This Week in B2B: Rewiring Legacy Payment Rails With Stablecoins and Automation
2025-05-01T15:46:48Z
Sleek tech is turbocharging the B2B space. And slow wires and clunky payment systems going the way of the fax machine couldn’t be happening at a better time for businesses. The global financial ecosystem is in flux, driven by a confluence of high-stakes innov…
Highlights B2B FinTech is transforming global trade infrastructure, replacing outdated systems with automation, AI-driven platforms and real-time financial tools. Stablecoins are bridging crypto and traditional finance, with companies like Visa, Mastercard and Stripe integrating them into mainstream payment systems. Geopolitical tensions and trade policy shifts are pressuring small businesses, but FinTech innovation in cross-border payments and payroll is helping businesses stay agile.
Sleek tech is turbocharging the B2B space. And slow wires and clunky payment systems going the way of the fax machine couldn’t be happening at a better time for businesses.
The global financial ecosystem is in flux, driven by a confluence of high-stakes innovation and mounting geopolitical tensions around trade tariffs. But B2B FinTech innovation is helping firms maintain agility and keep up with the speed of change in ways that legacy systems and manual processes simply can’t.
Gone are the days of chasing invoices and late fees. Today’s tools let businesses automate billing, manage cash flow and track every dollar in real time. From artificial intelligence (AI)-powered procurement platforms to blockchain-enabled stablecoin cards, the news this week puts an exclamation point on the fact that the financial arteries of global trade are being rewired.
Advances in B2B Financial Infrastructure
Investors are pouring fresh capital into infrastructure firms hoping to digitize B2B trade flows, a domain long plagued by paper checks, manual credit terms and opaque counterparties.
San Francisco-based Nuvo, for example, recently secured $45 million in a Series B round to expand its B2B trade infrastructure across verticals such as manufacturing, hospitality and food service. Nuvo’s pitch is to replace a fragmented landscape of trade credit workflows with a single, verified ecosystem where buyers and suppliers can vet profiles, assess creditworthiness and exchange banking data in real time.
Elsewhere, Field Materials, a procurement startup targeting the construction industry, raised $10 million to further develop its AI-based sourcing and invoice management platform. The firm estimates that contractors lose up to 20% of material costs to procurement inefficiencies — something it hopes to eliminate through automation.
Meanwhile, German FinTech Pliant has set its sights on the U.S. market after landing $40 million in fresh funding. The firm offers a card-based platform enabling businesses to issue virtual corporate cards with tailored controls and automated expense reconciliation.
Incumbent leaders are also accelerating their offerings. FIS, a treasury management behemoth, launched a cloud-native “Quantum Edition” of its treasury platform. The rollout promises real-time cash visibility, instant liquidity tracking and frictionless API integration — a response to CFOs seeking greater agility in managing global flows.
“CFOs want to focus their resources and ensure what those resources are doing adds the most strategic value,” Edenred Pay CFO Joe Denson told PYMNTS. “AP automation allows finance staff to stop doing manual tasks like entering invoices or looking up suppliers.”
The result? A leaner, more strategic finance function that’s built for resilience and agility.
“It’s a win-win, but you have to be ready to lean into it,” Denson said.
Integration of Stablecoins Into Mainstream Finance
While B2B platforms modernize the plumbing of enterprise finance, a parallel transformation is unfolding in digital assets. Stablecoins — digital tokens pegged to fiat currencies — have emerged as the crypto sector’s most viable bridge to the mainstream.
Once relegated to niche DeFi protocols, stablecoins are now being integrated into major payment networks and expense platforms.
In a landmark move, Visa and Bridge — a stablecoin orchestration platform owned by Stripe — partnered to launch stablecoin-linked cards across key markets in the region. These cards allow users to top up with USDC (a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin), then spend seamlessly across merchants that accept Visa.
Meanwhile, Mastercard said Monday (April 28) that it partnered with two more companies — OKX and Nuvei — to further its own efforts to power stablecoin transactions for consumers and merchants.
The partnerships align with a broader narrative explored in a recent digital asset primer from PYMNTS, which notes a growing interest among payments professionals in stablecoin staking and settlement. By staking stablecoins, platforms are incentivizing liquidity while exploring yield-generating models — blurring the line between DeFi and traditional finance.
Innovations Redefining Global Trade
Yet not all corners of the global economy are enjoying a FinTech-fueled boom. For small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs), macroeconomic volatility — especially in the form of trade policy — is becoming an existential challenge.
With tariffs climbing, small businesses are facing inventory shortfalls, margin erosion and in some cases, complete market exit.
Amazon, one of the largest beneficiaries of global sourcing, is reportedly pressuring its suppliers for steep discounts in response to new U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. The move is part of a broader campaign to offset rising costs, which are squeezing margins and disrupting procurement cycles.
Still, firms remain focused on solving many of cross-border commerce’s longstanding frictions. Thunes this week raised $150 million in a Series D funding round to strengthen its cross-border payments platform and accelerate its expansion in the United States; while Mastercard has invested in a 3% stake in Corpay’s cross-border business, and the two companies have formed exclusive agreements.
Global payroll is also becoming a focus of innovation.
“Can I, as the chief payroll person in the company, allow myself not to interact with AI? The answer is 100% no,” Amit Levi, chief product officer at Papaya Global, told PYMNTS. “AI is real. Unlike other buzzwords we heard in the past, AI is real.”
Levi added, “Processes that used to take days are happening in an hour.”
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