Author: Charitarth Sindhu

We asked finance operators a blunt question. What role does AI in accounts receivable play right now, and is it genuinely delivering? Their answers cut through the marketing noise fast. Across small teams and venture-backed finance shops, the verdict converged. The technology earns its keep in narrow, measurable jobs. Meanwhile, the broad promises still run ahead of the proof. So three leaders agreed to share their hype-free read on what works. AI in Accounts Receivable Starts With Smarter Prioritization For leaner teams, the first win rarely involves full automation. Instead, it involves triage. AI in accounts receivable helps decide which…

Every business owner has felt the pull of a low headline rate. We asked three industry leaders a blunt question. How can an owner judge whether fintech lending costs genuinely come in below a traditional bank line of credit? Every answer pointed past the advertised APR. Fintech lending costs live in the math behind the offer, not on the marketing page. So we put one question to a fractional CFO, a software delivery leader, and a fintech founder. How should an owner run the comparison properly? Their framing lined up almost word for word. Look at the total cost over…

True Cost of Capital: What a Fintech Loan Really Costs You The true cost of capital rarely matches the number a lender prints at the top of a term sheet. A headline rate looks clean and simple. Behind it sit origination fees, monthly charges, and repayment schedules that quietly reshape the true cost of capital. So we put one direct question to three finance leaders. How should a business owner judge whether a fintech loan is genuinely cheaper than a bank line of credit? Their answers landed in the same place. Stop reading the rate, and start counting everything around…

Late B2B payments rarely announce themselves as a crisis. One invoice slips past its due date, then another, and the strain builds quietly while the work carries on. For most small and medium businesses, the missing cash is only the visible part. The deeper damage sits out of sight, in lost hours, frayed nerves, and chances to grow that slip away. The scale is hard to ignore. More than half of US small businesses are currently owed money on unpaid invoices, with an average of $17,500 outstanding, according to Intuit QuickBooks. In the UK, almost half of all small-business invoices…

Author: Charitarth Sindhu, Fractional Business & AI Workflow Consultant Payment processing fees keep climbing for small businesses in 2026, even as the headlines promise relief. The raw numbers are sobering. US merchants paid more than $187 billion in card fees during 2024, a rise of almost 9% in a single year. Across the Atlantic, regulators delivered a blunt verdict. The UK Payment Systems Regulator found that Visa and Mastercard face little real competition, while small firms struggle to read what they owe. So we asked three industry leaders one question. How are fintechs helping SMEs fight rising interchange and payment…

Author: Marcel Syriani, COO, DATABASICS, Inc. Expense management problems rarely start where finance teams go looking for them. A few months ago, my team worked with a finance director at a nonprofit. She kept hitting the same policy headache, where employees submitted expenses that should never have been approved. Her proposed fix was to start penalizing approvers whenever a non-compliant expense slipped through. Punishing the approver after the fact solves nothing. By the time an expense lands on someone’s desk, the money has usually left the account. The employee has already taken the flight, booked the hotel, or run the card.…

Author: Raul Tudor, Fractional Chief Technology Officer, Tudor Software House Modern expense management still runs on a workflow designed for a world that no longer exists. An employee pays out of pocket, uploads a receipt, waits for approval, and finance reconciles the spend days or weeks later. The pattern feels administrative, slow, and oddly disconnected from how money moves through current financial systems. Behind the scenes, financial infrastructure has evolved dramatically. Payments authorise in milliseconds. Card networks push rich transaction data in real time. Yet inside most organisations, expense visibility stays delayed, fragmented, and manual. The gap is no longer a…

Author: Charitarth Sindhu, Fractional Business & AI Workflow Consultant Primary bank loyalty is collapsing across North America. At FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego last May, EMARKETER Principal Analyst Tiffani Montez delivered the line that defined the week. Her verdict: “Banks no longer own the customer.” Consumers in the region now hold an average of 7.1 financial products and services, according to Montez’s keynote analysis. More than half sit outside their main bank. The fragmentation is no longer a theory pushed by neobank founders. In addition, McKinsey, Accenture, J.D. Power, Capgemini, and the Federal Reserve now publish data telling the same…

Author: Charitarth Sindhu, Fractional Business & AI Workflow Consultant Bank AI overhaul moved from boardroom talk to disclosed numbers this month. Three of the world’s banks revealed sharply different angles on the same shift. Axis Bank in India confirmed a workforce reduction of roughly 3,100 staff over the past 12 months. Meanwhile, U.S. Bank expanded its AWS deal to move hundreds of mission-critical systems into a cloud-and-AI operating model. In parallel, NatWest unveiled a 2026 FinTech Programme cohort made up entirely of AI-focused founders. Together, the three announcements showed how the bank AI overhaul now spans headcount, infrastructure, and external…

Author: Charitarth Sindhu, Fractional Business & AI Workflow Consultant Paytm Payments Bank licence cancellation took effect on 24 April 2026 when the Reserve Bank of India invoked Section 22(4) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. The order ended the Paytm Payments Bank licence at the close of business that Friday. From then on, the bank could not accept deposits, run customer accounts, or call itself a bank at all. RBI also said it would file a winding-up petition in the High Court. Yet the order described the bank as having enough liquidity to repay every depositor. So this was less…