HSBC Study: Payments Are Becoming More Critical to B2B Growth

HSBC’s Global Payment Trends Report 2026 shows how international expansion, B2B e-commerce, embedded finance, real-time payments, and AI are reshaping growth

 

In the second half of 2026, businesses face an unusual growth environment. International expansion is firmly on the agenda, but pathways to growth are changing. Trade is becoming more regional. B2B commerce is moving online at scale. Buyers expect consumer-grade payment experiences. Technologies ranging from real-time payments to embedded finance and AI are moving closer to the center of the commercial payments model.

Those facts are hard to ignore. In HSBC’s Global Payment Trends Report 2026, a survey of more than 1,100 customers worldwide, nearly all respondents (96%) said international expansion is critical. Nearly 70% expect most of their revenue to come from overseas markets within five years. At the same time, 89% are increasing capital deployment in high-growth markets, and 91% expect cross-border activity to become more regional.

The larger message is that growth strategy and payments strategy are becoming harder to separate with companies needing more connected and controlled payment operations.

 

B2B e-commerce is Moving into a Different Weight Class

Perhaps the clearest example of the change happening is in B2B e-commerce.

The HSBC report projects that the global B2B e-commerce market will grow at a compound annual rate of 21% from 2026 through 2033, reaching $106 trillion. It also notes that business purchasers are becoming more comfortable placing individual online orders worth more than $500,000.

That changes the significance of the online B2B buying experience.

For years, companies could tolerate friction in B2B transactions that would be unacceptable in consumer commerce: manual invoicing, multiple approvals, disconnected payment processes and limited visibility after payment initiation. As larger transactions move online, those frictions become commercial weaknesses.

Buyers increasingly expect payment choice, speed, transparency and reliable settlement to be part of the purchasing experience. Sellers that cannot provide them risk creating friction precisely when a customer is ready to buy.

That is why payments should increasingly be viewed as part of the revenue engine, not simply the final step in the accounts receivable process.

 

Embedded Finance Connects Payments with Working Capital

The next development is the increasingly direct connection between commerce and financing.

According to the report, 84% of buyers expect significant growth in embedded finance within procurement over the next five years. HSBC says that banks and platforms able to combine financing, payments and data-driven decisioning will be better positioned for the next phase of B2B e-commerce.

The appeal is straightforward. Financing can be presented when and where a transaction occurs instead of forcing the buyer or supplier into a separate process.

Commercial and virtual cards can also extend buyer payment cycles while allowing suppliers to receive funds promptly. API-enabled financing can give business buyers additional payment terms at checkout. At the same time, transaction-level data can automate reconciliation and provide teams with better visibility into spending and liquidity.

The “so what” for finance leaders is noteworthy: working capital decisions are increasingly being embedded directly inside purchasing and payment workflows.

Growth therefore depends not only on whether a company can sell into another market, but on whether its financial infrastructure can support the buyer and supplier relationships required to make that growth sustainable.

 

Cross-border Payments Need to ‘Feel Domestic’

International growth creates another expectation gap.

Companies expanding into new markets may be operating globally, but customers and suppliers increasingly judge payments against their best domestic experiences. They expect fast settlement, clear status information, transparent foreign exchange costs and fewer surprises.

As trade corridors shift and digital commerce accelerates, clients increasingly expect a domestic-like experience globally, HSBC said, combining speed and reliability with transparency, richer data and stronger controls.

That expectation becomes harder to satisfy as companies add currencies, payment providers, local banking relationships and regulatory requirements.

The answer is not necessarily to add more connections. It is to simplify and orchestrate them. Modern payment infrastructure can provide access to local clearing, greater payment-status visibility and more centralized control without requiring treasury to recreate a separate operating model in every market.

For companies pursuing international growth, that makes payments infrastructure an important component of scalability and operational resilience.

 

Better Payment Data Equates to Growth

The migration toward ISO 20022 is giving payments richer and more standardized information, helping companies automate reconciliation, improve cash-flow forecasting and strengthen sanctions, AML and fraud controls. The HSBC report also notes that organizations face a November 2026 requirement for standardized remitter or beneficiary address information in payment instructions.

That makes the current moment particularly important.

Treasury teams should resist treating ISO 20022 as a technical file-format project. Its greater value comes from what companies can do with cleaner, structured payment data: automate exceptions, improve straight-through processing, strengthen controls, and gain a clearer picture of liquidity.

That capability becomes more valuable as transaction volumes and geographic complexity rise. In other words, data quality may sound like an operational issue. For a company scaling B2B commerce globally, it is increasingly a growth issue.

 

AI and Agentic Commerce Could Accelerate the Next Transition

The report points to agentic AI commerce, in which intelligent software agents can discover products, negotiate and complete transactions for consumers or businesses. Those agents could eventually choose payment methods dynamically based on price, speed, risk and other real-time factors.

For B2B organizations, the immediate lesson is not to redesign everything around autonomous purchasing tomorrow. It is to make payment infrastructure flexible enough to accommodate more automation.

Treasury is moving in the same direction. Fewer than 30% of treasury organizations have adopted AI in finance so far, according to the report, yet more than 70% of respondents believe AI could automate as much as one-quarter of current activities within five years.

 

The Growth Question for Treasury has Changed

The traditional question was whether treasury could support the business after entering a new market. Increasingly, the question is whether treasury and payments capabilities can help make that expansion possible in the first place.

A $106 trillion B2B e-commerce market, more regional trade networks, embedded working capital, and real-time cross-border expectations all point in the same direction. Companies will need connected payment operations capable of scaling alongside their growth ambitions.

That means simplifying connectivity, improving payment data, embedding financing where it removes friction and strengthening control as transaction speeds increase. The companies that get that combination right will not merely process the growth their businesses create. They will help enable it.

 

Read the full HSBC report