Firms Battle Uncertainty With ‘Straight-Through’ B2B Transactions as Growth Unlock

In consumer markets, the idea of frictionless commerce is so ingrained that few people stop to think about it. A shopper clicks “Buy Now” on Amazon, the order slips invisibly into a vast logistical machine, and days later a box arrives at the doorstep.

No emails. No phone calls. No invoices bouncing between departments.

In B2B payments, however, that kind of seamlessness has been more aspiration than reality. Even in 2025, the flow of goods and services across global supply chains often relies on a patchwork of purchase orders, manual reconciliations, and legacy systems that cannot “speak” to one another.

But that gap between consumer and wholesale markets is closing quickly, as evidenced by the Monday (Sept. 22) news that Mercado Libre launched a new B2B unit in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, servicing more than 4 million B2B users.

And across industries, suppliers are being pressed to support what many are now calling “straight-through” B2B experiences: transactions that run from order to fulfillment to payment without the back-and-forth frictions that have historically defined enterprise procurement.

What once sounded like an operational efficiency project is fast becoming a strategic necessity, particularly as companies navigate trade uncertainty, volatile costs and heightened buyer expectations.

Read more: Why Time to Cash Is New Benchmark for Cross-Border B2B Growth

From Efficiency Play to Competitive Necessity

The idea of straight-through processing has long been familiar in financial services, where securities trades and payments must settle with minimal human intervention. What is new is the expectation that this same principle should apply to supply chains and procurement.

The challenge is that B2B commerce has always been more complex than most other payments and commerce environments. Orders often involve negotiated pricing, customized terms, compliance checks and multi-party logistics.

The case for straight-through processing in B2B once lived in the back office, framed around cost savings and process optimization. Automating order intake, reconciling invoices and matching payments meant reducing headcount in accounts payable and shortening days sales outstanding. Those benefits remain, but they are no longer the primary driver.

Now, the strategic question is differentiation. For suppliers, the ability to plug directly into a buyer’s procurement platform, confirm availability in real time and auto-generate compliant documentation is increasingly a prerequisite for participation. Large enterprises are embedding straight-through requirements into RFPs, particularly in industries like automotive, electronics and chemicals where supplier ecosystems are vast and transaction volumes are high.

After all, a supplier might have the right product and the right price, but if they can’t transact electronically without friction, procurement leaders are thinking twice. It becomes a risk to speed and to cost predictability.

Investments in ERP modernization, API integration and digital procurement interfaces are no longer necessarily discretionary. They are fast becoming central to competitive positioning.

“The reality is that the world is moving way faster than most companies can keep up pace with,” Wendy Tapia, head of product, receivables at FIS, told PYMNTS in an interview posted Sept. 10. “Because of legacy systems, there are still a lot of organizations that are stuck in heavily manual processes, very fragmented systems. Without realizing it, they are limiting their agility and ability to scale.”

For decades, ERP has been the backbone of enterprise operations, but many systems are decades old, heavily customized and resistant to change.

Read also: 3 Ways AI Is Taking the Headache out of B2B Onboarding

Moving Beyond Email and Fax

For all the sophistication of B2B innovation, much of the transformation in the sector’s many industries still comes down to replacing the everyday frictions of legacy methods. In many organizations, procurement is still managed through long email chains, attached PDFs and even faxes. Orders get rekeyed into systems multiple times, creating delays and errors. Payment disputes drag on because invoice numbers do not match purchase orders.

PYMNTS Intelligence data found that 88% of finance leaders face problems in their accounts payable operations, with manual entry and fragmented workflows fueling delays and errors.

Straight-through processing is the antidote to this inertia. It standardizes interactions, ensures data integrity and automates reconciliations. In practical terms, it means that an order entered in one system appears instantly in another, that shipping documents are pre-validated against trade regulations and that payment terms are enforced without human negotiation.

A new wave of technologies is bringing the straight-through vision closer to reality. Cloud-based ERP systems have evolved from record-keeping engines into integration hubs, able to link suppliers and buyers across geographies in real time. Standardized APIs are reducing the need for bespoke connections, allowing even smaller vendors to plug into large buyers’ systems without months of IT work.

Register for the upcoming B2B PYMNTS 2025 event, “B2B.AI: The Architecture of Intelligent Money Movement,” taking place Oct. 6 to 31.

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