Author

Lyall Cresswell

Published

10 December 2025

Estimated Read time

6Mins

Lyall Cresswell, Founder & CEO, TEG on how integrated payments are unlocking growth for SMEs in the UK’s £170bn transport and logistics sector

Consumer fintech is booming. From instant payments to embedded finance, digital innovation has transformed how individuals manage money, access credit, and transact with businesses. Yet in B2B markets, embedded finance adoption remains stubbornly low. The question is: why?

Instant settlement alone doesn’t solve this problem. But when combined with embedded compliance it transforms how fragmented B2B markets operate. This infrastructure enables large enterprises to scale their supplier bases from dozens to thousands while giving SME carriers immediate access to working capital, all without personal financial risk.

The answer becomes clear when you examine the UK’s £170 billion logistics sector. Employing over 8% of the workforce, it’s a low margin industry ripe for financial innovation, but in reality, highly fragmented with many SME operators. Large operators at the top of the supply chain are simply unable to verify, onboard and manage large networks of suppliers through traditional methods. This creates delays and friction.  I’ve watched this dynamic play out over 25 years building TEG. Smaller operators tell us the same story: ‘I need money now, not next month’. Cash flow isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s existential.

The barrier isn’t payment speed alone. It’s trust at scale. Integrated payment networks, combining instant settlement with embedded compliance and verification, create the infrastructure that enables these fragmented markets to operate differently.

Large enterprises don’t limit themselves to a small pool of known suppliers by choice. They do so because onboarding and compliance costs make broader collaboration prohibitively expensive. Each new supplier relationship requires verification of insurance, licensing, VAT status, and payment setup. This friction doesn’t just slow things down, it fundamentally constrains supply chains.

Recent research we conducted across six leading UK third party logistics providers (3PLs) revealed the scale of this challenge: 83% audit fewer than 10% of their subcontractors annually, and only 33% use eSourcing technology. These aren’t signs of negligence. They’re symptoms of a system where verification and onboarding are simply too resource intensive to scale.

Traditional payment solutions, from early payment programmes to invoice finance, address cash flow symptoms but miss the fundamental barrier. Without infrastructure to verify and onboard new trading partners confidently, enterprises remain trapped working with familiar suppliers even when capacity constraints or cost pressures demand alternatives. Meanwhile, SME carriers aren’t just delayed in payment, they’re excluded from opportunities entirely.

This dynamic turns large enterprises into inadvertent gatekeepers, not by choice, but because they lack the infrastructure to safely open their networks. The result is a continuous loop: constrained supplier choice for buyers, limited market access for SMEs, and a fragmented sector unable to collaborate efficiently. The solution requires rethinking the relationship between payments and compliance entirely. Integrated payment networks, embedding compliance verification directly into payment workflows, solve both problems simultaneously.

Building Trust Infrastructure Through Verified Payment Networks

The breakthrough comes when payment infrastructure and compliance verification integrate seamlessly. At TEG, we’ve built this through SmartPay’s integration with Trustd, our digital identity verification platform, embedding compliance directly into payment workflows.

The model is straightforward: carriers are verified once through real time checks of KYC, AML, VAT status, operating licences, and insurance credentials. Once verified, they can transact across the entire network. This “verify once, transact everywhere” approach removes the need for repeated onboarding across different customers or business units.

The operational impact has been significant: 90% faster invoice processing, 80% fewer supplier queries, with over 1 million invoices paid through the platform in 2025. By year end, the TEG rollout will connect 2,500 customers with 7,500 suppliers, demonstrating adoption at scale across the logistics sector.

But the real transformation lies in shifting from credit based to transaction based finance models. Many carriers have historically relied on credit cards and overdrafts to bridge cash flow gaps, costly stopgaps that eat into already thin margins. Traditional invoice finance excludes many SMEs because lenders must manage risk without transparency, often retaining portions of invoice value and demanding personal guarantees.

SmartPay changes this by leveraging verified transaction data to provide instant, non recourse access to full invoice value minus fees. No retention, no personal guarantees, simply immediate working capital based on actual trading activity. This unlocks early payment facilities for carriers who previously had no alternative to expensive short term credit.

This creates powerful network effects. As more carriers join the verified payment network, enterprises gain confidence to work with a broader supplier base. More suppliers mean better capacity, more competitive pricing, and greater resilience. For SME carriers, verified status opens doors to opportunities previously out of reach.

Verification Infrastructure and Working Capital Access

It’s crucial to understand that verified payment networks operate on two distinct but complementary tracks.

Unlocking working capital addresses the SME challenge. In a sector where margins run as low as 2% and payment cycles stretch to 90 days, liquidity is existential. Without working capital, SMEs can’t hire staff, expand capacity, or invest in growth. They’re forced to choose clients based on payment terms rather than strategic fit.

Instant settlement delivers immediate access to working capital for wages, fuel, and expansion. The UK Small Business Plan identifies late payments as one of the biggest barriers to SME growth—instant settlement directly addresses this constraint, enabling carriers to accept larger contracts and scale their operations.

These two tracks reinforce each other. Enterprises gain access to a larger, verified supplier base. SMEs gain both market access and the working capital to serve those opportunities effectively. The result is a more efficient, collaborative market structure.

The Fragmented Market Opportunity

While logistics provides the proving ground, this model applies to any fragmented B2B sector where compliance complexity limits collaboration. Construction, facilities management, and professional services all face similar dynamics: thin margins, extended payment terms, high onboarding friction, and SME suppliers excluded from opportunities.

The key requirement is neutral, collaborative infrastructure that provides a standardised verification model without competing with participants. In sectors where supplier qualification is straightforward, instant payment alone may suffice. But in regulated industries with complex credentialing requirements, verified payment networks become essential infrastructure.

The value isn’t in handling compliance alone. It’s in creating a trusted, shared layer that all participants can use without concern that the platform itself will compete with them.

The transformation only occurs when you solve both problems simultaneously: enterprises need neutral, trusted verification infrastructure to expand their networks confidently, and SMEs need instant settlement to operate sustainably within those networks. In fragmented markets where no single player can create industry wide standards, this shared infrastructure becomes essential. Address one without the other, and you’ve solved neither.

Trusted Collaboration at Scale

The narrative around embedded B2B finance needs reframing. It’s not about faster payments. It’s about removing the friction that prevents enterprises and suppliers from working together effectively—it’s about enabling trusted collaboration at scale. True transformation happens when payment infrastructure, compliance verification, and transaction transparency operate seamlessly together to unlock cash flow and expand market access for both sides.

Across TEG’s network of over 9,000 logistics businesses, we’ve seen how verified payment networks can reshape fragmented markets. Large enterprises can finally collaborate with the breadth of suppliers their operations demand. SME carriers can access opportunities and capital previously out of reach. The entire sector operates more efficiently.

This is the path to unlocking B2B embedded finance adoption: build infrastructure that solves the whole problem. Verify once, transact everywhere, and unlock cashflow. When enterprises can open their networks confidently and SMEs can operate sustainably within them, you create the conditions for genuine market transformation.

The technology exists. The business case is proven. We’ve demonstrated it works at scale. The question now is which sectors will move first to build the trust infrastructure their markets desperately need.

Learn more at teg.tech

  • Digital Payments
  • Embedded Finance

Author

Dan Brightmore

Published

18 September 2025

Estimated Read time

2Mins

Embat and MicroFin strategic alliance delivers AI-powered cash management, reconciliation and real-time visibility for finance teams managing complex, multi-entity operations

Embat, the leading European financial management and treasury platform, has formed a strategic partnership with MacroFin, part of Cooper Parry Digital and the UK’s leading NetSuite Alliance Partner. The collaboration combines MacroFin’s market-leading NetSuite implementation expertise with Embat’s next-generation treasury technology. The alliance will help finance teams tackle the growing complexity of international operations.

MacroFin has been recognised as NetSuite Alliance Partner of the Year since 2021, reflecting its reputation and expertise for delivering the UK’s most complex ERP implementations. Following its acquisition by Cooper Parry, MacroFin has further solidified its position as one of the UK’s premier NetSuite partners.

Facing the Challenge to Transform

As companies scale – particularly in sectors such as SaaS, e-commerce, retail, and hospitality – their finance teams face challenges to transform that outgrow traditional tools such as Microsoft Excel. Multi-currency operations, multiple legal entities, high transaction volumes, and increased regulatory demands. This partnership ensures NetSuite clients have access to Embat’s treasury platform bidirectionally connected to NetSuite, offering:

  • Real-time cash visibility across accounts and currencies
  • AI-powered bank reconciliation that cuts manual processing time by up to 90%
  • Advanced forecasting to support strategic planning
  • Automated treasury operations to streamline day-to-day processes
  • Seamless NetSuite integration for consistent, efficient workflows
  • TellMe, Embat’s AI-powered treasury analyst, which enables finance teams to save up to 75% of their time on manual tasks. Freeing them to focus on strategic decision making

Treasury Management

“Treasury management has evolved from a back-office task to a strategic driver of business growth and efficiency. By working with MacroFin, we’re making advanced treasury technology accessible to NetSuite clients who need real-time visibility and automation to manage complexity with confidence.”

Theo Wasserberg, Head of UK&I at Embat

“When clients face complex international and multi-entity challenges, we look for solutions that go beyond NetSuite’s native functionality. Embat’s direct integration and AI-driven automation deliver the clarity and efficiency CFOs need in today’s environment.”

Ross Latta, Co-Founder of MacroFin

This partnership underscores Embat and MacroFin’s shared commitment to innovation in financial technology and toempowering CFOs and finance teams with tools that enhance both operational efficiency and strategic insight.

About Embat

Embat is a leading European financial management and treasury platform that enables finance teams in medium and large companies to centralise all operations from banking relationships to their financial management processes. It allows finance teams to save up to 75% of their time on manual tasks by using TellMe, our AI-powered treasury analyst, so they can focus on strategic decision-making. The main functions of Embat are treasury automation, automated accounting, and payments. Clients experience cost savings (by optimising their working capital management), time savings, reduced errors and an increased quality of life.

About MacroFin with 3RP and the CP Digital Family

MacroFin is a UK-based consultancy specialising in finance-led ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) transformations centred around the NetSuite platform. Founded in 2018 by chartered accountants, their approach emphasises embedding finance expertise at every stage of implementation. They offer services including NetSuite implementation, optimisation, training, support, and custom development. 

In 2024, MacroFin joined Cooper Parry to form CP Digital alongside 3RP and Cloud Orca, creating a digital transformation hub with wider expertise and tech partnerships.

MacroFin has implemented NetSuite for leading brands like Babylon, Depop, PensionBee, and Zego, achieving average go-live in four months.

  • Artificial Intelligence in FinTech
  • Digital Payments

Author

Rob Israch

Published

29 August 2025

Estimated Read time

4Mins

Rob Israch, President at finance automation specialists Tipalti, reflects on the post-hype AI landscape for innovation in financial services

The initial excitement around AI In finance is shifting toward a more practical focus on real business value. Many companies were swept up in the early enthusiasm. However, companies are now leaning toward integrating artificial intelligence more meaningfully into core workflows to deliver lasting value.

While 92% of companies plan to increase their AI investments over the next three years, just 1% of leaders say their organisations are truly AI mature. True maturity means AI drives measurable outcomes and is central and streamlined into daily operations.

So for finance teams, this shift is critical. In an economy shaped by changes in inflation, tariffs and taxes, every investment must deliver clear ROI and help the business by streamlining operations, enhancing forecasts and adopting predictive analytics.

As companies push for sustainable growth and a thawing IPO market signals possible opportunities, scalable and integrated AI solutions will be key to business success.

Building for Real Problems, Not Hypothetical Gaps

Most companies agree that innovation in the finance department is key to unlocking the next level of growth. However, despite growing ambition to adopt AI and automation, 84% of finance teams still rely heavily on manual processes. Leaving little leftover time for strategic thinking.

To truly drive value, AI must be applied not just tactically, but strategically for each business. Research shows that while 74% of companies have adopted AI, only 4% have advanced capabilities that drive clear business value. Real impact is delivered when the technology goes beyond simple workflow automation and becomes a source of real-time, predictive insight across the finance function.

Take treasury operations, for example. Traditionally, treasury teams have faced mounting challenges in managing cash flow, forecasting liquidity, and overseeing global bank relationships. With AI-powered tools, finance teams can now gain real-time, intelligent cash visibility across thousands of banks, ERP systems, and data sources. This transformation not only empowers leaders to make faster and smarter decisions but also underscores the importance of streamlined systems within the finance function.

From a Surplus of Tools to One Unified Platform

What businesses don’t want is extra layers of complexity; they need a straightforward, unified platform that solves real problems.

Large enterprises may seek ‘AI-first’ products and invest in cross-functional AI platforms. But they typically have the resources to fund extensive IT teams or consultants to customise these systems. However, for most businesses, this level of support isn’t a reality. So, businesses without reams of IT people, benefit more from a consolidated system that delivers efficiency and scalability. This allows them to stay focused on growth and innovation. 

If AI is seamlessly embedded within these solutions, it can enhance performance without increasing complexity. Whether improving automation, workflow management or operational efficiency, AI should be an integral part of the product.

Staging the Runway for the Next Stage of Growth

Companies that fully integrate AI will be more ready for sustainable growth. However, integration is just the start… Once AI is embedded, organisations must focus on how it can deliver real, strategic value. This means designing solutions not only to automate processes but to provide actionable insights. Currently, only 26% have developed the skills to move beyond AI conceptually and deliver real value. In the finance function, using AI strategically can lower processing costs by 81% and speed up processing times by 73%.

As more advanced models are integrated into workplaces systems, they can predict payment patterns, cash flow trends, and vendor behaviour. In today’s dynamic environment, companies that have sustainable, AI-powered solutions centred on usability and scalability are best positioned for the next stage of growth.

The Continued Road to AI Maturity

As finance teams navigate a more mature AI landscape and prepare for future growth, the focus is shifting from individual features to foundational value. With investors sharpening their focus, they seek durable business models. The companies that succeed will be those that have applied AI to maximise their investment.

These companies haven’t just chased metrics; they’ve spent the past few years strengthening their foundations and embedding AI deeply into their architecture.

  • Artificial Intelligence in FinTech

Author

Akbar Hussain

Published

23 July 2025

Estimated Read time

5Mins

Akbar Hussain, Co-founder and Chief Legal & Compliance Officer at TerraPay, on cross-border payment innovation

Every transaction tells a story. Most pass by unnoticed: familial remittances, a gift, a balance topped up. But behind the scenes, every transfer or cross-border payment sets off a chain reaction of checks, rules, and decisions. Signals are assessed. Contexts are weighed. Trust is verified.

Cross-border payments don’t operate in a vacuum. They move through regulatory frameworks and risk assessments, often in milliseconds. And as more and more transfers pass through this complex system, there is a growing need for infrastructure that knows not just how to move money effectively but how to govern its movement wisely.

Small Transactions, Big Stakes

There’s a myth in the payments world that small transactions carry small risk. That compliance obligations only apply at scale. Or that low-value payments fly under the regulatory radar. But in a globally connected system, nothing operates in isolation.

Small transactions power financial inclusion: school fees, emergency loans, micro-business payments. They are frequent, personal, and essential. And when repeated millions of times across loosely monitored corridors, they can create risk patterns with system-wide consequences.

When oversight is thin, even a modest flow of funds can be exploited for money laundering, fraud, or sanctions evasion. The notion that scale is only measured by individual ticket size ignores how quickly volume and velocity can multiply exposure. The risk isn’t always in the size of a transaction, it’s in how little is known about it.

Risk also doesn’t scale linearly. A seemingly harmless payments corridor can, over time, become a blind spot for illicit flows if the right compliance checks aren’t embedded. That’s why building safeguards into the infrastructure, not just the interface, of any payments system is critical.

Ultimately, there’s no such thing as a low-value transaction when the cost of failure is measured in trust.

Innovation vs Regulation

In much of the FinTech world, there’s still a belief that building effective cross-border payment systems means choosing between two paths: innovate fast or regulate carefully, as if the two can’t coexist. But this is a false choice. There is no sustainable growth in cross-border finance without regulatory credibility. Any system built to avoid or defer oversight will ultimately collapse, hollowed out by its own shortcuts.

In reality, we shouldn’t think of compliance as a barrier to scale but rather as a condition of scale. It’s what unlocks markets, builds durable infrastructure, and earns the trust of partners, governments, and users. Trust isn’t a switch that flips at go-to-market; it’s something built transaction by transaction, jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

That means licensing, yes. But it also means culture. It means embedding compliance into the architecture of your systems, the rhythms of your operations, and the priorities of your leadership. When regulatory design is built in from the start—rather than patched on later—it helps power growth.

Systemic Risk Has No Borders

One of the defining features of modern financial infrastructure is its interdependence. There are no isolated risks anymore. A lapse in one system—a poorly monitored corridor, a flawed due diligence model, an unvetted partner—doesn’t stay local. It echoes outward. Financial crime doesn’t respect borders. Neither does reputational damage.

This is particularly true in high-risk markets, where traditional institutions are limited or absent, and the appetite for speed often overshadows prudence.

These are also the places where financial inclusion efforts matter most—and where failure risks cutting people off entirely. Getting it wrong in these contexts risks shutting out the unbanked and underbanked from the systems designed to serve them, reinforcing the very barriers this industry claims to dismantle.

Financial institutions that choose to operate in these environments must do so with heightened accountability. The organizations that lead with integrity understand this and act accordingly: investing in real-time monitoring, adapting to regulatory shifts, and holding their partners to the same standard.

Building for the Future with Cross-Border Payments

There’s an understandable appeal to silver-bullet solutions: AI for fraud detection, blockchain for traceability, real-time everything. These technologies are powerful, and when applied with care, they can significantly enhance the robustness of compliance systems. But they’re not infallible. When adopted without scrutiny, they risk masking deeper structural weaknesses beneath a surface-level sense of control.

The more sustainable approach is rarely the flashiest. It’s incremental, data-driven, and adaptive. It prioritizes experimentation over assumption and refinement over scale for scale’s sake. Using anonymised data to test systems, deploying AI to extend—rather than replace—human oversight, and continuously evolving alongside the regulatory environments these systems must serve: this is where long-term resilience is built.

Trust, in Practice

To design for trust is to design for complexity. It means making peace with the regulatory landscape and recognizing that compliance isn’t a one-off exercise but a constant, evolving discipline that must move in step with innovation—not trail behind it.

It may not be the flashiest part of the story, or the one that makes the headlines, but any serious player in the cross-border economy must learn to balance the urgency of go-to-market with a deep, operational understanding of compliance and security. Regulation isn’t something to be welded on later. It’s something to be baked in from the start.

  • Digital Payments

Author

Dan Brightmore

Published

10 June 2025

Estimated Read time

4Mins

Russell Gammon, Chief Solutions Officer at Tax Systems, on the benefits of AI in automating routine processes to make time for higher level strategic tasks

In the past two and a half years since the launch of ChatGPT – and the likes of Copilot – the world has been gripped with generative AI fever. However, after the initial rush of enthusiasm, many businesses today are taking a more cautious approach. Trying to identify tangible benefits and use cases that can prove its worth before making costly investments.

One industry where the use cases are becoming more evident day by day is Financial Services. Repetitive and time-consuming tasks, traditionally completed manually with all the risk of human error that entails, can now be automated. Capabilities such as machine learning, generative AI, and advanced data analytics algorithms are being used to help ensure organisations remain compliant through delivering accurate, timely calculations, tax filings and reports. And creating clearer visibility.

AI Revolution

By automating routine processes, such as data analysis and reconciliation, finance executives can spend more time on higher level strategic tasks. AI can also provide insights beyond the capacity of humans thanks to its ability to crunch vast volumes of data, It can uncover trends that might otherwise go unnoticed. This enables real-time reporting and analysis with AI insight forming the basis of smarter decision-making.

For finance, this is just the beginning of the AI revolution. Look deeper into any finance sector and a huge variety of more specialised applications are revealed. Take the tax industry, for example, where a sizeable cohort of professionals still spend a considerable amount of time checking long lists of numbers on invoices or using spreadsheets to track spending. Not only is this work frustratingly boring, it is also prone to human error. AI has the potential, at a single stroke, to handle such tasks.

Navigating Choppy Regulatory Waters

Staying in the tax-related field, AI can also play a pivotal role in handling incoming regulations, such as Pillar Two. Multinational corporations are grappling with the complexities of this legislation. AI is emerging as a game changing tool in compliance management, transforming tax reporting, risk mitigation, and regulatory adaptation.

AI is being used to automate compliance and reporting processes. It can streamline data aggregation, ensure accurate reporting, and adapt to evolving regulations. AI-powered compliance tools optimise the evaluation, monitoring, and reporting of Pillar Two obligations. This can reduce complexity and improve precision. They can also integrate and standardise financial data across jurisdictions, improving consistency in tax computations.

These solutions seamlessly connect disparate systems, extracting and harmonising data from multiple sources regardless of format. By normalising and processing this information in line with BEPS regulations, AI can swiftly identify potential compliance risks. Advanced algorithms can flag irregular transactions between related entities and pinpoint inconsistencies in transfer pricing. This helps to detect possible profit-shifting activities before they become regulatory concerns. AI thus has the potential to change compliance management from a costly obligation to a strategic advantage.

Be Wary of AI’s Limitations

So, there is clearly a lot of potential for AI to transform financial services in terms of daily operations and compliance. However, it is important to remain wary of its limitations. Chief amongst them, is AI’s propensity to ‘hallucinate’ or make information up if it can’t find the right answer. That casts a shadow over the accuracy of all of its output. And underlines the importance of professional gatekeepers who can verify AI content and ensure it is correct.

AI also currently lacks the ability to interpret subtle context, which humans can more easily respond to. This can feed into spurious responses and misinterpreted data. However, with the right training, monitoring and oversight, AI tools can overcome such weaknesses.

Supporting, Not Replacing, the Human Touch

Understandably, given AI’s potential, many are concerned about the impact on jobs. If AI can digest thousands of lines of data and spit out a report in seconds, what do we need interns for? But it’s important to see AI as an augmentation of existing human talent, not a replacement for it.

As noted above, the possibility of hallucination means that qualified professionals will always have a role to play in quality checking output. So, what we are seeing is the development of a symbiotic relationship wherein professionals are freed from the drudgery of repetitive grunt work. They can focus on more strategic objectives, while AI handles it under their careful eye.

For the tech-savvy Gen-Z entering the workplace today, this is a hugely positive change. The finance and tax industries have become a less attractive career option for this generation, due to the traditional processes and lack of technological innovation. What graduate wants to spend their days entering data after years of studying their chosen subject? With AI ready as a helping hand, they can enter the workplace and use their skills and knowledge to assess the technology’s output, rather than spending hours manually doing it themselves. The finance industry is now in a position to embrace this opportunity that AI has presented. And encourage new talent into the industry.   

Given the financial services sector is plagued with skills shortages, and ever-growing workloads, employers can now offer more attractive career opportunities. Furthermore, striking the right balance to drive improved efficiency, productivity and performance and reap the rewards of an AI-enabled future. 

  • Artificial Intelligence in FinTech

Author

Mark Andreev

Published

6 June 2025

Estimated Read time

4Mins

Mark Andreev, COO at Exactly, presents a practical guide to tackling e-commerce fraud with payment tokenisation

Tokenisation can solve a big problem… e-commerce fraud is a growing threat that continues to impact online businesses worldwide. According to recent figures from Statista (2025), global e-commerce losses due to online payment fraud are projected to exceed $100 billion by 2029. As fraudsters increasingly exploit IT vulnerabilities, it is imperative for online and brick-and-mortar businesses to fortify their cybersecurity posture.

Amidst the current security challenges, payment tokenisation emerges as a technology to future-proof business operations and is projected to reach USD 28.97 billion worth by 2033.

This guide explores the concept of payment tokenisation, emphasising its value and role in ensuring credit card payment processing standards for merchants.

What is Payment Tokenisation?

Tokenisation is the process of substituting sensitive data with non-sensitive values – tokens. It works as a key layer of protection for stored data by replacing card numbers with illegible, surrogate values.

During a transaction, payment details are securely transmitted to a trusted payment provider via hosted payment page or through direct API integration.

In the hosted payment page flow, the customer is redirected to a secure payment page operated by the payment provider. Here they can enter their payment information. The provider handles data collection, encryption, and transaction authorisation, keeping sensitive information off the merchant’s servers.

In the API integration flow, the merchant’s website collects payment details using secure client-side tools. In this case, the merchant is responsible for ensuring full PCI DSS compliance, as sensitive data passes through their systems.

Following a transaction, sensitive card data is substituted by a special character sequence. The translation of characters into randomised values refers to the tokenisation process.

For merchants who are not PCI DSS compliant, storing sensitive information on their side is not allowed. In these cases, the third-party payment provider retains the sensitive data and the tokens for future use, while merchants don’t retain any sensitive information.

This method is one of the key cybersecurity best practices to ensure payment providers remain compliant with PCI DSS and is also crucial for merchants using API integration to store sensitive data.

Different Types of Tokens

There are different types of tokens available to merchants, offering different levels of complexity and security. Simple tokens refer to randomised reference numbers that are unidentifiable and unrelated to customer data. They provide a high level of security when implemented correctly by a reputable payment provider.

On the other hand, token vaults represent a more complex system of payment security and data handling. Essentially, token vaults are encrypted repositories of original payment data associated with tokens from each customer transaction. Depending on the type of payment gateway integration, either the merchant or the payment provider may retrieve the payment information as needed. Token vaults can also be deployed in cloud environments, mitigating the need for extensive infrastructure.

The Value of Tokens

In an era where cybersecurity is paramount, failing to secure customer data can come at significant costs. Recently, the IT systems of the UK’s most prominent retailers suffered significant downtime following a series of cyberattacks. They were prevented from serving their customers as a result. As the consequences of these attacks continue to linger, affected UK retailers are working overtime to get back on track. In these situations, the use of tokenisation payment security has partly helped prevent what could have been a catastrophic breach. Reducing the risk of a lateral exploitation of customer data. In fact, using payment tokens, retailers avoid the need to encrypt and retain sensitive payment details. This lowers the risk of attacks, breaches, and noncompliance with ever-changing payment processing and data security policies.

Tokenisation also enables seamless customer experiences, addressing a crucial customer demand – convenience. In fact, with tokenisation enabling one-click checkouts, customers avoid re-entering card details and access a seamless shopping experience, meeting an important need for comfort and familiarity for consumers.

Finally, from a regulatory perspective, compliance with PCI DSS is mandatory for payment providers and merchants specifically using API integration within payment gateways to store sensitive information. In this regulatory context, tokenisation becomes a straightforward strategy to meet fundamental data handling legal requirements. In an era of rising cyber threats and increasing customer expectations, tokenisation offers merchants a scalable, effective, and future-ready approach to safeguarding sensitive data, building trust, and preserving business integrity.

  • Cybersecurity in FinTech
  • Digital Payments

Author

Dan Brightmore

Published

20 February 2025

Estimated Read time

4Mins

Akbar Hussain, Co-founder and Chief Legal & Compliance Officer at TerraPay. on how money is travelling faster and further than ever

In the last few years, we’ve seen capital become increasingly mobile, with ever greater sums of money travelling across national borders. This trend in international payments has largely been shaped by shifting consumer behaviours and needs, an unprecedented global health crisis, technological advancements and the rapid rise of eCommerce. However, just because more of us are doing it, that doesn’t mean international money transfers have become all that much easier or quicker.

International Payments

Sending a digital bank transfer from A to B is one thing. But when you’re sending cash across national borders the complexities are compounded. However, while cross-border money movement can be a challenge, there are opportunities on the other side of the coin. The big prize? A chance to reimagine how money flows. 

In a frictionless world, international payments could, and should, be effortless. But cross-border payments are still bogged down by regulatory demands, technological gaps and transparency issues. Until fairly recently, the word ‘instant’ was not associated with cross-border money transfers.

If we get it right, and substantially ease the difficulties of sending money abroad, we can empower individuals and open up the global economy. Smoother cash flows mean markets can function more effectively, and geographic barriers to wealth and attainment can be broken down. First, it’s incumbent on us to dismantle the following barriers:

Financial Illiteracy

Traditionally, navigating international payments has felt like an exclusive club, accessible only to those fluent in its jargon. From formatting payments correctly to ensuring BIC and IBAN numbers are accurate, it’s easy to see why so many feel excluded.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Streamlined systems can make it easier for people to send their money wherever they want. Moreover, you don’t need to be wealthy or well-heeled for your cash to be a frequent flier.

High Costs

Hitting “pay” on an international transfer can often feel like throwing it into a black hole and hoping for the best. With no tracking or transparency, the money disappears until it finally surfaces in the recipient’s account days later. Transaction fees are high, which can really add up if you’re transferring small payments at a time.

Compliance

As financial regulations tighten to combat fraud and crime, cross-border payments face more scrutiny than ever. Large transfers, in particular, often encounter unexplained delays as banks – yours, intermediary banks, or even the recipient’s – verify the legitimacy of the funds. Customers are rarely kept in the loop. Instead, they’re left waiting, powerless, for their money to clear. It’s an opaque, frustrating experience that feels anything but consumer friendly.

These challenges all pertain to traditional cross-border payments. But what if we thought about these transactions differently? Let’s reimagine cross-border payments in the same way we’ve revolutionised communication. If an SMS can reach anyone, anywhere in the world, instantly, affordably, and without interruptions, why can’t money work the same way?

Digital Wallets

In just over a decade, digital wallets have transformed the financial landscape, connecting millions of unbanked and underbanked individuals to the formal financial system. These tools have proven especially vital for small-value cross-border transfers, which are often critical for families, businesses, and communities. By 2026, global wallet users are projected to exceed 5.2 billion, driving transaction volumes past $12 trillion. These numbers highlight not only the scale of their impact but also the untapped potential for advancing cross-border payments.

The question isn’t whether digital wallets can play a role in cross-border transactions, because we know that they do. The question is how we can maximise their potential across geographies. What does a payment ecosystem look like when wallets are at the heart of it?

Two key factors are essential: building a more comprehensive ecosystem for digital wallets and ensuring greater interoperability between systems. These changes would simplify cross-border transactions for individuals and businesses alike. Creating a global financial environment where sending money is as intuitive as sending a text message.

A thriving digital wallet ecosystem – characterised by low fees, simple interfaces, transparency, and robust security – could redefine how people connect, collaborate, and seize opportunities across borders.

The Future for Payments

To achieve this, the financial industry must come together to dismantle systemic barriers. Interoperability, regulatory alignment, and infrastructure upgrades are essential to creating a unified global payment framework. Advocating for cross-border interoperability at the domestic level, for example, would pave the way for transactions that transcend silos and fit within a globally recognised standard. This would lower costs, reduce risks, and boost the efficiency of cross-border payments.

Digital wallet innovators have an opportunity to bridge the gap left by traditional banks. While established financial institutions bring legacy and scale, they’ve often been slow to innovate in ways that meet the needs of a fast-moving, increasingly interconnected world. For billions of people, the future of finance is already in the palm of their hand. 

  • Digital Payments
  • Neobanking

Author

Sean Galea-Pace

Published

8 March 2024

Estimated Read time

5Mins

Changing requirements, shifting demographics, and new technologies are conspiring to create a procurement talent shortage.

Two of the biggest challenges facing procurement leaders are recruitment and retention. Staffing issues were identified as one of the biggest risks facing procurement in the next two years by Amazon Business’ 2024 State of Procurement Report, as the procurement function “broadens in scope while facing staffing shortages”. 

It seems as though the more critical procurement becomes to the modern enterprise, the more the cracks in the talent pool begin to show. With increased technological adoption and a growing emphasis on strategic operations (compared to a traditional transaction-focused approach) in the procurement function, solving the talent shortage is more critical than ever. 

As we’re still in early 2024, we’ve put together the top five factors driving the talent shortage, as well as how procurement leaders can address them in order to capitalise on the opportunities in the industry and meet the strategic objectives of the business as a whole. 

1. Digital transformation

Ironically, the very trend that’s driving the rise in procurement’s fortunes is also one of the biggest factors fueling its talent shortage. As digital transformation reshapes the procurement function from top to bottom, it also means that the skills necessary to succeed in procurement roles are changing. Even a few decades ago, a procurement job was a mixture of relationship management and sending invoices. Now, there’s AI to grapple with, big data analytics, and an expectation that the department will be a key strategic driver of efficiency, sustainability, and supply chain resilience. The skill sets that make a successful procurement team today aren’t the same as they were even a few years ago. 

How to fix It: Education and development should be at the forefront of anyone’s mind looking to build a successful procurement function. Upskilling and growing the team’s knowledge base is almost always more cost effective than hiring externally, but you should also know when to look beyond the department to fill a talent shortage, even if that just means sniffing around the IT department for anyone not nailed down.  

2. Competition (internal and external) 

If (almost) every procurement team is short on staff (well, 86% of them, according to Amazon Business), then it’s no surprise that competition for top talent is fierce. Salaries are rising, and the fact the talent shortage is affecting departments other than procurement means that procurement is in competition, not only with other procurement teams, but with other departments in its company for talent and the money to pay that talent. 

How to fix It: Smaller firms without the resources to compete might consider outsourcing their procurement functions, engaging third parties like a business might engage a legal team or a management consultancy.

3. Messaging and awareness 

Or lack thereof… Seriously, procurement may be the exciting new frontier of digital transformation and strategic optimisation, but traditionally the department has largely existed as an afterthought—a place where purchase orders go to be rubber stamped. The nature of the role may be changing, but perceptions are harder to shift. If the preconceived notion is that procurement is a stodgy, backwards profession, then it’s unlikely to attract the best and brightest graduates, let alone funnel MBAs into a procurement-specific pipeline early on in their education. 

How to fix it: Take a leaf out of the broader supply chain discipline’s book and go on a two-pronged charm and educational offensive. By working with educational institutions and recruiting heavily from adjacent industries with transferable skills (increasingly easy to do given the increasingly digital-first nature of the discipline), new talent can be enticed into the procurement space and developed from there by existing veterans. 

4. Demographic shifts 

Tied into Number 5, the natural changing of the guard is a large part of what’s ushering in a more discerning labour force. It’s also seeing Boomers and Gen X either exit the workforce into retirement or be promoted up into senior management, where the skills that made them an asset to the company on a day-to-day basis are less important to their roles. 

Also, as Millennials age up towards middle management there aren’t as many members of Gen Z entering the workforce to replace them. It’s the same further up the chain as the populous Baby Boomers are replaced with the relatively sparse Gen X.  

How to fix it: One way to encourage a smoother transition from one generation to the next—especially in an industry where relationship management plays such a huge role—is to encourage mentorship and development aimed at transferring skills and key knowledge from senior staff to lower (even entry level) positions. 

5. The Great Resignation 

Sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a general rise in pro-labour sentiment across the economy at large, the last few years have seen a spectacular rise in employees quitting the roles that couldn’t be bothered (or afford) to pay them enough or treat them fairly. The consequences for mismanaging teams are much higher in a world where the stigma over changing roles regularly for better pay, hours, and working conditions has more or less evaporated. 

How to fix it: It should be obvious, but people keep quitting their jobs, so the message must not be getting through. The age of pizza parties and casual Fridays are over. Employees expect more from their employers, whether in terms of wages, benefits like healthcare, work-life balance, and other meaningful contributions to quality of life. In addition to benefits on paper, fostering positive cultures, creating opportunities for development and salary advancement are all a big part of not only attracting new talent but keeping it as well.  

Author

Sean Galea-Pace

Published

23 January 2024

Estimated Read time

4Mins

The top seven trends driving procurement’s transition from the back-office to the boardroom in 2024.

The year ahead has the potential to be a watershed moment for the procurement industry, as infusions of leading edge technology and process innovation conspire to enable procurement’s shift from spend management to strategic leadership. Increasingly, leadership is recognising the potential of procurement to guard against risk, drive sustainable practice, and be a key enabler in helping the business identify and capitalise on new opportunities.

Reflecting on the past several years, we’ve looked ahead to bring you the seven trends defining the procurement landscape heading into 2024 and beyond.

1. Procurement takes centre stage

Procurement is undeniably on a journey from being a back-office cost-cutting function to a key driver of strategic wins for the business. In 2024, procurement teams should continue to capitalise and build upon existing wins as they continue their optimisation journey. For those lagging behind, the time to begin their transformation from functionary to value orchestrator is now.  

2. More space strategic, value-add work

A vast majority of decision makers surveyed by Amazon Business last year revealed that they needed to outsource elements of their procurement function to a third party. It’s a known fact that the current procurement industry struggles with a lack of the necessary human resources, skills, and systems to keep pace with mission critical operational demands. With those demands only expected to get more complex in 2024, procurement teams need to find ways to spend less time on low value manual work and refocus their efforts on high-level, strategic activities. Adopting low-code platforms, AI, process automation, and other technology could be a way to execute on this necessary transformation.

3. More investment (and hype) surrounding AI, automation, and analytics

2023 was the year when generative AI exploded into the spotlight, attracting massive amounts of hype, interest, and investment. However, just a few weeks into 2024, you can see excitement starting to cool, as organisations struggle to find effective applications that justify the price of admission.

In 2024, we can expect to see massive AI utilisation in data analytics, in process automation, and other elements of the S2P process, but generative AI adoption in ways that produce meaningful benefits are likely more than 12 months away.

4. Low code, higher automation in S2P platforms

Managing the source to pay process is increasingly complex, and time consuming to orchestrate. In 2024, with pain points like this increasing complexity (due to climate instability, compliance regulations, etc.) and talent shortage, the adoption of more low-code platforms will increase the ability of procurement teams to automate significant elements of their operations.

5. Scope 3 comes under greater scrutiny

A recent report found that around two thirds of procurement professionals in the US, UK, and Europe feel that their Scope 3 emissions reporting is more “best-guess” than hard fact. With regulatory scrutiny—not to mention public opinion—growing less and less lenient with regard to greenwashing and climate inaction, procurement teams need to make 2024 the year they take meaningful action to create transparency beyond Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

This obviously represents a significant challenge. Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions are relatively straightforward compared to the sprawling, often opaque morass of Scope 3. Inaction is not an option, however, if organisations are to meaningfully pursue their net zero by 2030 targets. 

6. Mission-critical Big Data

Collecting, managing, and effectively drawing insights from big data is and will remain one of the defining challenges for the modern enterprise. A proliferation of data from IoT devices, cloud-based platforms, and a general increase in the amount of technology being integrated into the procurement process (not to mention an increase in awareness of how important it is to gather as much data as possible) is leaving some industry players overwhelmed.

Vast silos of data with no meaningful way to draw insights from the unstructured mass create more problems than they solve. 2024, then, should be the year that procurement not just recognises the importance of data, but the absolute criticality of putting systems in place to manage it effectively.

7. AI achieves greater autonomy in planning tasks

Even as the shockwaves of the COVID-19 pandemic recede from the global supply chain, macroeconomic forces still conspire to place increased pressure on supply chains and procurement teams. Forward planning is more important than ever and procurement professionals are finding themselves increasingly struggling to meet the demands of “a more complex, multi-tiered, more nuanced world.”

Using artificial intelligence to more effectively run scenario analysis could have a transformative effect on the S2P process, allowing low-touch planning driven by AI to eliminate manual work, analyse data at scale, identify and flag anomalies, and even start making suggestions to humans as to how to proceed. There is still some doubt over AI’s ability to handle tasks consistently with minimal human oversight, but the tide of public opinion is starting to change. 

By Harry Menear

Author

Sean Galea-Pace

Published

7 December 2023

Estimated Read time

5Mins

At DPW Amsterdam 2023, Prerna Dhawan, Chief Solutions Officer at The Smart Cube (a WNS company), tells us about the importance of remaining focused on fixing the problem and not leveraging technology for technologies sake.

“You don’t need AI or even gen AI for the sake of it.”

In today’s world, everyone is obsessed with what’s new and fresh. Like in most other functions, in procurement, the latest craze is generative AI, with ChatGPT being one prominent example. Despite new technology’s clear benefits, such as cost and time savings, it’s important to keep the problem you’re trying to solve and the business impact you’re looking to make front of mind.

Prerna Dhawan is the Chief Solutions Officer at The Smart Cube. Like many of her peers, Dhawan recognises the potential that new technology brings but also shares concerns. “Like everyone else, we’ve been on that bandwagon as well,” she tells us. “For us, there have been two key learning so far. We have already done one live deployment of gen AI. We went live with our gen AI model earlier this year, which enables users to skip the stage of manually searching for content on Amplifi PRO, our on-demand procurement intelligence platform. You just ask the question and our platform leverages a custom NLQ framework and gen AI to provide a natural language response. Using a combination of our own AI models and gen AI provides a more dependable, accurate response as pure Gen AI isn’t fully functional for all types of analysis and can’t be trusted completely.”

Navigating AI adoption

Indeed, there has been criticism from some sections about ChatGPT providing hallucinations and making key data up. For multi-million pound organisations responsible for high levels of spend, this isn’t good enough. A second learning Dhawan is keen to get across is that she believes that gen AI is being dominated by hype. She explains that with any “new shiny object”, it should be treated with caution.

“I’ve tried to explain this a little bit, but everyone is excited about new things. A recent example is another use case where we were experimenting with our digital assistant,” she explains. “There was a point where we used a 100% gen AI approach, and we were still getting issues and hallucinations where the queries weren’t being answered correctly. The team said we needed to make it work and I explained that, ultimately, a client needs to solve the problem, they’re less hung up on how this is done. Sometimes people get lost with the technology and the approach. You have to ask yourself, are you solving the problem? If the answer is to just input a human and you don’t need AI, then do that.”

Prerna Dhawan, Chief Solutions Officer at The Smart Cube, sits down with CPOstrategy at DPW Amsterdam 2023

The journey

Armed with more than 16 years of experience in developing client solutions, managing strategic relationships, defining product strategies and driving profitable growth, Dhawan has worked with procurement, supply chain and corporate strategy teams across many global 2000 companies. Throughout her career, she has helped them embed intelligence and analytics as enablers of competitive differentiation and business transformation, along with The Smart Cube’s co-founders Gautam Singh and Omer Abdullah.

The Smart Cube is a WNS company and is considered a trusted partner for high-performing intelligence that answers critical business questions. The Smart Cube works with clients to figure out how to implement answers faster through customer research, advanced analytics and best-of-breed technology. The firm transforms its data into insights – enabling smart decision-making to improve business performance at the top and bottom line. Together with WNS, expert resources are combined with leading digital technologies, merging human intelligence and AI with innovation.

Digitally-enabled future

While AI’s challenges should be acknowledged, Dhawan is in no uncertain terms about the importance of stepping out of comfort zones and meeting fear head-on. Change can be a divisive topic with human nature being to cling on to what’s familiar. However, this can result in becoming reactive and failing to keep up with competitors.

Prerna Dhawan, Chief Solutions Officer, The Smart Cube

“As leaders, if we want to change the game of procurement and redefine the value we create for a business, we have to be more open to embracing new things,” she explains. “If you learn what the capabilities of new technology are and where you can actually use it, everything has strengths and weaknesses. Ask yourself – do you want to be an early adopter or do you want to be a laggard in your industry? All of this has the potential to give you that competitive advantage. It’s about being open, experimenting at pace, but also not being blinded by the magic and assuming everything will just work. There will be changes needed to your processes and people’s mindsets.”

Procurement’s future

With the future of procurement set to continue to be digitally-enabled and full of innovation, Dhawan believes the function now has its seat at the table and is ready to thrive.

“If I look at my journey from when I started in procurement, clients were asking questions like ‘Who are the suppliers in the market? How do I get the best price?’ Procurement is now getting involved at the new product development stage and is even advising the business on what ingredients to use while taking a more total value approach,” she discusses. “When you’re thinking about the product, do you want to put in palm oil or sunflower oil based on sustainability considerations, and how can you justify additional costs of a sustainable supply chain? Procurement isn’t just supporting the bottom line but also influencing the broader business goals of sustainability, innovation and resilience. It’s a great time to be here.”

Author

Sean Galea-Pace

Published

24 November 2023

Estimated Read time

5Mins

At DPW Amsterdam 2023, Brandon Card, Co-Founder and CEO at Terzo, discusses the rise of his organisation amid the COVID-19 pandemic and how it used the disruption to its advantage.

Terzo means third in Italian.

With the two founders having Italian heritage, they chose to describe what they set out to build – a platform that brings third parties together.

Terzo uses powerful AI technology to extract, analyse, and visualise its customer’s contract data. Terzo’s AI data extraction capabilities also reach beyond contracts and can solve an organisation’s document problems, from invoices to POs and more. Its platform was designed on the foundation of contract intelligence, providing business teams the necessary data to improve productivity, optimise spend, reduce costs, and manage risk and governance across their entire supplier ecosystem. Terzo is the first solution to provide critical data and terms to both legal and business teams to make decisions together.

Terzo’s journey

Brandon Card is the Co-Founder and CEO at Terzo. His company’s journey’s start was an interesting one, having been founded days before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that then ensued. But, reflecting on the disruptive nature of the situation, Card believes it actually helped get Terzo up and running quicker. “It just accelerated our timeline because we wanted to build fast,” he reveals. “When we put the team together, we had this concept that we wanted to get the product out as fast as possible. We knew that with Covid happening there was going to be a huge shift in how people were working. People were going to need to buy new solutions faster and it’s going to be harder to control spending. We knew procurement was going to have a host of challenges across the supply chain with this interruption with Covid. Our team on the engineering side believed we need to build faster.”

This led to Terzo’s team on the engineering side of the house to work diligently throughout the rest of 2020 and into 2021 on building code and new releases with the vision of getting the Terzo product into the industry quicker. “We thought we might be able to help procurement given the challenges they have now with all of these new needs that the business is going to bring,” he says. “We probably built the product about 50% faster just because there were no distractions so there’s pros and cons when everything happens in life. Our team really worked well together and they buckled down and they took that time to focus on Terzo. It’s something I’m very proud of this team for doing that.”

Brandon Card speaks with CPOstrategy at DPW Amsterdam 2023

Developing relationships

A big part of what Terzo does revolves around strengthening relationships by uniting teams to unlock insights so organisations can make smarter decisions and maximise value from suppliers, customers and partners. Card believes this mantra holds the key to long-term success in procurement.

“It’s critical for us because when we think about whether we’re doing spend analytics or contract intelligence, it’s all about understanding the relationship with these different entities you’re working with,” discusses Card. “We’re not there yet but my big vision in the future is to build an enterprise relationship intelligence platform to understand every single business that you’re working with, whether it’s a customer, a supplier or a partner. The truth with these big organisations, a lot of their suppliers are also partners or customers. These relationships are very complex and they’re very critical to innovation.

“If you’re doing anything in the cloud right now, if you’re doing anything with AI or even autonomous driving, you need partners to get this done. You can’t build it in-house. And years ago, people would build in-house. When we were young growing up in the nineties, everyone had to build their own data centres and build their own software. We’re in a world now where you can go and turn things on online in a few minutes, and that’s where we want to be so you can push product out faster, competitive advantage, and I think these relationships are critical to procurement having a competitive advantage and driving value for the whole business.”

Procurement’s place

In today’s world, procurement is in the driving seat. The function isn’t siloed anymore, stuck in a back-office room and out of the way of everyone else. Despite such significant innovation, there is sometimes a perception that procurement is still boring. For Card, he believes one of procurement’s biggest challenges is changing that age-hold mentality of procurement within a c-suite.

“It’s about educating the CEO or the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of large organisations just how critical procurement is. A lot of them just don’t understand,” he tells us. “That’s the challenge we have, and that’s something we want to change. In the future, the CFO is going to treat the head of sales the same they treat the CPO. Right now, the chief revenue officer gets special treatment in every organisation. If you run sales, you’re treated differently because you bring in revenue. If you’re procurement, you’re lucky if you’re at the table. But I do see that changing.”

While Card believes this shift is already beginning to happen with younger CFOs, change such as this doesn’t happen overnight. “By doing this, you’re going to have a really balanced organisation and reduce risk while optimising their costs,” he discusses. “Ultimately, they’re going to be more efficient, and the teams are going to be working a lot better together. There’s going to be a better culture when leadership buys in because then procurement feels valued. They work harder, and that vibe carries throughout the organisation. That’s something that we want to help push for procurement but we know it’s going to take time.”