What is the essence of stablecoin B2B payments?

Author: DeFi Cheetah - e/acc Source: X, @DeFi_Cheetah

In the perception of many, B2B payment systems seem to simply involve pressing a "send" button to transfer funds from one entity to another. Therefore, many stablecoin projects also focus on enhancing the efficiency of transaction channels, such as checks, wire transfers, or digital transfer technologies, but often overlook the critical workflows that are highly relevant to specific business scenarios both before and after the transfer of funds.

In fact, B2B payments are the final outcome of a large number of workflows. These workflows mainly revolve around data validation, compliance checks, and multiple approvals, with a significant amount of preparation work completed before the actual payment occurs.

This misunderstanding of B2B payments—from "just need to make a payment" to "must first verify contract terms and operational details"—is particularly evident in cross-border transactions. The legal frameworks of different countries, localized tax regulations, and exchange rate fluctuations significantly increase the complexity of cross-border operations. At the same time, with the rise of digital assets, especially stablecoins (as described by @hadickM), these emerging tools are gradually intersecting with traditional workflows, and if combined with powerful process automation capabilities, they have the potential to greatly simplify the flow of funds.

The core point of this article is: The introduction of stablecoins should not merely be seen as an enhancement of payment execution efficiency, but must be part of an overall workflow optimization. Only in this way can we truly unleash the trillions of dollars market potential proposed by @PanteraCapital. In the entire stablecoin payment stack, the most value-creating link is the coordination layer, as emphasized by @robbiepetersen_, which can effectively simplify complex workflows and cover more regions.

B2B Payment Demand Hierarchy Model

Understanding B2B payments can be aided by a "demand pyramid" model, with layers as follows:

1. Data Collection and Invoice Management

B2B transactions typically require the consolidation of supplier information, analysis of invoice content, and reconciliation with purchase orders or delivery records. 2. Compliance and Regulatory Review

Companies must ensure that suppliers comply with local or international regulatory requirements, such as KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) regulations. 3. Tax Reconciliation

Cross-border transactions involve complex tax obligation assessments, such as withholding tax, value-added tax (VAT), etc., which are particularly complicated in international shipping of goods. 4. Approval and Audit Process

Most organizations have multi-layer approval chain requirements and need to maintain complete audit trails and real-time approval visualization throughout the process. 5. Payment Execution

The actual movement of funds—whether through checks, ACH, SWIFT, or other channels—occurs at the top of the entire pyramid.

Recognizing that payment execution is merely the superficial action and its success relies on the collaborative support of multiple underlying processes is key to designing an efficient and reliable B2B payment system. Ignoring data traceability, compliance processes, or the integrity of the approval chain may lead to delays or failures in the entire flow of funds.

Cross-Border Payment Workflow: Where is the Real Bottleneck?

Compared with domestic payments, cross-border B2B payments have amplified the existing challenges in various aspects:

1. Regulatory Complexity

Each jurisdiction has unique requirements for foreign currency transactions, which not only include AML/KYC compliance checks but often also involve specific document requirements related to trade regulations and customs procedures.

2. Tax Obligations Refinement

From import duties to value-added tax (VAT), cross-border transactions require precise tax tracking, and sometimes even necessitate the allocation of tax responsibilities across different countries and regions.

3. Extended Approval Levels

There is often a complex chain of approval processes between the subsidiary and the parent company. Any errors in local compliance, product assortment, or document preparation can lead to an indefinite halt in the payment process.

In fact, these complexities often pose a greater obstacle to timely and accurate payments than the friction of the payment channels themselves.

Industry Case Analysis

1. Freight and Logistics: Not Just Freight Audit

Background:

In the field of freight and logistics, multiple carriers charge separate fees for transportation, loading and unloading, additional fees, and even penalties for early or delayed arrivals. Fluctuations in fuel prices, combined with multi-segment transport arrangements, often lead to extremely complicated bills.

Workflow Pain Points:

The core issue is not as simple as "paying the trucking company," but rather reliably matching each expense with the contractual agreement, verifying whether the weight of the goods and transportation distance are calculated correctly, and properly handling various exceptional situations.

Importance:

B2B payment solutions that focus solely on simplifying the payment interface and ignore the heavy lifting of invoice verification won't really solve business pain points. A better way to do this is to integrate shipping documents directly, track changes in shipping arrangements in real time, warn of invoice anomalies, and intercept errors before payment.

Real Case:

Companies like Loop initially focus on transportation auditing and workflow logic, and then integrate payment functions. Another approach is to use AI to automatically scan and parse transportation documents, pushing anomalies to a processing queue and triggering payments only after validation is complete.

2. Construction Industry and Upstream Supply Chain Management

Background:

Construction projects typically involve multi-layered supply chains, ranging from wood, cement to electrical and mechanical subsystems, and the tax burden varies significantly based on the region and type of project.

Workflow Pain Points:

Payment is not just about "purchasing 50 cubic meters of concrete"; it must also ensure that the procurement is associated with a specific project or permit number, correctly applies the local tax rate, and ensures that the procurement behavior complies with the project budget and authorization codes.

Importance:

If the goal is solely to accelerate payments without capturing and automating these approval and compliance processes, it will ultimately be difficult to solve the fundamental issues. More valuable B2B solutions can automatically complete approvals, integrate building permit management, coordinate subcontractor budgets, and handle partial deliveries.

Practical Case:

The Nickel platform integrates a tax rate calculation engine, capable of managing complex situations with different tax rates for the same material based on usage, buyer classification, and geographic location. Other solutions ensure that all stages meet requirements before payment by embedding material usage forms and automatically generating compliance documents.

3. Fuel Card and Expense Management

Background:

In the day-to-day operation of a company's fleet of vehicles (trucks, automobiles, construction equipment, or official vehicles), fuel expenditures account for a large portion of operating expenses.

Workflow Pain Points:

Although fuel costs are obvious, drivers may also use them to purchase non-work-related items (such as snacks, fuel for personal use, etc.), therefore, real-time control and visual management of expenses are more important than simply "fuel payment" itself.

Importance:

Platforms like Wex, Fleetcor, Mudflap, AtoB, and Coast combine payment actions with real-time policy control, allowing managers to promptly detect and intercept unauthorized spending while optimizing gas station choices and reducing costs.

Real Case:

Some solutions integrate in-vehicle communication systems and path optimization software to automatically detect anomalies in mileage or fuel consumption, flag suspicious transactions, and release payments only after approval.

4. Vendor Management and Invoice Approval

Background:

Large enterprises often have thousands of suppliers, with various invoice formats—some are electronic, some are PDF, and there are even paper documents.

Workflow Pain Points:

The Accounts Payable (AP) team needs to ensure that each invoice is valid, not duplicated, correctly allocated to the budget code, and complies with the terms of the agreements signed with vendors.

Importance:

In fact, the actual step of "making a payment" (such as issuing a check or initiating an ACH transfer) is the simplest part. Verifying whether a $3,500 invoice is accurate (for example, whether there is a $100 markup) often requires a lot of manpower.

Real Cases:

Solutions such as Tipalti, Coupa, or SAP Concur integrate invoice receipt, expense management, and vendor onboarding processes, standardizing chaotic data, supporting multi-level approvals, automatically handling currency exchanges, and ultimately triggering payment actions.

5. SaaS Industry Sales Commission Management

Background:

SaaS companies typically have complex sales commission structures, with different commission rates and bonuses segmented by product type, sales region, or subscription package.

Workflow Pain Points:

Calculating and verifying each commission is far more complex than actually issuing sales bonus checks. If errors occur, it can easily lead to disputes and employee dissatisfaction.

Importance:

Setting up a proper and transparent commission automation system requires a robust system that connects with CRM data to track subscription usage or expanded sales in real time, while handling splits between multiple salespeople.

Case Study:

Platforms like CaptivateIQ and Spiff focus on solving the data and workflow issues behind commission calculations. They automatically process and clean up a large amount of complex data before payments occur, avoiding errors that are common with traditional manual spreadsheets.

Enhancing Workflow Efficiency Through Integration of Stablecoin Payments

Although traditional payment channels (such as checks, ACH, SWIFT) are often slow and costly in cross-border payments, stablecoins have emerged as a highly attractive digital settlement alternative. Key considerations include (as pointed out by many industry professionals, such as @proofofnathan):

1. Shorten settlement time

Stablecoins enable nearly instantaneous fund settlement, bypassing the multiple intermediary banks often involved in traditional cross-border payments. This feature is particularly advantageous in scenarios where a well-established workflow ensures that all operational conditions and approval processes have been completed, effectively avoiding unnecessary payment delays.

2. Automated Compliance Check

After integrating the stablecoin transfer function into the workflow platform, it can be designed to initiate on-chain payments only when the conditions set by the smart contract are met, such as supplier identity verification, compliance documents passing review, or delivery proof being uploaded. By automating compliance, it significantly reduces human intervention and errors.

3. Transparent Foreign Exchange Management

Many stablecoin assets are pegged to major fiat currencies (such as the US dollar), thereby reducing the risks associated with exchange rate volatility. This stability can simplify payment reconciliation and financial processing workflows. Furthermore, integrating stablecoin payment rails with advanced workflow systems can also automatically convert to the recipient's local currency before the payment is completed, reducing the burden of manual fund management.

4. Cost Savings in Cross-Border Micro Transactions

For B2B arrangements involving cross-border micro and frequent payments (such as paying overseas contractors for micro-invoices), stablecoins can effectively reduce fixed transaction fees. A workflow-based approach can further optimize blockchain network gas fees and network costs by bundling or scheduling bulk payments.

5. Expand Value-Added Services

Once a company incorporates stablecoins into its payment workflow, it will be able to explore more new business opportunities. For example, enabling features such as instant financing, real-time invoice factoring, or embedded dynamic discounting – all of which can be automated through workflow logic, while the stablecoin system acts as a support for underlying capital flows with minimal friction.

Workflow-Driven Strategic Advantages in Cross-Border Payments

1. Improve Transparency and Auditability

By emphasizing documentation and automated approvals, enterprises can ensure that every stage from KYC/AML review to contract matching is clearly recorded, thereby reducing the likelihood of disputes and strengthening compliance guarantees.

2.Minimize Human Intervention

Human manipulation at every step is not only error-prone, but also prolongs the overall cycle. End-to-end workflow management, with stablecoin settlement as the endpoint, automates and seamlessly connects all the steps, dramatically reducing the overall payment cycle.

3. Build Scalable Global Solutions

Relying on scattered and temporary cross-border payment methods makes it difficult for businesses to scale. In contrast, a workflow platform that integrates stablecoin payment rails with dynamic compliance management can enter new markets at a lower operational cost and faster speed.

4. Packaged Value Proposition

Simply providing "payment" services has limited differentiation. By integrating document management, compliance processing, and payment flows into the same platform, businesses can become indispensable partners to their clients, thereby establishing more stable and higher-margin business relationships.

Conclusion

Although traditional views regard B2B payments mainly as an issue of accelerating fund transfers, the real constraint on the efficiency of cross-border payments is, in fact, fragmented workflows that lack systematic management. These obstacles stem from fragmented data management, complex regulatory requirements, lengthy approval chains, and variable tax obligations.

Although there are already a large number of stablecoin projects dedicated to improving existing payment channels, relying solely on stablecoins cannot completely resolve the multi-layered complex workflow issues behind B2B payments. Many stablecoin projects are positioned as "payment execution layers"; however, I believe that those projects that approach from a systematic, workflow-first mindset and solidly address the underlying processes will truly capture the largest share of the payment market. These projects achieve a faster, more transparent, and lower error rate global payment system through real-time settlement and simplified currency exchange.

In other words, these leading projects must build powerful tools to deeply embed supplier qualification verification, invoice verification, tax management, and multi-layer approvals into automated and intelligent workflows.

This trillion-dollar opportunity belongs to projects that adopt a holistic approach, optimize workflow orchestration, and maximize the effectiveness of stablecoins. They can not only provide faster and more economical international payment services but also seamlessly integrate compliance, tax, and document management requirements.

This depth of collaboration can significantly enhance the efficiency of daily payment operations, help enterprises explore emerging markets, launch new financial products, and establish a lasting, differentiated competitive advantage in the global B2B financial sector.