9 B2B payment industry trends to get ahead of in 2026

Key takeaways

• AI is shifting from small workflow wins to real-time decisions across payments, fraud, and treasury, reshaping how finance teams operate.

• Autonomous finance, AI-powered fraud prevention, and usage-based billing will gain momentum in 2026, giving businesses faster, more secure money movements and clearer financial data.

• Airwallex gives businesses a way to plug into a modern, AI-ready payment infrastructure without rebuilding their finance stack from scratch.

2025 zipped by in a blur of regulatory announcements, shifting payment preferences, and record digital payment volumes. Finance teams leaned harder on corporate cards to tighten control, platforms pulled more payments inside their own ecosystems, and global operations became the default rather than the exception.

Looking ahead, it’s hard to be declarative when the pace keeps accelerating, but we've identified nine trends that we believe will shape how businesses move money in 2026. AI features heavily, but so do the quieter forces nudging finance leaders every day. Think of this as the map for navigating a year that may unsettle, but also invigorate, how you run your financial operations.

1. Autonomous finance becomes real for the CFO office

In ANZ, 96% of decision-makers expect the CFO role to become AI-augmented. At the same time, two-thirds of global firms haven't scaled their use of AI at all. This points to an emerging gap between teams embracing new technology and those still comfortable with the manual work behind payables, receivables, reconciliation, and FX management. That gap will only widen as early adopters begin to rework their operations around intelligent systems rather than human-driven processes.

In 2025, progressive teams ran small pilots with AI agents. In 2026, those experiments will start to move closer to autonomy, where dozens of agents run in the background, read policies, process information, and decide which actions to take without constant supervision. It'll change how CFOs spend their time, they’ll move from operator to architect, designing guardrails while systems take on the repeatable work.

Where Airwallex will help: We’re building agents that power our unified software and infrastructure, allowing systems to manage treasury decisions, approvals, routing, and FX exposure while your team maintains oversight and judgement. Our AI Assistant is the first step towards this. It understands your business context, guides you through onboarding, answers questions in real time, and can perform actions on your behalf. From opening new currency accounts to enabling the payment methods you want to offer, just tell AI Assistant what you want and it’ll handle the rest for you.

2. AI-driven finance will power every layer of B2B payments

AI is starting to sit beneath the payment flow in the same way automations sit beneath workflows now. It’ll become the quiet engine shaping routing decisions, retry logic, fraud checks, and even the quality of the settlement data your team receives. Fixed rules will give way to more adaptive reasoning as systems learn continuously and optimise accordingly, adjusting to issuer behaviour, regional patterns, and cost sensitivities.

You should expect higher approval rates, fewer unnecessary 3DS challenges, and a material reduction in false declines that currently drain revenue and try your patience. AI can effectively make fraud decisions without punishing genuine customers, which is a constant struggle for merchants.

Where Airwallex will help: Our AI-powered optimisation engine, Optimize 360, sits directly in our acquiring stack so you get tighter control and adaptive intelligence across every transaction. It will continuously evaluate transactions and select the best routing path, authentication flow, retry strategy, and token usage so that more payments succeed on the first attempt.

3. AI agents will start to think and act for consumers and businesses 

Agentic commerce, where AI agents browse products and complete purchases on your behalf, is still in its B2C infancy, but it’s catching on fast. By 2030, the US B2C retail market alone could see up to $1 trillion in orchestrated revenue from agent-led purchases. 

In 2026, we may see that same convenience transplanted to B2B. AI agents may start researching suppliers, comparing prices, and initiating payments without constant human oversight. The procurement function becomes less about people chasing quotes and more about setting parameters for agents to work within. Already, 64% of organisations plan to invest in agentic AI for procurement and supplier management within the next three years.

4. AI-driven fraud prevention is becoming the frontline defence

The new front line in fraud is AI versus AI. Deepfakes are fooling verification systems, synthetic identities slip through basic checks, and fake websites spin up at speed using generative tools. According to the Federal Trade Commission, US consumers and businesses lost $7.11 billion by the end of the second quarter of 2025, an increase of just over 15% compared to the first two quarters of 2024. Fraud losses have increased every year this decade, and that trend shows no sign of slowing down.

This is why many finance and risk teams expect 2026 to be the year they shift away from static rules and towards adaptive systems that analyse behaviour, networks, and context in real time. You still make the judgement calls, but the volume, speed, and creativity of attacks now demand automated, AI-driven support.

Where Airwallex will help: Our AI-driven fraud engine runs real-time risk scoring on every transaction, using behavioural signals and contextual data to catch fraud without punishing legitimate customers.

5. Stablecoin adoption will continue to grow 

2025 saw many new players exploring stablecoins, and 2026 will be key to watching how these initiatives play out. Stablecoins will attract more interest in 2026 as regulated digital dollars and tokenized deposits move from pilots into early use. There was about US$15.6 trillion in stablecoin transactions in 2024, close to Visa’s annual volume.

While stablecoins are often positioned as a fast, cheap alternative to international transfers, there are fintechs that already offer instant and free international transfers. For us, the jury is very much still out on the benefits of stablecoins. They don’t reduce FX costs when the receiving party still needs local currency. Off-ramping can be more expensive than interbank FX, which limits their value for most corporate flows. Without an easy way to off-ramp stablecoins into fiat, integrating stablecoins into everyday payments will remain a challenge.

There is still potential, especially if stablecoins eventually sit inside the same wallet and rails you use today. Until that happens, adoption will grow, but meaningful corporate uptake will remain limited.

6. Billing is adapting to how customers use software globally

Seat-based pricing no longer fits the way software behaves. Usage of AI-native and API-first products can fluctuate overnight or spike by the hour. When that happens, a fixed subscription stops reflecting how customers actually use your product. That is why so many companies are rebuilding their pricing foundations in 2026. Usage-based and hybrid models feel fairer and more flexible, but they also create new headaches. Finance teams now have to manage metres, regional pricing differences, credits, commitments, and revenue moving across currencies. 

Forward-looking teams are now choosing platforms that remove the heavy lifting. 

Where Airwallex will help: In 2026, we’ll be introducing global-first usage tracking, flexible pricing models, and real-time metering that connects directly to payments and FX. That means you can track consumption and price more accurately without having to rebuild your entire finance stack.

7. Embedded payments deepen within SaaS and vertical platforms

Payments stopped being a bolt-on feature a long time ago. In 2026, you'll see more platforms owning the full flow, from acceptance to payouts, issuing, and reconciliation. Customers want one place to run their finances, and platforms want revenue that scales with usage rather than seat licences. Bain predicts embedded finance in the US will reach US$7 trillion in transaction value by 2026, which should give you some indication of how quickly this model is scaling.

When payments sit within your product, you can let customers invoice, collect funds, pay suppliers, issue cards, or manage balances without ever leaving your platform. You control the experience, the economics, and the data, which keeps customers longer because payments become part of how they operate day-to-day. Once a business runs critical payment flows through your product, switching becomes a far harder decision.

Where Airwallex will help: Payments for Platforms gives you the issuing, payouts, and reconciliation tools needed to build payments directly into your product without becoming a financial institution yourself.

8. BNPL grows into B2B and subscriptions under tighter regulation

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) continued its growth in 2025, and it is no longer limited to fashion or consumer electronics. It's now showing up in food delivery, travel bookings, and mid-ticket services, which makes the leap into B2B a lot less surprising. You'll see more SaaS companies offering instalments on annual plans, especially when customers hesitate to absorb a full year of spend in one hit. Predictable monthly payments make those conversations easier and, in many cases, help deals move through procurement without stalling.

A similar pattern is emerging in procurement and higher-value digital services. Buyers want payment terms that match their cash cycles, and sellers want a way to keep deals alive rather than watching them wilt in month-end approvals. The option to spread costs without renegotiating credit lines is becoming far more attractive on both sides.

Regulation is catching up, particularly in Europe. Providers will need to behave more like lenders, which should steady the market and give finance teams a clearer framework to work within.

9. Biometric payments quietly enter the next phase

You might start seeing more odd bodily movements in front of cashiers this year. Fingerprint scanning, facial recognition, iris scanning, voice authentication, and palm vein mapping are all being tested. In some markets like China, they're already in use.

In 2026, we’re likely to see further developments and even early adoptions in new markets, especially where speed matters. Think travel, events, cafés, and stadiums. Payments could increasingly rely on a look, a short phrase, or a hand gesture, and customers like this because it’s fast and it works. You’ll need to keep pace, making room for biometric-authenticated payments alongside cards and wallets without adding friction to your checkout flow.

How to future-proof your finance stack

If you want to take something actionable away from these trends, here's where we'd recommend starting.

1. Unify your tools: Fragmented systems slow your team down and break the data lineage AI needs to improve over time. When payments, FX, cards, and reconciliation sit on one connected platform, you build a finance stack that can grow without constant patchworking or re-engineering.

2. Adopt AI workflows early: Start with the obvious wins: reconciliation, expense categorisation, fraud scoring. Let AI handle the rote work while your team focuses on judgement calls. The sooner you train these workflows, the sharper they get.

3. Route payments through local rails: Local payment networks settle faster and cost less than traditional correspondent banking. If you operate globally, you want rails that give you predictable settlement instead of waiting on overnight windows.

4. Prepare for regulatory shifts: PSD3 arrives in 2026, AMLA will centralise AML oversight across Europe, and BNPL moves under lending rules. Choose infrastructure that adapts as rules tighten, not one that forces you to rebuild manually every time standards change.

5. Test emerging rails now: You don’t need to go all-in, but small A2A pilots or controlled stablecoin tests help you understand how these rails behave before they hit scale. Familiarity today gives you options tomorrow.

Teams that modernise their foundation now will move faster, reach further, and stay in control while those on legacy stacks spend the year catching up.

A year where finance finally comes together

If 2025 was the warm-up, 2026 is the year more businesses start putting the right foundations in place. The technology that makes finance feel more instant and more connected already exists. Digital payments are the default, and AI is quietly moving into the background of day-to-day operations. That’s why many CFOs are rethinking the old "bank plus ERP plus a pile of tools" approach. When your suppliers, customers, and teams are spread across markets, patching systems together only multiplies the work. The shift we’re seeing is geared towards practicality: businesses want fewer moving parts, cleaner data, and financial operations that hold up when payment preferences, FX conditions, or supply chains shift overnight.

This is the direction we’re building towards at Airwallex. Business accounts, payments, spend management, and FX controls on one global platform, so the work feels joined-up rather than improvised. Teams that make this transition early are already seeing steadier operations and fewer fires to fight, and that advantage becomes more noticeable as the year unfolds.