Will Fintechs Do to B2B What They Did to P2P? The Cross-Border Payments Question That Actually Matters

Martynas Bieliauskas, CEO of Bivial AG, joined a panel at FIBE Berlin 2026, on the multi-billion dollar opportunity for fintechs in cross-border payments. The moderator, Klaus Steinkamp, opened with a direct question: will fintechs replicate in B2B what they have already achieved in P2P?

It is a question worth examining carefully. Not because the answer is obvious, but because the way you answer it determines what kind of infrastructure you build — or choose.

The Scale of What Is Actually at Stake

Before assessing whether disruption is possible, it is worth understanding the scale of what is being discussed.

Global cross-border payments hit $195 trillion in 2024, with forecasts pointing toward $320 trillion by 2032. Within that, the B2B cross-border payments market alone reached a valuation of approximately $68 trillion in 2024, with projections to exceed $120 trillion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 7.2%.

The B2B segment is not a subset of the cross-border payments story. It is the dominant structural fact of it. In 2024, the B2B segment captured more than 52.7% of the global cross-border payments market — driven by corporate treasury flows, supply chain settlements, and international business operations.

Banks currently hold the majority of this. And they hold it not primarily because they are faster or cheaper, but because the operational requirements of B2B cross-border payments have, until recently, required institutional infrastructure that fintechs could not match.

That is the condition that is beginning to change.

What Fintechs Actually Achieved in P2P — and How

The P2P disruption story is well-documented, but the mechanism is often mischaracterised. Fintechs did not win in P2P primarily because they were more innovative. They won because the incumbent model was structurally misaligned with the problem.

The global average cost of sending $200 stood at 6.5% in Q1 2025 — far above the G20's 3% target, and far above what digital infrastructure should require. Just 35% of retail cross-border payments and 55% of wholesale payments reach beneficiaries within one hour, well short of international speed benchmarks.

The correspondent banking model, which underpins most traditional cross-border flows, was built for a pre-digital world. A single payment may traverse several correspondent banks and messaging steps before being settled, with each intermediary adding time, fees, and compliance checks applied repeatedly to the same transaction.

In P2P, fintechs bypassed this by building direct settlement networks, local currency accounts, and transparent pricing models. The transaction complexity in P2P was manageable enough to allow this approach to scale. Wise, for example, reported 22% cross-border volume growth to $185.2 billion in FY2025, built largely on that structural arbitrage.

In B2B, the structural complexity is categorically different — and that distinction matters more than most discussions acknowledge.

Why B2B Is a Different Problem Entirely

The assumption that B2B cross-border payments will follow the same disruption arc as P2P rests on a misreading of what makes B2B complex.

In P2P, the core requirements are speed, low cost, and accessibility. These are features that can be optimised through better technology and leaner networks. In B2B, those factors are still relevant, but they sit beneath a set of operational requirements that cannot be resolved through technology alone.

Multi-currency treasury management

A business operating across four or five jurisdictions does not just need to send money quickly. It needs to hold balances in multiple currencies, manage FX exposure at a group level, reconcile settlement across entities, and maintain a consistent audit trail. That is not a payment problem. It is a treasury architecture problem.

Compliance and AML obligations

Cross-border B2B payments must satisfy AML, KYC, and CFT requirements across multiple jurisdictions. The same payment may be screened several times by different intermediaries, each applying its own standards. Regulatory frameworks continue to intensify. Rising demand for compliance-driven solutions is one of the structural forces reinforcing the B2B segment's dominance, with strict AML and KYC rules pushing businesses toward providers with built-in regulatory screening and audit infrastructure.

Governance and audit readiness

Finance teams managing B2B treasury operations are accountable to auditors, regulators, and boards. The infrastructure they use must produce consistent reporting, maintain transaction logs, and support segregation of duties. These are not optional features. They are selection criteria.

Counterparty and settlement risk

In B2B, the amounts involved are materially larger. Over 85% of cross-border stablecoin transactions in 2024 were B2B, with average transaction sizes exceeding $50,000. At that scale, counterparty risk, account structure, and settlement certainty carry a different weight than in consumer payment flows.

A fintech that wins on speed and price in P2P is not automatically equipped to operate as the primary financial infrastructure for a cross-border financial group managing eight-figure treasury flows under regulatory scrutiny. The threshold is structurally different.

The Stablecoin Question

No serious discussion of cross-border payments in 2025 avoids stablecoins. They came up repeatedly on the panel, and the conversation was more nuanced than the typical either/or framing suggests.

The technology has genuinely matured. The total value of issued stablecoins has roughly doubled to $250 billion and is forecast to reach over $400 billion by year-end and $2 trillion by 2028. Payment-related stablecoin volumes grew from approximately $6 trillion in 2024 to $11.1 trillion in 2025, an 85% year-on-year increase. Regulatory frameworks are catching up — the EU's MiCA framework is now in force, and the US GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, established the regulatory framework for payment stablecoins with reserve requirements designed to maintain a stable one-to-one peg against the dollar.

This is meaningful progress. But the relevant question for B2B is not whether stablecoins can move value efficiently across borders. That is now demonstrated. The question is whether they can be embedded into institutional treasury and settlement workflows in a way that satisfies the operational requirements outlined above.

Among organisations currently using stablecoins, B2B applications dominate — 62% use stablecoins to pay suppliers. However, regulatory uncertainty remains a major concern, particularly in Asia at 81% and Europe at 79%. The top concern cited by organisations surveyed by EY is regulatory uncertainty, at 73% — nearly twice the level of the next highest concern.

The integration challenge is also substantive. Integration with legacy treasury systems remains costly, and widespread adoption will depend on scalable and reliable on- and off-ramp infrastructure. For corporate treasury teams operating across multiple jurisdictions with existing banking relationships, ERP integrations, and audit frameworks, the transition cost is not trivial.

Stablecoins are not a substitute for regulated account infrastructure in B2B. They are, at this stage, a potential component within a more complex treasury stack — and their role will expand in proportion to the regulatory clarity and integration depth that surrounds them.

What the Fintechs Most Likely to Gain Ground in B2B Are Actually Building

The fintechs best positioned to compete in B2B cross-border payments are not those optimising for transaction speed alone. They are those building regulated account infrastructure with the structural depth that B2B treasury operations actually require.

That means several things in practice.

Deposit-taking capability or regulated account structure

There is a material difference between a safeguarded account — where client funds are held separately from the provider's own balance sheet — and a deposit-taking model, where the institution holds funds as deposits with the regulatory protections and balance sheet obligations that entails. For CFOs and treasury leads making infrastructure decisions, this distinction affects counterparty risk perception, regulatory positioning, and long-term operational continuity.

Multi-rail connectivity

B2B treasury operations require flexibility across integration modes. Not all businesses route payments through API alone. SWIFT messaging remains the backbone of institutional cross-border settlement. Batch processing supports high-volume payout operations. A provider that forces businesses onto a single integration model is not serving B2B treasury needs — it is constraining them. API-driven systems are now integrated into 70% of ERP platforms, but SWIFT and batch connectivity remain essential for the segment of the market that operates at institutional scale.

Governance controls embedded in account structure

Role-based access, segregation of duties, approval workflows, and consistent reporting are not optional enhancements for B2B treasury users. They are the conditions under which finance teams can operate. Over 78% of large corporations now prefer digital channels for efficiency and cost reduction, but the preference is for digital channels that include the governance depth previously associated with traditional banking — not digital channels that trade governance for speed.

A single environment for acceptance, holding, and disbursement

Treasury fragmentation is one of the most consistent operational problems reported by CFOs managing cross-border flows. Multiple providers for acceptance, settlement, FX execution, and disbursement create reconciliation complexity, visibility gaps, and compliance overhead. The structural advantage of a unified account environment — where inflows, held balances, and outbound payments operate within the same regulated infrastructure — is measurable in operational terms, not just in product messaging.

The Infrastructure Question Beneath the Disruption Narrative

The panel at FIBE Berlin reflected a broader shift in how the market is framing competition in cross-border payments. The conversation has moved from product features to infrastructure questions. Regulatory positioning is becoming a selection criterion, not a compliance footnote.

According to McKinsey, payments generated $2.4 trillion in global revenue in 2023, with an additional $700 billion in growth expected by 2028. Nearly 40% of global banking executives believe payments innovation will be led by Big Tech by 2030. That figure reflects the degree to which incumbents recognise the structural pressure they are under — not just from fintechs, but from the entire ecosystem of new infrastructure providers entering B2B cross-border payments.

But for the CFOs, treasury leads, and payments operations directors who actually make infrastructure decisions, the relevant question is not who will lead payments innovation by 2030. It is which provider can function as a structurally reliable primary operating account for their business today — under current regulatory expectations, with current governance requirements, and with the integration depth their operations require.

That question is not answered by speed or price alone. It is answered by institutional structure, regulatory clarity, and operational depth.

Fintechs that understand this are building accordingly. Those that continue to position cross-border payments as primarily a cost and speed problem will find the B2B segment more resistant to the kind of disruption that reshaped P2P.

History does not always repeat. But the structural lessons from P2P are clear enough: the providers that take durable market share in B2B will be those that build for the actual complexity of the problem, not for a simplified version of it.