The WEX 2027 B2B Payments Trends Report is here. Built from proprietary research and data across the payments industry, it identifies five shifts likely to define how businesses build, manage, and think about payments next year. Below is a preview of what’s inside. 

Download the full report for the complete picture. 

Who’s driving payments decisions in 2027?

It’s not just Finance anymore. IT and Technology/Engineering professionals now make up 32% of payments decision-makers — the single largest job function, ahead of Finance/Accounting at 25%. Nearly half of organizations (45%) now list IT as a distinct stakeholder in payment decisions, separate from Finance. The reason? Payment platforms are increasingly evaluated the way any other piece of core infrastructure is: on integration, API quality, and automation support, not just cost.

Is AI actually working in payments, or is it just a buzzword?

94% of organizations are using AI in payments or plan to soon. But ask the same organizations how much they trust AI-driven decisions, and the picture changes fast — data security and lack of trust top the list of concerns. The gap is even wider for agentic AI, where adoption is still in single digits and most organizations cite one specific barrier well ahead of cost or integration difficulty.

How exposed are businesses to payments fraud?

More than a quarter of organizations experienced payments fraud in just the past six months. Yet the tools most widely used to stop it are the oldest ones available: multi-factor authentication (85%) and manual review (62%). Only 34% have AI-based fraud detection in place — and that drops to 21% among Mid-Market organizations. Fraud prevention now ranks as organizations’ second-biggest B2B payments challenge, just behind cost.

Are payments becoming invisible infrastructure?

Increasingly, yes. Embedded finance is projected to exceed $7 trillion in transaction value in 2026 — nearly tripling in five years (Bain and Company). The catch: standing up an embedded payments program has gotten easy, but scaling one hasn’t — new currencies, banking relationships, and compliance requirements each add weight that either gets absorbed by good architecture or turns into technical debt later.

Why are businesses consolidating payment providers?

More than 90% of organizations use two or more payment providers just to run their payment lifecycle, and 30% juggle four or more. That fragmentation carries a real administrative cost — 74% say managing multiple vendor logins and contracts is a real administrative burden, and 55% say their systems simply don’t talk to each other. It’s no surprise that a strong majority would rather work with a single partner that handles banking, processing, and card issuing all at once.

What ties these five trends together?

A gap between what payments could be doing for a business and what most organizations have actually built. Some of that gap is about who’s in the room for payment decisions. Some of it is about which parts of the process still run on manual review. And some of it is about how much of “AI in payments” is substance versus a label stapled onto business as usual.

2027 won’t reward the flashiest pitch. It will reward whoever closes that gap first.

Learn more about how WEX payment solutions can be tailored to your business, so you can accelerate and streamline operations while creating lasting growth and success for your organization.

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