Digital Payments Fail to Automate Commercial Transactions
The B2B payment landscape has undergone significant changes in recent years, with electronic transactions becoming increasingly prevalent. According to research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, B2B check payments declined from 4.6 billion transactions in 2015 to 2.7 billion in 2024, yet their value barely moved, from $15.4 trillion to $15 trillion.
Despite this progress, a major obstacle remains: connecting payment data to commercial transactions. The Cleveland Fed's research identified fragmented remittance standards, legacy accounting systems, and incompatible data formats as ongoing challenges to automation.
The issue is not with the speed of payments, but rather with interoperability. Suppliers often receive electronic payments quickly, yet still spend hours determining which invoices they satisfy, whether discounts were applied correctly, and how the transaction should appear in their accounting system.