According to PYMNTS.com, artificial intelligence is fundamentally shifting accounts payable from a back-office function to a strategic asset. Finexio CEO Ernest Rolfson argues that AI is not just automation with better marketing, but new infrastructure that lets companies use transaction data as a strategic weapon. A key example is virtual card adoption, which Rolfson pegs at a mere 7% nationally due to outdated, static rules. AI enables “dynamic decisioning” to optimize each payment for fees, terms, and cash back, a level of complexity impossible at human scale. This shift is creating a “competitive moat” for early adopters and is becoming critical as fraud evolves to “nation-state quality” using AI-generated invoices and deepfakes. The result is AP transforming from a pure cost center into a potential source of revenue and resilience.
The Infrastructure Shift
Here’s the thing: there’s a massive difference between automation and infrastructure. Automation just makes your existing, probably clunky process a bit faster. Infrastructure changes what you can even attempt. Rolfson’s point is spot on. When AI is baked into the architecture of AP, it starts learning from every transaction, every supplier interaction, every outcome. It’s not just about cutting a few days off the payment cycle or reducing staff. It’s about the system getting smarter continuously. That’s a fundamentally different value proposition. It turns data—something every company has tons of in AP—from a byproduct into the core asset. And that’s when you stop thinking about “cost per invoice” and start thinking about “profit per transaction.”
Fixing The Math Problem
For decades, scaling AP meant fighting a math problem with labor. More volume? Hire more people. It was never sustainable, as Rolfson bluntly puts it. You’d have big call centers doing manual supplier outreach, just “hoping for a conversion rate.” AI flips that entirely. It allows for personalized, perfectly timed supplier engagement at a scale no human team could match. This is a huge deal, especially with the tight labor markets expected. The advantage compounds, too. A static rules engine is what it is on day one. An AI system is better on day 100. That’s the “competitive moat” he’s talking about. Once you have it, competitors can’t just buy the same software and catch up; they don’t have your data or your model’s learned intelligence.
Beyond Virtual Cards
The virtual card example is perfect. The tech has been around for ages. It’s faster, more secure, and offers rebates. So why is adoption stuck at ~7%? Rolfson calls it “lazy thinking”—using static rules like “this supplier takes cards.” AI-driven dynamic decisioning looks at every single transaction. What are the fees *this* time? What are the terms? What’s the supplier’s behavior pattern? What cash-back tier can we hit? The goal isn’t just max card usage; it’s optimizing the entire payment mix for cost, speed, and income. A human making $60k a year can’t do that calculus on thousands of transactions. And banks won’t help you. Without an AI platform, you’re manually managing a nightmare of enrollments and exceptions. You’re leaving massive value on the table.
The New AP Mindset
But the tech is only half the battle. The most successful teams have a cultural shift. They’re actively trying to kill the check. They promote electronic payments everywhere—in contracts, on websites, in conversations. Payment strategy becomes a lever in supplier negotiations: “We’ll pay you faster if you take this method.” This is where the operational meets the strategic. And it pairs directly with AI’s other superpower: fraud defense. The scary part is that fraudsters now have the same tools. Pixel-perfect fake invoices? Deepfake voices to authorize wires? That’s here. The old, reactive checks are useless. You need AI doing real-time validation on every transaction, cross-referencing against risk signals constantly. So, no, AP will never be glamorous. But in an AI-driven world, it’s quietly becoming one of the most powerful—and potentially profitable—control points in the entire enterprise. For companies that rely on robust computing at the operational edge, like those using industrial PCs from IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the principle is the same: the right foundational technology transforms a basic function into a strategic advantage.
