2026 Executive Perspectives: What’s Ahead

At the end of each year, I take a moment and reflect on the trends that have impacted my life—both personally and professionally.

2025 is no different. But instead of focusing my annual reflections on all things Grateful Dead or the wonders of Severance season two, my 2025 headline trend is the massive impact of Generative AI across businesses. We’re on the next big technology wave, and this one will likely create greater long-term impact than prior technical revolutions (like the web, cloud, mobile, and SaaS). We’ll see many business impacts from Gen AI in 2026, and also from other technical, regulatory, and economic trends. 

I decided to ask a group of smart people what they see coming in 2026, so I sat down with the Tipalti executive team to get their takes on what businesses should focus on. These insights, rooted in what Tipalti is seeing across our many global customers, offer a sharp view into the upcoming trends that are shaping the future of the technology and fintech industries.

Perspective #1: Experiment with AI or Fall Behind

2025 saw the adoption of Generative AI in every aspect of our business lives. 2026 will show greater adoption of AI within core business workflows. We’ll also continue to see leading organizations conduct ongoing experimentation to completely reimagine these core workflows with AI. For businesses, the era of multi-year modernization roadmaps is behind us. Now, the companies that will see success are those that treat AI-driven innovation as a continuous operating principle.

Businesses that rely on long-term contracts, multi-quarter tech evaluations, and rigid implementation cycles are falling behind on innovation. AI technology is evolving too fast, and the teams that are willing to apply it to core workflows in meaningful ways to break, redefine, and iterate will be the ones that thrive in the future.

Companies seeing real ROI in 2026 will foster cultures that promote experimentation. Leaders should ensure that all teams have real programs with real deliverables for experimentation. They’ll celebrate wins publicly, run hackathons to engage skeptics, and avoid the trap of locking into long-term contracts. In AI, the best-in-class tool changes every few months. Companies that stay nimble in their tooling choices will outpace those committed to yesterday’s technology.

Chen Amit, CEO and Co-Founder, Tipalti

Perspective #2: A Higher Bar for B2B UX

If the last few years in B2B were about consumerization and improving product UX, the next few will be about elevating the end-to-end customer experience—especially for scaling companies whose operational needs are growing more complex. The gap between what business customers expect and what most vendors can deliver today is widening, especially with AI innovations kicking in. Technology vendors will need to provide a great experience while also keeping up with the increasingly complex needs of mid-sized and enterprise organizations.

In 2026, UX isn’t just about having the most widgets. It’s about how easy and intuitive solutions are to implement and use. Mid-sized companies are complex, so addressing their business needs is not as simple as those of small businesses. They expect straightforward technology and services that make their complicated lives easier—allowing them to scale efficiently with improved visibility and control over business risk.

Rob Israch, President, Tipalti

Perspective #3: The World Isn’t De-Globalizing After All

Supply chains are becoming more global, not less. Today’s companies (despite facing economic volatility, geopolitical tensions, and currency fluctuations) are, in fact, continuing to grow and diversifying their operations globally—not consolidating them.

For many organizations, this means more corporate subsidiaries, more banking relationships, more currencies, and more cross-border payments. AI is also accelerating the formation of new global alliances as companies continue to build for resilience.

Despite the rhetoric by some leaders, the supply chain continues to get more global. Companies require enhanced cross-border payment capabilities, banking services, and currency support. Cash flow visibility will become increasingly more critical and challenging, while the implementation of increased global regulation and security standards will create further complexity.

Rob Israch, President, Tipalti

Perspective #4: Customer Advocacy Above All

With AI-generated reviews flooding communication channels, user feedback moving at lightning speed, and long-standing growth levers (e.g., SEO and performance marketing) becoming less reliable, companies can’t hide or outrun their customer support shortcomings anymore.

The smarter and more resilient organizations will be those that can achieve growth through word-of-mouth and peer-to-peer-driven strategies. This requires unquestionable quality in products, authentic partnerships, and elevated customer experiences, which will influence potential customers far more than most “bought and paid for” branding tactics.

Companies can no longer rely on aggressive branding and spending dollars on demand generation techniques to outrun a poor customer experience. They need to rely on the network effect for future growth by delivering a superb customer and product experience, alongside strong partnerships.

Rob Israch, President, Tipalti

Perspective #5: Fraud Goes Synthetic

Fraud is entering its new era—one where attackers are using the exact same sophisticated AI tools as businesses. Moving forward, synthetic identity fraud is the most urgent risk, fueled by Generative AI’s ability to create convincing documents, fabricate identities at scale, and mimic previously unreplicable behavioral patterns.

For organizations, traditional KYC (Know Your Customer) methods that rely on document verification pose a greater risk than they did in the past. Fraud tactics are evolving rapidly and becoming increasingly sophisticated, with the ability to mimic real documents with greater accuracy. Teams that once relied on periodic audits now need real-time solutions that can proactively manage risk.

AI is helping identify fraudulent invoices and detect anomalies in real-time, but fraudsters are adopting AI just as quickly as protectors are. To stay ahead, it will be important to fundamentally evolve authentication, moving beyond one-time methods involving documents or other approaches that are easily scanned or intercepted to more adaptive systems that can evolve as fast as the fraud tactics themselves.

Manish Vrishaketu, Chief Customer and Operating Officer, Tipalti

Perspective #6: A Never-Static Regulatory Rulebook

Increased regulatory volatility was already a theme for 2025, but 2026 will push this challenge into entirely new territory. After years of intensifying geopolitical tensions, shifting trade alliances, and rapid advancements in AI, the global regulatory environment has become more fragmented, more reactive, and significantly harder for businesses to navigate.

The burden of maintaining real-time regulatory requirements will now fall on every part of an organization, not just risk or compliance functions.

Geopolitical volatility and regulatory unpredictability will be the dominant risks. We’re seeing rapid shifts in sanctions and regulations. For globally scaled companies, the challenge is staying abreast of changes and managing currency exposure and hedging strategies when regulatory frameworks continue to shift. Risk and compliance have become moving targets that require continuous adaptation and have serious consequences for business success.

Manish Vrishaketu, Chief Customer and Operating Officer, Tipalti

Perspective #7: When Engineering Outpaces Product

AI has fundamentally reshaped how engineering teams operate, but today’s product teams also need to keep pace. The traditional product manager-to-engineer ratio, unchanged for decades, no longer matches the speed and volume of modern development cycles.

This imbalance leaves engineers moving faster than product teams can validate, research, or translate customer needs. But the most forward-looking companies will treat product and engineering teams as a continuous loop, where AI accelerates not only engineering execution but also customer-to-product team feedback.

Tech leaders need to reimagine how product validation and customer research operate at scale. AI can transform traditionally time-intensive processes, such as user interviews, surveys, and market research, into rapid and continuous feedback loops. This can empower technology teams to understand and advocate for customer needs, which will offer more consistent and comprehensive customer representation.

Roby Baruch, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Tipalti

Perspective #8: Finance in the Lead

Across all industries, financial planning and analysis teams are shifting from backward-looking reporting to forward-looking decision-making, fueled by automation and AI that link data from all departments, including finance, sales, HR, and operations.

Moving from reactive to proactive partners, these teams will work closely with all business units to model scenarios and test trade-offs before decisions are made—emphasizing the prediction of outcomes and the prescription of actions.

Finance is moving past ‘What happened?’ and ‘What will happen?’ to ‘What should we do?’ Essentially, transitioning from reporting and forecasting to prescriptive analysis. Utilizing AI and automation to instantly identify, explain, and flag the ‘why’ will allow us to move straight to action planning. This will break down the silos of traditional analysis and allow us to proactively guide investment and risk decisions.

Alex Cedro, VP Finance, Tipalti

Perspective #9: Every CFO Is Now a “Chief Value Officer”

Another significant 2026 transformation for organizations is the ongoing evolution of the CFO role. CFOs will be asked to act as strategic copilots to the CEO, responsible not just for fiscal accuracy but for orchestrating business value—from digital transformation to investor strategy.

The CFO role will no longer operate solely as the guardian of the ledger. They will be expected to translate complex data into actionable insights, align finance with product, operations, and marketing, and anticipate the impact of strategic decisions in real-time.

In a volatile market, the CFO’s primary deliverable is confidence and readiness. Investors and the board measure the CFO not just by the accuracy of the past, but by the agility of their forecasting and the speed at which they can model and pivot the business in real-time.

Alex Cedro, VP Finance, Tipalti

The Bottom Line

As I collected and reviewed these predictions for 2026 from across the Tipalti executive team, I’m struck by how these perspectives all point to a single underlying truth. The businesses that will thrive in 2026 are those that are most adaptable to rapidly changing technology and a volatile business environment. They’re the ones that remain nimble, grounded, and deeply connected to the evolving needs of their customers.

Yes, the pace of change isn’t slowing down. New disruptions will arrive just as quickly as the old ones fade. But if we carry forward with the same curiosity, resilience, and willingness to experiment that defined 2025, we won’t just keep up—we’ll be ready to shape whatever comes next. 2026? Bring it on!