94% of Companies Plan Investments to Digitize Payments and Finance Functions

Demand for digitization in the payments and finance areas has reached critical velocity as a new sampling of CFOs shows near unanimous support for additional spending on this technology to meet coming challenges.

According to the study “Digitization Strategies: How CFOs Are Prioritizing Digital Payments To Maximize Efficiency,” a PYMNTS and Corcentric collaboration, based on surveys of 250 CFOs from retail and manufacturing, companies are auditing systems, spending where the need is.

As the study states, “In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the unpredictable business climate led companies to make targeted investments in digital technologies to meet the demands of remote workforces and a spike in eCommerce. Now, as we approach the end of the third year of the pandemic, businesses are taking a fresh look at their technology investments to determine which to continue for the long term and which to scale back or abandon.”

While our research revealed that 44% of companies have dropped digital working capital and credit solution investments made during the pandemic, and 38% have done likewise with procurement technologies, where they see ongoing need is managing money in, money out.

Per the study, 94% of companies surveyed plan to invest “in digital technologies in at least one area of payments and finance, with 87% planning to invest in the future,” adding that “companies have prioritized fraud prevention and risk management since the pandemic began and plan to continue to do so.”

We also found that over half (55%) of companies are already investing in these areas, “and 30% plan to invest in these functions. PYMNTS’ data also shows that procurement has been a key area for investments in digitized platforms,” with 38% of CFOs reporting plans to invest there.