The next click in commercial payments may be a tap

LeGrand: It's going to require a big change to introduce a new payment channel within any corporate ecosystem. Any modification you introduce can be a risk. The complexity of project management and delivery across multiple stakeholder groups, integration points and geographic locations often results in costs. However essential the shift is, managing the transition adequately is top of mind for corporate leaders and introducing new digital payment capabilities is a substantial change requiring funding, resources but most importantly selecting the right banking partner and doing some homework. Digital payment adoption might not have been a priority in the past but it is increasingly becoming essential in today’s economy.  

Pettican: The first step is understanding where the friction points exist today, whether that's manual processes, limited visibility or a lack of control over spending. From there, organizations need to focus on the solutions that can deliver quick wins while creating a foundation for longer-term transformation. Here’s what’s key: Keeping the end-user experience at the center. Whether it's employees, suppliers or finance teams, digital transformation is most successful when it makes their day-to-day work simpler and more efficient.

LeGrand: If you meet a procurement , IT, HR or a treasury leader … they’re all going to question the effort and cost of the change. It is our role as banker to show them how these innovative payment solutions can not only cancel the costs of implementation to their organization, but how the solution is really going to compete against the other payment channels and how this going to deliver benefits above and beyond what those existing payment channels offer — understanding how card payments can improve access to richer data and support working capital optimization, whether by financing the supply chain or unlocking cash flow that’s essential for business growth.

LeGrand: The consumer experience is translating into the world of corporates more and more. The expectation in the consumer world is to be more real time and always on time when it comes to payments. The same should happen with corporate payments, and we’re seeing an increasing number of fintechs stepping into the world of business to business to close the delta between consumer and business experience in payments. From data management to connectivity to supplier contract management, we are witnessing an increase in automation, speed of execution, and integration of card payments into corporate procurement and payables technology, all helped by the advent of API connectivity and the introduction of AI in business processes. This is particularly true when it comes to card payments, which already are globally homogeneous and already following trends in wallet and virtual technology adoption.

Pettican: AI will be transformative, fundamentally redefining what intelligent payments look like, from enhancing fraud protection to simplifying compliance to creating more personalized, intelligent and even automated transactions. Embedded finance is also driving the next wave of B2B payments, moving companies from reactive reconciliation to proactive optimization, making payments smarter, faster and more connected than ever before. 

LeGrand: Wallets are being deployed in all mature markets where they are available by HSBC, and this is really increasing customer satisfaction and their ability also to pay on the go. We've already seen an uptick in utilization, especially in lower-value ticket items.

If you take the example of the London business community, where I am, there has always been a gap between people traveling in the city on business and what was put on expenses on their corporate card. These transactions would traditionally evade the normal procure-to-pay travel and entertainment process. People just like to tap and go, and instead of taking their wallets out, they will use their watches, they will use their smartphones to tap for that business trip that they would typically claim back on the corporate via personal expenses.

Pettican: The recent launch by Mastercard and HSBC of the first mobile virtual corporate card in Hong Kong is another clear sign that consumer experiences and commercial payments are converging. Businesses can instantly issue virtual cards, add them to digital wallets, pay at physical points of sale or online, and benefit from mobile wallet compatibility. This is exactly what we mean by meeting clients where they are. We’re embedding solutions into the platforms and tools corporates already use.

LeGrand: Agentic AI is going to elevate the experience and the velocity employees are going to be able to perform typical procurement requests within a procure-to-pay process.

From sourcing to payments, a lot of repetitive tasks and predicted outcome can be removed from the review and validation process.

With corporate card specifically, we’ve already embedded the virtual card technology into the payment ecosystem for SAP, Oracle and Coupa users, so you can start making virtual card payments to your suppliers as soon as that same supplier is onboarded on the platform. Soon, we can imagine AI supporting every step including the sourcing of suppliers and their propensity to be paid via one channel or the other.  

You can apply that same logic to travel arrangements and payments. Going into a booking system and feeding it just your date of travel, AI will soon be able to look at your previous travel pattern, the type of restaurants that you've been using, the airlines that you've been using, the hotels that you prefer, and start pulling quotes instead of having you going through it step by step before you make the payment.

Having that on top of just adding your personal card details, whether it is in travel or in procurement, is going to deliver an elevated experience to the user and a much simpler way to source goods, services, and pay for them in travel as well as in general procurement.