Smart money just got smarter: How AI is helping move money in 2026

A lot was said about AI in 2025. Most of it was noise.

In U.S. finance, noise is expensive. We deal with cash flow, controls, compliance, and accountability — and trust is the job. So at Payhawk, we didn’t rush to bolt “AI” onto workflows that weren’t ready.

Instead, we focused on one standard: AI should do real work safely and within the controls finance teams already operate.

That is what “Smart money just got smarter” means at Payhawk. It’s about using AI to help money move faster through a business in 2026 — without loosening control.

In 2025, we launched two AI-native products, Travel and Procurement, and they crossed $1M in sales in the first 33 days (while it took us 33 months to reach that milestone with our first product).

We also upgraded our Global Payment Account, expanding payment coverage across 120 countries, significantly enhancing FX capabilities, and adding additional safeguards for customer funds with J.P. Morgan.

The category is expanding: From smart cards to how money moves

Spend management started with smart cards and proactive controls, proving you can govern spend before it happens — not just review it after.

Traditional banks don’t solve this because their responsibility ends when the payment clears and funds settle. But for a business, the hard part is the work around the payment: the request, budget check, and approval before it, and the receipts, coding, reconciliation, and audit after it.

That’s why managing money still slows U.S. businesses down. The work is manual and fragmented, spread across too many handoffs and systems. Too often, finance teams are chasing exceptions and piecing the story together after the fact, instead of steering the business in real time.

The category is expanding toward total control, simplification, and automation of how money moves end-to-end — from request to approval to payment to accounting, across bills, cards, expenses, travel, and procurement.

AI has the potential to change the experience, but only if it’s built on the hard foundations finance requires. In this domain, the hard part has never been the interface.

It’s permissions, approvals, audit trails, ERP depth, and payments execution. “AI-native” in finance doesn’t mean starting from scratch. It means making that foundation feel effortless for employees, while staying rigorous for finance.

That’s the shift we put into our Winter ‘25 Release. Spend becomes a conversation, but control stays tight.

At the platform level, the direction is simple:

• A Global Money Account is the foundation, so funds can be held, paid, and controlled in one place
• A software orchestration layer that unifies Cards & Expenses, Travel, Bill Payments, and Procure-to-Pay — enforcing policies, rules, budgets, roles, and approvals on every transaction
• AI embedded across the experience (web, mobile, Slack, and Teams) to automate the work around money movement, with enterprise-grade security and governance built in. AI that works across channels, and delivers a best-in-class experience inside our own mobile and web applications
• New products that weren’t possible before — for example, an AI-native travel experience that books and manages trips based on your preferences, then handles options, approvals, payment, and the trip record. Or procurement that starts as a conversation and turns into a compliant purchase flow, without endless forms

What we can prove from 2025: Customers trust Payhawk with more than cards

The clearest signal of progress is what customers actually run through the platform — and how much of their spend flows through Payhawk. Three things stand out:

1) More total spend — and it’s not just cards

In 2025, Payhawk reached $3.2B in annual Total Payment Volume (TPV), up 96% year over year, demonstrating strong product adoption and growth.

It’s a mix of card and bank payments — where high-control work lives: bills, suppliers, approvals, and payment execution.

The introduction of our Global Payments, with competitive FX rates supporting 120+ currencies, significantly expanded our international payment coverage. This was one of our most requested capabilities, enabling customers to pay suppliers at a fraction of typical bank costs — with FX rates more competitive than Revolut and Wise, and SWIFT payments at roughly a quarter of the cost of major U.S. and European banks.

Importantly, we introduced Global Payments without relying on additional third-party partners that require separate KYC processes and create a fragmented customer experience.

2) More mid-market and enterprise adoption

Mid-market and enterprise finance teams invest in spend management software to enforce policy across entities, departments, and systems — and to stand up to audit and compliance scrutiny.

Combined, Mid-Market and Enterprise now represent 48% of our customers, up from 22.0% in 2021. This has been a key growth driver for us over the years and a strong signal that the category is moving upmarket in the U.S.

It also reflects the maturity of our software stack, which can now support organizations with thousands of employees operating across multiple entities and jurisdictions.

3) Used across markets, not as a local add-on

Today, over 5,000 businesses in 32 countries use Payhawk to manage spend with a consistent control model across entities and geographies.

Put simply, customers are running more of their total spend through Payhawk — across more workflows and in increasingly complex operating environments.

Becoming AI-native as a company, not just a product

We don’t just ship AI. We want to operate Payhawk differently because of it.

That’s why we hired a Chief Efficiency Officer and built a dedicated team focused on rethinking high-impact processes end-to-end, starting with areas like outbound sales execution and compliance-driven onboarding. He’s a former founder and CTO who has built and scaled a company, raised $180M from investors like Index and Insight, and now leads an engineering team using AI to redesign how key departments work.

The goal isn’t “AI adoption.” It’s measurable business performance: faster pipeline generation, accelerated onboarding, less administrative work, and higher quality outcomes. We want Payhawk to be one of the few established fintech companies that can operate with the speed and execution of an AI-native SaaS startup.

The principle is the same as in the product: don’t automate a few steps and call it transformation. Redesign the workflow end-to-end, let AI handle repetitive work, maintain strong quality guardrails, and measure the impact on speed and results.

Our approach to AI: efficiency over hype

We’re not building AI for demos or webinars. We’re building AI that reduces workload, strengthens compliance, and stands up to audit scrutiny.

We started where the pain is real — and where “better automation” isn’t enough — especially in business travel and procurement. AI allows us to change the experience and the economics, not just speed up the same legacy workflow.

In 2026, our bar stays the same:

• AI must be usable by employees without training
• It must increase compliance — not bypass it
• It must reduce operational load for finance, without weakening control

That’s the operating model behind our 2026 focus.

What we’ll focus on in 2026

• 20% of our customers booking travel through our AI-native product
• 70% of our customers paying their bills using our 0.3% FX rates across 130+ countries
• 50% of customer spend flowing through the platform within 60 days of signing up
• 3x higher productivity for key roles like Business Development and Compliance Analysts

If you’re a customer, thank you for pushing us to earn trust through what we ship — not what we claim.

If you’re evaluating spend management in 2026, ask this: Does the platform simply help you pay and track? Or does it remove friction from how money moves — from request to approval to payment to accounting — with strong controls built in and a world-class FX and payments infrastructure behind it?

That’s the standard we’re building to.