• James Richardson, Global Head of Solutions at Bottomline


• 25.06.2026 11:00 am
#B2BPayments #DigitalPayments

As consumers, we now tap our way through life. On the tube, in coffee shops, sometimes for hundreds of pounds worth of goods. The modern payment experience has kept pace with how consumers want to pay – quickly, in a single click, and with an immediate notification sent to your phone. 

Should these expectations carry over to business payments? Yes, they should, as even in a more complicated environment with much larger sums of money and financial checks in place, the ethos of speed and visibility still matters. 

The Reality We Live in 

Business payments are often still subject to fragmented systems and manual processes. While organisations look to AI to help close that gap, newer solutions are being layered on top of existing systems rather than being built from the ground up. 

Our recent research found that 78% of CFOs say fragmented finance systems are holding back the speed, visibility, and control their business expects from finance. While 90% are under board pressure to adopt AI within finance, 76% say they are being pushed to move faster than their data, systems, and controls can support. 

CFOs are between a rock and a hard place. They’re being pushed to adopt AI, but they don’t trust the data that sits underneath it. There’s a clear gap between the pressure to modernise finance and the reality of how cash is managed across multiple systems. It’s this problem that needs to be addressed before we can start moving enterprise payments at the same speed and efficiency as consumer payments. 

Walking the Talk 

The complexity that exists in enterprise payments can quickly become a reputational issue. Organisations that have disconnected data and systems increase their exposure to errors, delays, and fraud. As businesses expand globally and transaction volumes increase, a failed payment or security breach can undermine trust with employees and customers. 

This is where payment orchestration and automation come in, providing ways to centralise payment processes and strengthen controls as organisations look to create a more holistic payment ecosystem. Automation is crucial but still requires the right level of human intervention. 

With 79% of CFOs saying they don’t think AI should be allowed to act in finance workflows without human approval, audit trails, and clear accountability, it’s clear that AI will only be trusted when it operates within controlled, auditable workflows that deliver real and measurable outcomes. 

CFOs Can Be Advocates for Change 

You can’t deliver a more consumer-like experience without reworking the processes that sit underneath payments. When it comes to AI, CFOs need reassurance that it can be applied in the systems and workflows their teams already rely on, not layered on top of them. When they trust the technology, they can then move forward with confidence. 

Payments might seem like a simple thing that doesn’t require the buy-in of the entire organisation’s leadership team, until a payment goes wrong. At that point, the gap between what people expect and what the business can deliver becomes hard to ignore. 

We don’t stop being consumers when we enter the workplace. The same expectations around speed, visibility, and ease quickly follow us in, and are starting to reshape what good looks like in business payments.