B-to-B payments

The surge of students seeking an overseas education in recent years powered rapid growth for Flywire, a Boston-based payments technology firm that handles cross-border tuition payments. It must now test whether the global network it built can serve the B-to-B market as well.

For the music industry, which globalized quickly as its products moved online, payment processes haven't kept up.

Just as Intuit has to find a way to meld consumer and business technology for accounting in the 1990s, financial institutions have the same challenge, and opportunity, today with small business payments technology.

Oro Inc., a rising force in the emerging $7 trillion business-to-business e-commerce market, is teaming with PayPal to streamline transactions as more global suppliers move their sales online.

Technology and payment companies are both trying to get businesses to automate supply chain payments, but for years their efforts have stalled.

Everybody thinks business travel payments and bookings are a headache, until consumer-style rewards are thrown in.

The payments industry has been overrun with innovation in mobile, wearable and cloud-based digital payments. But many niches are years — if not decades — behind this trend.

If you've ever walked past a film shoot, it's easy to see how much more there is to the movies and TV than just the star and director. There's often dozens or even hundreds of other people involved in the production — bit players, stunt performers, musicians and more — and they all have to be paid, at times irregularly and under different rules.

The payments technology revolution of the past few years has given consumers myriad new ways to shop across different channels. Business payments have not enjoyed the same level of attention.

The wave of new technology for CFOs should include easier invoicing and a user experience that resembles consumer e-commerce.