The unexpected players entering the B2B payments space

From tech giants to supply chain platforms, the B2B payment landscape is being redrawn

The world of B2B payments—long the stronghold of banks and legacy systems—is being transformed by a surprising wave of new entrants. Tech platforms, logistics players, and fintechs are rewriting the rules of how companies transact, finance, and manage working capital. What used to be a back-office, bank-driven function is now embedded into digital ecosystems, supply chains, and marketplaces.

This decentralization is not just a story of disruption; it’s a shift in power. Whoever controls the platform where business is conducted increasingly controls the payment flow that follows.

Big tech enters corporate finance through the side door

Amazon, Google and Apple are no longer just consumer brands—they’re building infrastructure that touches the core of B2B financial operations.

Amazon, via its Amazon Business platform (which topped $35 billion in annualized sales in 2023, Statista), is more than a procurement marketplace. It offers dynamic pricing, invoice management, and embedded lending through Amazon Lending, which has issued over $5 billion in working capital loans to sellers. Amazon is effectively becoming a financial partner to SMBs operating on its platform.

Apple, traditionally more focused on consumer finance, is making quiet inroads into the business market. Apple Business Essentials bundles device management, support, and iCloud—but also opens the door to flexible financing models and future B2B credit options. The company’s Apple Pay Later offering, while consumer-facing today, establishes the mechanics for more complex B2B buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) flows tomorrow.

Google plays a different game, focusing on infrastructure. Through Google Pay for Business and partnerships with banking-as-a-service players like Synapse and Plaid, it is building connective tissue for merchant payments, particularly in emerging markets. These infrastructures are highly adaptable to B2B use cases, from trade to treasury.

In short, Big Tech is moving into B2B finance not by building banks, but by building platforms—offering seamless UX, data-rich environments, and embedded financial services as part of the digital business experience.

Procurement and logistics platforms are becoming payment innovators

Supply chain and procurement platforms weren’t designed to handle payments—but they’re increasingly the best-placed to do so.

Take Flexport, originally a digital freight forwarder. It now offers invoice financing, customs credit, and other working capital solutions to the very businesses it helps move goods. According to Flexport’s own reports, over 40% of enterprise clients use its financial tools to better manage cash flow tied up in global trade.

Coupa and SAP Ariba, leaders in spend management, have both integrated payment orchestration tools and early payment financing. Their platforms hold valuable procurement data—delivery schedules, supplier performance, invoice approvals—making them uniquely equipped to offer embedded finance, such as dynamic discounting or just-in-time payment release.

Then there’s Tradeshift, which blends invoicing, procurement, and supply chain financing into one interface. By connecting buyers, suppliers, and funders on a single network, Tradeshift turns procurement operations into a real-time cash flow management engine. Its partnership with HSBC and Santander also signals a new model: banks delivering capital within third-party platforms, rather than through proprietary interfaces.

These platforms are redefining the B2B payment experience by bringing financing directly into the tools businesses already use to operate—eliminating the gap between finance and function.

Why retail banks are losing ground

Despite decades of dominance, traditional banks are struggling to keep up with the pace of innovation in B2B payments.

Most banks still rely on fragmented rails (SWIFT, SEPA, ACH) that are slow, manual, and expensive. Their interfaces are not built for procurement teams or SMBs. They lack real-time visibility, integration capabilities, and the seamless workflows that fintechs and platforms now offer as standard.

Meanwhile, fintechs like Stripe, Airwallex, and Adyen have turned payments into programmable infrastructure. With APIs for multicurrency payouts, automated reconciliation, and embedded treasury services, these companies are replacing bank functions in software environments.

Stripe Treasury, for example, allows platforms to hold, move, and pay out funds across accounts globally. In this model, the fintech becomes the rails—and the product. Platforms using Stripe don’t need a traditional bank to provide these services.

Other players like Bill.com, Melio, and Payoneer are also eating into banks’ SME business, offering faster, cheaper, and more intuitive B2B payment solutions. According to Deloitte (2023), 60% of mid-sized enterprises plan to change or augment their B2B payment provider by 2025, largely due to dissatisfaction with legacy banking tools. (Discover the role of open banking here)

Faced with this shift, some banks are opting to collaborate rather than compete. JP Morgan’s acquisition of Volkswagen’s payments platform and its investment in Taulia reflect this strategy: embedding into ecosystems rather than defending outdated portals.

The platform is the new payment gateway

What all these moves point to is a profound change: the decoupling of payments from banks, and their reattachment to platforms where business happens.

This “platformization” of payments reshapes how finance teams operate:

• Instead of logging into a bank portal, payments happen inside ERP or procurement tools.

• Financing options are triggered by workflow data, not by manual requests.

• Payment timing becomes a lever for strategic cash flow management, not just an accounting step.

According to Bain & Company (2023), embedded finance in B2B contexts will generate $500 billion in annual revenues globally by 2030, driven by players that were never banks to begin with.

The implication is clear: the winners in B2B payments will be those who own the context, not just the transaction. Whether that’s Amazon Business, SAP Ariba, or a logistics platform like Flexport, control is shifting to the ecosystem orchestrators—not the financial institutions.

References

• Deloitte (2023). Digital transformation in B2B payments.

• McKinsey & Company (2022). The new growth engine in B2B payments.

• Statista (2024). Amazon Business annual sales.

• Forbes (2023). Flexport’s fintech evolution.

• Harvard Business Review (2021). Why Big Tech is banking on financial services.

• Bain & Company (2023). Embedded finance in B2B ecosystems.

• Tradeshift (2022). Quarterly Index: Supply Chain Finance Trends.