This Week in B2B: SMB Innovation, Trade Disruptions Shape New Digital Economy

Across boardrooms and tech hubs alike, digital innovation, shifting global trade policies, and the relentless drive of small businesses are colliding, creating new imperatives for CFOs and treasurers alike.

It wasn’t long ago that corporate finance and treasury departments operated in parallel universes. Today, those walls are coming down. According to a recent PYMNTS Intelligence survey, 80% of tech treasurers believe that forging closer ties with finance would yield significant benefits for their organizations.

The rationale is clear: As financial operations grow more complex thanks to globalization, regulatory demands, and a volatile macroeconomic climate, the need for collaboration between finance and treasury has never been more acute.

At the heart of this convergence lies the digital revolution. CFOs are now “crashing the B2B sales party,” deploying a new wave of digital payment tools, including virtual cards and automated payables platforms, to modernize archaic processes and unlock new revenue streams. At the same time, digital procurement has become a C-suite priority — not simply for efficiency’s sake, but as a lever for strategic agility in turbulent times.

And the push toward digitization isn’t just about process improvement; it’s about intelligence. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is quickly becoming a sought-after tool among enterprise CFOs, with many eager to harness its power to gain real-time visibility into spending, automate vendor negotiations, and optimize budgets.

The shockwaves of digital transformation are being felt even more acutely in the small and medium-sized business (SMB) sector. For SMBs, which have long been the engines of economic growth for Main Streets around the world, access to capital and efficient payment systems can make the difference between thriving and merely surviving.

One major trend: the meteoric rise of instant payments. PYMNTS Intelligence reveals that as the frequency of ad hoc transactions increases — spurred by the gig economy, eCommerce, and just-in-time supply chains — small businesses are turning to real-time payment platforms to speed up cash flow and meet the demands of customers and suppliers

Elsewhere, European FinTech Froda recently raised $22 million to expand its embedded finance offerings to SMBs across the continent, addressing a stubborn funding gap that has long plagued small businesses in the region.

Domestically, the acquisition of Ampla by FundThrough signals another step in the evolution of SMB finance. The combined entity aims to provide a more robust invoice factoring platform, enabling businesses to unlock working capital trapped in receivables and invest in operations with greater confidence.

Yet, the road ahead is not without bumps. According to the Atlanta Federal Reserve, small firms are less likely than their larger counterparts to pass increased costs onto customers, leaving them more exposed to margin pressures when inflation or supply shocks hit. This dynamic underscores the critical role that new financing and payment solutions will play in helping SMBs navigate economic headwinds.

Read also: The Digital Asset Primer: Corporate Treasury Moves From HODL to Yield

If there’s a single factor that has kept CFOs and operations leaders up at night over the past few months, it’s the unpredictability of global trade policy. The latest waves of tariffs and shifting geopolitical alliances have fundamentally altered the calculus of supply chain management and procurement.

Across the U.S. steel market alone, President Donald Trump’s chokepoint “Anaconda Plan” has sent shockwaves through buyers and suppliers alike as firms scramble to adapt to rising costs and new sourcing realities.

“The pain is real,” Shep Hickey, the CEO of Bryzos, an online steel marketplace, told PYMNTS this week. “Inventory is being hoarded, prices are rising, and decision-making has shifted from the purchase price to the replacement cost.”

But where there is disruption, there is also opportunity. The imposition of tariffs has served as a catalyst for a digital procurement revolution, accelerating the adoption of automation, data analytics, and embedded financial services.

Companies are leveraging these tools to mitigate the impact of cost volatility, optimize supplier relationships, and maintain business continuity in an increasingly unpredictable world.

This spirit of adaptation extends beyond procurement and into the heart of logistics. The launch of platforms like Freightos Enterprise is giving large shippers unprecedented control over global freight procurement, allowing them to compare options, secure space, and manage risk in real time.

And separately, in this new era of digitized finance and global commerce, cybersecurity is more than a compliance requirement — it’s an existential imperative. The rise of credential-based compromises has prompted banks and financial institutions to rethink their security postures, investing in smarter authentication, real-time monitoring, and proactive threat detection.

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