Payhawk wins best Business Payments System Award at PayTech 2026

This article first appeared as a Press release.

The news

• Payhawk wins Best Business Payments System at the PayTech Awards 2026.
• The win lands as new research exposes a gap in corporate finance: near-universal demand for AI-native operations, set against a majority still locked into legacy bank-issued cards.
• 84% still bank their company cards with their primary partner, and 73% say switching would be operationally complex, even though most would move for better cost, reporting or card management.

Payhawk named Best Business Payments System at the PayTech Awards 2026. The win lands as new Payhawk research exposes a widening divide in corporate finance: near-universal demand for AI-native operations, set against a majority still tied to legacy bank-issued cards and payments that were never built to deliver it.

Payhawk, the AI-native spend management platform, today announced it has been named Best Business Payments System at the PayTech Awards 2026. The recognition comes as new proprietary research from the company reveals that corporate finance is caught between the AI-native operations it now demands and the legacy banking relationships that prevent it from getting there.

Based on a survey of 1,520 senior finance and procurement professionals across 25 countries, the study finds that finance teams stay with bank-issued payments because switching is difficult, not because they are satisfied. More than eight in ten (84%) still source their company cards from their primary banking partner, and 81% say they prioritise existing bank relationships over the efficiency gains fintech could deliver. Nearly three-quarters (73%) say separating cards from that banking relationship would be operationally complex.

Yet the status quo is not delivering. Only around half (51%) say their card functionality is highly optimised, and just 22% strongly agree. At the same time, roughly seven in ten would move to a new provider for better cost (73%), reporting (70%) or card management (67%). The lock-in, in other words, is held together by switching friction, not by performance.

Despite this inertia, demand for AI in finance operations is now nearly universal. 98% of finance leaders want AI to take over administrative work so their teams can focus on strategic priorities; 97% expect AI agents to handle routine employee expense and payment queries; and 97% want AI-assisted forecasting. The obstacle is structural: AI-native operations are extremely difficult to run on payment rails a business neither owns nor can reconfigure.

This is the gap Payhawk was built to close. Rather than sitting on top of someone else’s payment rails, Payhawk owns the underlying payments infrastructure: a Global Money Account safeguarded by J.P. Morgan, with dedicated IBANs in 32+ countries, multi-currency payment capabilities spanning 120+ currencies at a 0.3% FX mark-up, and zero-fee SEPA, Faster Payments and ACH transfers. On top of that infrastructure, AI agents enforce rules, policies and budgets on every transaction, giving finance teams banking-grade reliability and intelligent, real-time control in a single system, instead of forcing a choice between the two.

Konstantin Dzhengozov, co-founder and CFO of Payhawk, says:

For years, finance teams have accepted a trade-off: the reliability of their bank, or the intelligence of modern software, but rarely both...Our research shows that trade-off has become untenable. Nearly every finance leader now wants AI doing the administrative heavy lifting, yet more than eight in ten are still running on bank-issued payments that simply can’t deliver it. Being named Best Business Payments System validates a fundamentally different model: owning the payment rails and building the intelligence directly on top. That is what AI-native finance actually requires, and it is why we built Payhawk the way we did.

The recognition caps a period of rapid platform expansion for Payhawk, which continues to extend its AI-native architecture deeper into treasury and procurement orchestration. “Owning the rails was the hard part,” added Dzhengozov. "It’s also what lets us put AI everywhere finance actually spends and moves money, not just in the reporting layer after the fact."

Want the full picture? Payhawk's research into how 1,520 finance and procurement leaders are navigating the gap between AI ambition and legacy banking is available now via a series of four in-depth reports. Read part 4 and take away the 30/60/90 sequencing guide to scaling AI in finance.