WEX Says Faster Payments Need Smarter Brakes

The linear model of traditional business payments is breaking apart thanks to embedded payments, instant rails and artificial intelligence (AI).

“Payments went from being just a line on a P&L [profit and loss statement] to the thing that can actually drive product roadmaps [and] customer retention,” Ron Griswold, director of strategic alliances at WEX, told PYMNTS during a conversation for the August edition of the What’s Next in Payments series, “Only the Paranoid Will Thrive.”

As a result, companies are beginning to treat payments less like financial plumbing and more like product infrastructure.

“Customers want to get more creative with payments,” Griswold said. “There’s a lot more creative things that were spurred on by companies like DoorDash and Uber and Expedia, where they got into embedded payments for different use cases and turned it into a business.”

The strategic question, Griswold added, is now changing from, “Can we embed payments?” to, “Which payment capabilities create an advantage worth scaling?”

That shift is expanding what embedded payments can accomplish. It is also forcing executives to make more complicated decisions about AI, instant payment rails, regulatory exposure and fraud.

Payments Becoming a Product Strategy Changes the Risk Equation

As businesses start to unlock the strategic value of payments, the question is no longer simply whether a company can add a payment capability. It is whether the organization can match each capability to the right commercial use case without weakening the controls surrounding it. Real-time payments demonstrate why that distinction matters.

“You can’t do a blanket decision that we’re going to do real-time payments for a huge block of our outgoing payments,” Griswold said. “The faster those payments go from one bank to another, one company to another, the less due diligence can be done in between.”

AI presents a similar calculus. Automating an inefficient process does not necessarily make the underlying process better.

“How can we make something productive?” Griswold said. “How can we improve workflows and not actually make them longer, ironically?”

The competitive advantage across today’s landscape comes from solving payment problems specific to an industry or workflow than it does from one-size-fits-all solutions. Griswold said his team encounters new applications almost weekly, including problems that existing providers have been unable to resolve. When those solutions can be repeated across customers, a narrowly defined payment problem can become the foundation of a scalable business.

Payments Visibility Becomes the Finance Control Layer

At the same time, the ongoing collision of AI-enabled cyber threats with economic volatility may be the most important risk facing payment leaders. Fraudsters tend to exploit the least visible parts of a financial process, particularly manual handoffs, disconnected systems and controls that only identify a discrepancy after funds have moved.

“Fraud always tends to find its foothold wherever visibility is the weakest,” Griswold said. “Visibility doesn’t start with the bank statement. It’s almost too late at that point.”

An error is not necessarily an isolated data problem; it can be evidence that information was lost between an approval, system update and payment instruction. In a tighter economy, where cash visibility and working-capital control carry greater weight, those gaps become strategic liabilities.

Griswold highlighted the benefits of infrastructure that connects payment activity to the company’s system of record, automates routine checks and still allows straightforward human intervention.

Excessive automation may conceal gaps in logic, he added, while excessive reliance on employees introduces inconsistency and key-person risk, especially in functions with high turnover.

Regulation Is Moving Into Payment Product Design

Embedded finance also brings regulatory infrastructure closer to product strategy. Banking-as-a-service and sponsor-bank relationships can allow nonbanks to offer sophisticated financial capabilities, but they create dependencies on regulated institutions whose compliance decisions can ripple through entire customer ecosystems.

For executives, that makes regulatory expertise part of product resilience rather than a compliance cost.

“Leaders need to separate the noise of technology trends from real, design-led controls,” Griswold said. “AI is a great supporting layer.”

That may ultimately define the next phase of embedded payments. Competitive advantage will not necessarily accrue to the companies adopting every new rail, AI tool or payment model first. It will accrue to those capable of deciding precisely where each technology improves a commercial workflow and designing the controls that allow it to scale.

Payments may increasingly drive the product roadmap. The more valuable capability could be knowing where to accelerate it.

Watch the full PYMNTS TV episode with WEX’s Ron Griswold to hear more about: 

• Why payments are moving from a P&L expense to a business growth engine. Companies are increasingly using embedded payments to shape product roadmaps, strengthen customer retention and turn industry-specific payment problems into scalable revenue opportunities.
• Why faster payments and AI make smarter controls more important, not less. Real-time rails and automation can improve speed and efficiency, but businesses need to match those capabilities to the right transactions and workflows rather than applying them indiscriminately.
• Why visibility is becoming the foundation of payments risk management. As money moves faster, connecting payments to systems of record and identifying problems before settlement can help companies combat fraud, improve reconciliation and maintain regulatory resilience.