From Transactions to Ecosystems: Reimagining the Future of B2B Payments

It wasn’t too many years ago that a monthlong event to discuss issues, trends and opportunities in B2B payments would have been hard to imagine. It was a sector dominated by paper checks and invoices and legacy back-office systems. And at its simplest it was about “paying and getting paid.”

To say that the B2B payments sector has come a long way is an understatement, one that is about to be disproved at PYMNTS’ “Outlook 2030: How Platforms and Networks Will Power the Future of Business Payments.”

Yes, it’s still about paying and getting paid. But new strategies and technologies are redefining that equation. Forget checks and wires. The future of B2B payments is faster, smarter and more secure. It’s frictionless, invisible, powered by AI, embedded and aligned with the needs businesses have for working capital options.

Over the next month, PYMNTS will unpack almost 30 sessions from all parts of the globe and all facets of this industry. We would recommend you attend all 30. But if you need to pick and choose, here’s a quick guide to “Outlook 2030.”

Platforms and Networks: As Karen Webster noted in “B2B Payments Aren’t Boring Anymore” on Tuesday (Oct. 7), platforms are the “hardest thing to do in business.” But why are they so important? The first week of the Outlook 2030 event will center on how platform and network models are impacting business payments.

It can be seen in the opening session conversation between Webster and Boost Payment CEO Dean M. Leavitt, where the topic will be the evolving payment ecosystem reshaping networks as AP/AR platforms, FinTechs and BigTech firms aim to become preferred intermediaries in B2B transactions through solutions that enhance efficiency and financial performance.

The Leavitt conversation will be followed by Webster’s conversation with Worldpay Chief Product Officer Cindy Turner, where the topic will switch to “Maximizing Payment Efficiency and Growth in a Digital-First Economy.”

And the conversation will cover ways that small tweaks in payment strategies can unlock growth, boost customer satisfaction, and enhance operational efficiency across financial services, gaming and retail sectors.

Week Two will cover interoperability and data standards, a critical series of conversations with some of the industry’s biggest brands, and it includes new thinking about cross-border payments. Among the sessions scheduled for this week: “Mastering Cross-Border Payments with Bank Of America” will shed light on how interoperability and standards can make progress toward streamlining cross-border transactions.

You’ll also find information in this section of the event on cloud-native infrastructure in “Building a New Modernized Payments Platform.” Here you’ll discover how J.P. Morgan and AWS created a fast, scalable credit card processing platform to meet gig economy demands and speed up money movement. Learn about the cloud’s flexibility in building custom capabilities, testing, scaling services, and enhancing the global payments ecosystem

Week Three lands on closed vs. open networks. That may look like an issue to leave for the engineering team and software developers, but it’s not. As Webster will discuss with Ingo Payments CEO Drew Edwards, companies can turn one-way payouts into closed payments ecosystems. The audience here will find out how payouts can lead to accounts and become key to establishing an ecosystem that brings value to account holders.

This is also the section of the program where four of the hottest issues in B2B payments reside: fraud, verification, AI and tokenization. The audience here can explore how payments, fraud prevention, AI, and virtual asset issuance reshape business models. It will cover LE tokenization, security solutions, AI’s role in efficiency and risk management, and the trade-offs between defined ecosystems and open networks.

We end the month with the lifeblood of any company: cash flow. And we will also end with the stars of the show for October, CFOs and treasurers. This week will have use cases and thought leadership covering ways that real-time cash flow insights and understanding churn empower subscription-based businesses to make smarter financial decisions.

You’ll learn how CFOs can optimize operations, manage working capital, and reduce churn costs and discover how timely data helps anticipate risks and engage customers for financial efficiency and stability. And we will bring new thinking to how networks, GenAI and added services improve liquidity management.

The registration page with the schedule is here. The event is already underway.

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