As retailers gear up for the influx of holiday shopping, there is a whole segment of buyers hiding in the checkout: B2B. At year end, these business buyers (those making purchases on behalf of their company) often have the task of using or losing the remaining budget, making them an attractive but overlooked target audience. And with B2B e-commerce continuing to increase—McKinsey & Company reports nearly two-thirds of B2B companies are now fully transacting online—forward-looking merchants may find business buyers can provide retailers with reliability and a strong return on investment.
Fortunately, there’s plenty of opportunity to attract, win and retain these corporate customers heading into 2025. By better understanding and catering to the evolving needs of business buyers, retailers can capture their share of this market. For merchants looking to future-proof their payments strategy, here are a few key B2B technology trends that are driving loyalty and average order value for corporate shoppers.
Enhancing the payments experience
The B2B payments flow is a complex process with multiple stakeholders and numerous layers of infrastructure. On top of these intricacies, a recent study conducted with Murphy Research uncovered common frustrations among global business buyers, including inefficient processes, incorrect invoices and slow onboarding. These issues often stem from outdated, disjointed back-office systems.
Retailers can capitalize on payments and invoicing technology that provides choice and convenience to buyers to cultivate loyalty and efficiency. Given the unique requirements of businesses, B2B buyers need to be given the choice of how to pay at checkout. Trade credit, which allows for 30-, 60-, or 90-day payment terms, is particularly favored for larger and frequent purchases, and can significantly improve the buyer experience. The desire for flexibility also extends to invoicing. In fact, the same study showed flexibility with payment options is so important that 78% of business buyers claim it is necessary for merchants to offer invoicing. Retailers must adapt by integrating automated trade credit and invoicing solutions to stay competitive.
Incorporating composable commerce solutions
From browsing a retailer’s site to completing the checkout process, today’s B2B buyers increasingly expect a tailored digital commerce experience. Composable commerce, a concept popularized by Gartner, implies a modular approach where businesses create customized, agile commerce systems using interchangeable components. With this ‘pick-and-choose’ strategy, companies can combine the top technology solutions and services to build commerce experiences tailored to their specific industry or buyer needs. For example, business buyers often require customizable fields for tracking purchase orders or SKUs. Offering such flexibility can meet specific invoicing and reporting needs, making it an easy choice to encourage corporate shoppers to return and make future purchases.
Leveraging AI and APIs to stay secure and nimble
The integration of AI and APIs is reshaping how businesses manage their operations and customer relationships, while helping remain flexible for future growth and changing buyer demands. Even though generative AI captures much attention, the true potential of AI and machine learning lies in its behind-the scenes applications and when it’s paired with human functions. For example, AI can enhance retail fraud detection by analyzing vast amounts of data quickly to identify suspicious patterns. In a B2B transaction, this helps minimize risk in extending trade credit (a key payment preference of business buyers discussed above), while also offering proactive insights so businesses can see trends of when to increase trade credit lines and stimulate purchases.
The flexible nature of API functionality in the payments tech stack helps merchants adapt to changing and growing buyer needs. Innovative partnerships made possible through APIs help build a dynamic merchant ecosystem. One growing use case is leveraging a suite of APIs to enable banks to deliver automated accounts receivable, underwriting and trade credit management solutions to their commercial retail clients. The upcoming B2B payments conference in Kansas City, Crossroads, will dive into this topic with Mastercard and Corsair to showcase the role of financial and operational partners in creating scalable order-to-cash solutions that deliver the best possible experience for all parties.
“By better understanding and catering to the evolving needs of business buyers, retailers can capture more of their share of the expanding B2B e-commerce market. The opportunity is here to make payments technology improvements that will reduce checkout friction and build lasting buyer loyalty.”
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As digital transformation continues its rapid acceleration, merchants must keep up with the latest retail technology trends or risk losing B2B market share to competitors. By enhancing the checkout experience with more payments choice, embracing composable commerce and leveraging AI and APIs for flexibility, retailers can create a more responsive, efficient and customer-centric approach. With a busy Q4 shopping season ahead, the opportunity is here to make technology improvements that will reduce checkout friction and build lasting buyer loyalty.
Brandon Spear, CEO of TreviPay
Brandon Spear leads TreviPay with expertise in managing large, diverse global teams. His strength is discerning and focusing on the most important challenges facing an organization at a particular point in time and unifying all stakeholders behind accomplishing a set of specific goals. Brandon has a unique ability to connect across all levels of an organization, motivate staff with diverse skill sets, while ensuring a common alignment and results.
