Traditionally fragmented accounts payable and accounts receivable processes can be streamlined with agentic AI. 

Business-to-business (B2B) payments transactions totaled about $35.8 trillion in 2024, according to a Federal Reserve Bank payments report released Feb. 3. 

However, B2B money movement is not standardized, causing friction, Aharon Levine, vice president of payments strategy at accounts payable and receivable platform Melio, told FinAi News. 

Manual processes continue to slow down accounts payable transformation, according to the Institute of Financial Operations and Leadership’s (IFOL) Accounts Payable Automation Trends Report 2026, released in June. The survey was conducted in partnership with cloud-based software platform SAP Concur.  

The report found that 77% of respondents still manually enter invoices into their accounting systems, and just 19% of respondents said their AP environment is mostly or fully automated. 

The online survey was conducted between April and June, with responses from IFOL’s global community of financial professionals, IFOL Chief Executive Sam Hitchen-Rae told FinAi News. 

“It’s fragmented because there’s no standard of how you send an invoice,” Levine said. For example, 100 vendors could have 100 different preferences on how they want to be paid —whether it’s ACH, check, wire, online, payments links or something else.

Deploying agents

That’s where Melio is tapping agentic AI to bridge the gap between accounts payable and accounts receivable systems without having to onboard new payments portals or networks for each vendor, Levine said. 

The agents on Melio’s B2B payments network for SMBs, announced in June, autonomously log into supplier billing and AR systems and execute payments using vendor-specific preferred payment methods, Levine said. This allows SMB owners to pay all their vendors in one place while accommodating vendor preferences. 

“The heart of what we’re able to do at the end of the day, is we’re able to bridge fragmented AR processes with fragmented AP processes,” Levine said. 

AI in AP

AI embedded in AP processes is increasing, according to the IFOL report, which found: 

• 19% of organizations already use AI within AP; and 

• 30% plan to adopt AI for AP within the next 12 months. 

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