B-to-B payments

Corporations are leaning harder on virtual cards as post-pandemic business travel ramps up amid hybrid work arrangements, according to a new Mastercard survey. Visa separately has extended its collaboration with virtual-card technology provider Conferma Pay.

JPMorgan Chase is expanding beyond acquiring in the Canadian small-business market, where it will have to rely on new technologies to be competitive.

Business-to-business payments have long been stuck in the past, with a heavy emphasis on paper checks. The need for modernization has attracted a flurry of technology developers.

The bank's purchase of Digital Payments Torana has become a key element of a newly combined payments business run by Amit Dhingra, enterprise payments director. The fintech's capabilities allow the bank to better serve government agencies, health care providers and other business categories.

The bank is working with invoicing vendor IFG to simplify the process of paying multiple suppliers.

Firms such as Mesh Payments and TripActions are anticipating that the trend for flexible and remote work will make it harder to distinguish personal and business purchases on the road.

Billing is becoming part of faster payments, a development the bank contends makes paper-based B2B payments "unsustainable" for businesses facing equipment and staff shortages.

In many cases, it's as difficult to move money as it is to move products around the globe. Firms like Rapyd and BNY Mellon are trying to ease concerns that businesses have about automating payments, with a goal of reducing friction in an increasingly complex global economy.

A new service speeds payments by using artificial intelligence to predict which buyers are most likely to pay.

The bank, which helped launch the real-time network for peer-to-peer payments, is trying to duplicate that success by helping corporate clients process certain transactions instantly with wholesale partners and, in some cases, retail customers.