In 2026, market forces are triggering a reckoning in B2B payments. The era of “automate it” now turns on a tough question: is it working?

The business payments landscape is shifting from years of new tech implementation to a period of measurement, and from siloed rails to a network-of-networks strategy designed to unlock speed and monetization at scale.

The winners will treat AI as a force multiplier for human judgment, use freed-up brain capacity to make demonstrably better decisions, and prove which digital strategies work.

By the end of this cycle, a clear throughline emerges: productivity alone isn’t enough. Proof of performance is what team leaders and management expect to see.

“We’re in a sea of sameness. We need differentiation and reflection [in 2026].” – Gunita Bindra, VP, Bottomline

Gunita Bindra, Bottomline’s VP for Paymode Business Development, puts it plainly, saying 2026 is “a year of differentiation and reflection.” That means measuring metrics that matter, keeping monetization up-front, and flexing new forms of market leadership muscle that reflects the power of finance teams.

 

AI with Human Oversight

For all the talk about generative AI taking jobs, gains in 2026 and the immediate future just beyond will come from pairing human judgment with machine acceleration.

Bindra said the real magic happens when teams use prompts to design workflows that elevate decision quality, and in so doing, prioritize supplier payments, assess risk, compress cycle times, and surface the few actions that can move a P&L.

As she put it, “the way we use AI is driven by the human mind. You are at least tripling productivity or intelligence levels” when AI is used to support humans at work. That compounding effect only shows when teams are explicit about the questions they ask and the outcomes they measure. That’s the so-called “Prompt Economy” at work.

On practical application, her guidance is direct: prompt your system to rank payments by due date, supplier profile, days sales outstanding (DSO) and the like. Use agentic AI to compress internal manual tasks, from polishing executive emails to assembling board-ready decks. Then, turn to the harder challenge: true differentiation when everyone uses identical technology.

 

Making Automation Pay Off

The days of easy wins with automation are done. CFOs and AP leaders must now formalize measurement. Bindra said it’s time to validate the assumptions baked into automation business cases like late payments, on-time rates, touchless throughput, exception rates, approval cycle time, and the one that concentrates minds in a snap: monetization.

She said a fundamental question to answer in 2026 can be stated as follows: “Is my money making money?” It’s a deceptively simple KPI that reframes cash management as an investment discipline. That means knowing when to pay early, when to hold, how to maximize rebates, and how to redeploy those gains into customer-facing capability.

She pointed to a standout case: one CFO redirected rebate gains into a new mobile feature, turning back-office yield into front-of-house innovation. It’s the new flywheel: payments optimization funds innovation, which strengthens network effects, and so on.

Part of Bindra’s 2026 agenda is for more creativity in problem solving, especially with AI. “We’re in a sea of sameness. We need differentiation and reflection," she said. Reflection is about auditing whether the stack is delivering. Differentiation focuses on upgrading processes from efficiency claims to measurable business outcomes based on expertise.

 

Scaling Through Partnerships

It’s the sad song of payments: siloed networks can’t cover the market’s complexity. Bindra said the next phase of B2B payments is partnerships, with various networks linking up to “maximize the digital payment opportunity in the market."

One size doesn’t fit all suppliers, so in a world of expanding partnerships, buyers need orchestration to reduce friction, improve acceptance, and optimize cost and yield.

To that end, she framed 2026 as “a year of partnerships,” where competitive strengths snap together to expand reach and performance. In practice, that looks like routing intelligence that balances interchange, rebates, acceptance, and timing across card and ACH, driven by supplier profiles, invoice terms, and cash positions.

The business case is straightforward: higher straight-through-processing (STP) rates, better economics, and fewer stranded payments due to crossing borders or subpar messaging.

 

Reinvesting Time Where It Matters Most

If automation and AI give back time, in 2026 we will decide how that time is reinvested. Bindra said leaders should start with a first principle: ask teams whether they have what they need, technically and strategically, to accomplish priority tasks. That unlocks the next-order effect: elevating decision quality and strategic influence across finance.

She expects “a lot more middle management [to] rise to leadership positions, and more individual contributors [to] become better leaders” as manual work recedes and strategic bandwidth expands.

The practical move for CFOs here is to shift capacity from reconciliation and reporting to scenario planning, supplier strategy, and cash yield optimization. Those are all areas where human judgment amplified by AI drives superior outcomes.

Bindra’s recommended action plan for team leaders in 2026 team is as follows:

  • Codify human-in-the-loop AI: Define prompts and approval of workflows that improve decision quality, especially around payment prioritization, supplier terms, and cash positioning.
  • Make monetization a KPI: Treat “Is my money making money?” as a standard ‘metric,’ with explicit targets tied to payment timing, rebates, and yield.
  • Validate your automation: Compare promised ROI to outcomes like cycle time, on-time pay, exceptions, and working capital performance.
  • Build your network strategy: Partner across rails; deploy routing intelligence to balance cost, acceptance, and monetization at the supplier level.
  • Redeploy talent: Move skilled operators into higher-order analysis and cross-functional initiatives; equip them with AI and data models that accelerate insight.

Add AI to that list as table stakes and true differentiation starts happening for teams who ask better questions/prompts, and then effectively operationalize AI advice. This is why Bindra’s obsession with ‘sameness’ is smart.

In 2026, true differentiation will separate the finance organizations that are merely keeping up from the ones that compound advantages to stay ahead of the pack.

And if you need a gut-check metric along the way, remember Bindra’s north star: “Is my money making money?” It’s a way of embracing innovation without losing sight of core objectives like higher sales, greater customer satisfaction, and market share growth.