Businesses have not embraced payments automation as quickly as consumers, a gap American Express is hoping to address via a multi-pronged strategy to embed new technology with existing and future clients.
"For so many years, the B2B payments eco system has been really cumbersome with multiple steps and a lot of complexity," R.J. Ancona, vice president and general manager of B2B Product, Partnerships and Client Management, Merchant Services at American Express, told American Banker.
Ancona and Widad Chaoui, senior vice president of corporate and B2B Solutions Product Management, Global Commercial Services, discussed Amex's business payment plans in an interview with American Banker at the recently concluded Payments Forum and over email. The company also provided a peek at new company research on business payments that it is releasing today.
Corralling tech
The payments company is making a
"More people are moving towards a consumer experience where they want things easy. They want things streamlined," Ancona said.
The pandemic also changed business culture as work became more geographically dispersed, which Amex argues creates a demand for digital payment options.
Amex is also betting that its deep penetration with both suppliers and buyers will increase the value it can offer its clients because it is both a card issuer and payment processor. Yet, balancing those needs can be tricky because buyers and suppliers have competing interests when it comes to payments. Suppliers generally want to receive payments as quickly as possible, and buyers want to hold on to their cash as long as possible.
Amex wants to change that dichotomy with its push into automation, Chaoui said.
"With automated payment solutions, buyer and supplier relationships can become a win-win partnership through which buyers gain flexibility and visibility, suppliers get certainty and dependability, and both can more easily plan for and invest in their future," Chaoui said.
One area Amex has invested in is in the virtual cards area, where it has partnered with Boost Payment Solution to remove payment friction. Boost allows for virtual, B2B card payments that are unable to flow through traditional card schemes.
"A couple of months ago, we did a $66 million transaction on card in a single payment," Rebecca Schultz, chief marketing officer at Boost, said at the Payments Forum last week. "The core merchant processing solutions at most banks are not set up for that. Consumer rails are not set up for that."
Virtual cards can be a critical component to automating business payments, Ancona said. "When virtual cards come through to suppliers, [they] want the ability to ingest that payment data in an automated way," he said. "The payment might be coming digitally but now they have the confidence and the automation to make sure that they are able to pick up that payment and automate it into their own ERP back office system, and clear down the receivable."
But automation in B2B payments isn't a one-sized fits all approach due to nuances of invoicing and distribution processes in different industries, such as construction or healthcare.
Banks sometimes struggle when dealing in those niche industries, Christian Santaniello, senior vice president and head of commercial deposits and treasury management at Axos Bank said at the Payments Forum.
"A lot of banks and financial providers have very niche industries that they target, and they have bankers…and servicing folks that are expert in those industries. They all use a certain lingo," Santaniello said. "And yet, banks struggle when trying to take their standard banking services and putting those forth in a manner that follows that specialized lingo or specialization.
"You take something very simple and basic like 'ACH debit origination,' one market segment might call that 'dues collection.' Another might call it 'debt collection.' Another might call it a vendor payment," he said.
Reluctant users, tough competitors
Many businesses have not gotten fully onboard with automation, according to Amex research
Businesses have been slow to adopt automation in their AP/AR workflows despite the indication that smooth, fast and secure payments are good for business, according to the Amex Trendex: B2B Payments Edition survey provided to American Banker ahead of its release. The survey queried 1,000 business leaders and was conducted online by Opinium research on between December, 9 2024 and January 2, 2025.
Only 17% of respondents said they had fully automated their payments processes and 15% said they had not automated any processes at all, according to the Amex survey. Of those that said they had not automated their processes, 45% cited cost as the leading prohibitive factor, 28% said it would not benefit their business and 26% cited security concerns.
Still, 82% of businesses surveyed said they planned on improving their payments processes this year, with 91% saying that easy, streamlined and secure payments drive business growth, according to Amex.
Those results echo a November 2024 report from
The gap in business payments technology is also attracting Amex's rivals.
Other payments firms also recognize the promise of automating business payments. Deluxe Corporation, which was founded in 1915 as a traditional check and lock box company, launched its own automated AR/AP solution in the summer of 2024, John Rubinetti, president of B2B Payments at Deluxe Corporation, told American Banker.
"We've launched a digital accounts receivable platform that helps customers not only receive those checks in the lock box, but then integrate all their other types of payments – their card payments, their wire payments. You bring that in and you automate it," Rubinetti said.
"We offer lockbox services to 70% of the top 300 banks out there, so taking that and then offering this digital solution is what we think is going to differentiate us in that mid market space," he said.
Deluxe also offers a similar payments solution targeted toward mid-market companies between $25 million and $250 million in annual revenue.
"That's what a mid market spends most of their time trying to do is either receive the payments, and in most cases for the automated payables piece, they're still doing manual check runs [or] trying to push stuff out to a credit card payment," he said.
"The automation there is so big of an opportunity," he said.
