial institutions, FinTech startups, and payment service providers are building intelligent payment infrastructures.

On Tuesday (March 11), Uruguay-based FinTech Prometeo introduced a solution designed to streamline B2B payments between Latin America and the U.S.

The Borderless Banking solution allows for access to local bank accounts for receiving payments and automating collections, while also facilitating international payment disbursement and optimizing global treasury management.

Elsewhere, Boost Payment Solutions has teamed with Transfermate to address a rising demand for cross-border payments. The partnership combines Boost’s cross-border payment solution for enterprise-level business, Boost 100XB, with TransferMate’s payments infrastructure to help promote industry-wide commercial card usage and adoption.

Cross-border payment pain, as well as payment gains, can be multiplied when it comes to handling payroll.

“Managing employees, contractors and contingent workers all over the world is incredibly complicated,” Bryan Peña, head of workforce management with Papaya Global, told PYMNTS. “You have a patchwork quilt of 180 different laws, regulations, processes and cultural zeitgeists, and managing that payment in real time is incredibly challenging for most large enterprises.”

But 2025 marks a turning point, as emerging technologies, regulatory shifts, and evolving business needs converge to redefine global payments.

Read more: Your Business Has Its Payments Data. Now What?

The Shift Toward Better B2B Payments

In the world of payments, automation is no longer a futuristic concept: it’s the new standard. The latest wave of funding underscores how critical automation has become to efficiency and security.

Automation-focused FinTech platform Worth raised $25 million in new funding, the company said Wednesday (March 12).

A day earlier, regulatory artificial intelligence (AI) agent company Norm Ai said Tuesday (March 11) that it raised another $48 million in funding, bringing to $87 million the total funding it raised in the past 18 months. Norm Ai will use the new funding to accelerate the development of its AI-powered legal and compliance automation solutions.

Elsewhere, Estonia-based cybersecurity firm Blackwall raised 45 million euros (about $49 million) in new funding. The financing round will let Blackwall — which rebranded from BotGuard — double its headcount and expand into the United States and Asia-Pacific (APAC) markets, according to a Thursday (March 13) announcement.

On the frontier of B2B payments, cryptocurrency payments company MoonPay said Thursday that it expanded its enterprise offerings by acquiring API-first stablecoin infrastructure platform Iron. Iron’s application programming interfaces (APIs) provide solutions for enterprises; FinTechs and payment processors; and marketplaces and merchants.

See also: CFOs Embrace Data Clouds Amid Shift Away From Pure-Play Record-Keeping

Looking Ahead to the Future of Payments Innovation

Word of mouth is a powerful force in B2B transactions, and a company known for slow, cumbersome or error-prone payment processes can find its reputation tarnished, leading to customer churn and lost opportunities.

That’s not just hearsay; it’s the latest PYMNTS Intelligence from the “B2B and Digital Payments Tracker® Series” that found that 71% of subcontractors experienced delayed payments from general contractors, an increase from 60% in 2022.

PYMNTS looked into how, by viewing payments as a core part of the customer experience, businesses can work to turn what was once a liability into a competitive advantage.

After all, Generation Z decision makers rising through the business ranks want their B2B purchasing decisions and experiences to be as seamless, and as digital, as possible.

And as payments are reimagined, so too are the functions that deal with them. In 2025, the treasury department isn’t just some back-office bean-counting operation. It can be a secret weapon worth deploying.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “The Impact of Misunderstood Treasurers in the Transportation Sector” found a disconnect between treasurers and other department heads in the transportation sector. While 60% of treasurers see themselves as strategic players, only 33% of department heads recognize their influence. The result? Companies are failing to fully use the financial expertise necessary to drive stronger cash flow predictability, reduce debt and enhance operational efficiency.

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