Spurring B2B payments growth through AI

Mastercard just announced an AI-powered B2B analytics platform, Mastercard Advanced B2B Analytics, to unlock value from supplier payments through new levels of visibility and control for issuers and corporates.

And the card company isn't alone in the quest to boost B2B card payments through AI. AppZen recently took the wraps off Autonomous Cards, which the San Jose company describes as an agent-first automation, compliance and spend intelligence layer supporting the cards businesses use to pay other businesses.

Commercial cards generated $2.23 trillion in U.S. spend in 2024, a 4.5 percent increase over the prior year, according to Nilson Report. That spend runs across purchasing, virtual, ghost, fleet and lodging card programs, often with different issuers, data formats, policies and control processes. Yet it represents only a fraction of what Mastercard identifies as a B2B payments opportunity of roughly $80 trillion.

Businesses are moving more of their spending onto cards to reduce invoice-processing costs while gaining improved visibility and other benefits. But as usage expands, so does the work required to understand purchases, apply policies, collect supporting information, code and reconcile transactions, investigate risk, and identify leakage. It also becomes more difficult to glean accurate and actionable supplier payment insights.

Actionable insights from Mastercard

"Businesses today are sitting on vast amounts of payment data, but too often it remains fragmented and underutilized," said Marc Pettican, global head of corporate solutions at Mastercard. "With Advanced B2B Analytics, we're combining powerful insights with our deep commercial payments expertise to help issuers identify where card acceptance can deliver the greatest value, engage suppliers more effectively and drive measurable growth."

Advanced B2B Analytics helps financial institutions and their corporate customers identify supplier payment opportunities with greater precision by transforming accounts payable insights into actionable insights, Mastercard explained in a press release. Combined with consulting expertise from the Mastercard Advisors and Transformation team, the platform can help streamline procurement processes, reduce costs and accelerate commercial card acceptance at scale.

Mastercard noted that by connecting payment, acceptance and performance insights, it is "building toward a future where intelligence is embedded across the commercial payments lifecycle. Mastercard Advanced B2B Analytics is the first foundational B2B capability to support that vision."

AppZen tool built 'from ground up'

In a related development AppZen's Autonomous Cards connects to existing purchasing, virtual, fleet, ghost and lodge cards, then continuously monitors eligible transactions with its finance-specific AI agents.

The agents are trained to understand each transaction and what was purchased, then apply company policy, obtain missing context, resolve routine exceptions, maintain a complete record of every action and decision, and produce program-specific spend intelligence across the card portfolio.

Anant Kale, CEO and co-founder of AppZen, said, "We built Autonomous Cards from the ground up by rethinking how enterprise card operations should work when AI agents are the primary workers.

"Our agents continuously monitor spend, understand what was purchased and intervene when necessary, help employees and other transaction owners complete what is needed, and carry each transaction through policy, accounting and resolution. This is not the old card workflow with AI added to it.

"It is a new operating model designed to make finance teams autonomous while keeping people in control of the decisions that require judgement."

With AI agents performing the repetitive work, monitoring eligible transactions continuously and turning card data into actionable insights, finance teams can expand card adoption while maintaining policy enforcement, explainability and control, AppZen stated in a press release. The result: more spend moves to cards without increasing administrative burden or exposure.

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