9 in 10 Companies Struggle with Payment Operations Even as Instant Economy Demands Greater Efficiency, Modern Treasury Survey Finds

Modern Treasury, the leading payment operations platform built for the Instant Economy, today released survey results showing that the vast majority of companies continue to struggle with payment operations, leading to higher risk and operational cost, wasted employee time, and greater risk of audit errors.

The Company’s fourth annual State of Payments Operations 2025 report conducted with Harris Poll included responses from 500 U.S. financial decision-makers from companies with 500–9,999 employees.

The report found that nearly nine in 10 (88%) of financial decision-makers—a percentage that’s been largely flat for three years—say their company faces problems with payment operations, describing them as manual (47%), complicated (35%), slow (27%), and inefficient (26%)—all of which make it harder to compete in a world that is rapidly shifting to real-time.

The topline shortfalls lead to a host of operational miscues, with the biggest problems cited as data quality errors (25%), protracted reconciling of payments due to manual processes (24%), a high rate of payment returns, refunds, and separately, payment failures (24%), and a high rate of reconciliation errors (23%). Other survey highlights include:

• 71% say getting a complete view of money movement across multiple bank accounts is hard. This can slow business operations.
• 68% say their finance team wastes a lot of time on payment operations.
• 51% of companies perform up to half of payment operations manually.

Many companies are already investing in their payment infrastructure to keep up with the pace of innovation. The survey found that 84% of companies invested in payment operations within the last 12-18 months, with software-focused companies at 91%, with most companies investing in payment automation (67%). As companies automate, the survey found that they expect faster, more accurate reconciliation (47%), increased revenue (45%), better visibility into money movement (45%), faster bank integration (39%), and improved customer experience (37%)—all of which address current shortfalls with existing payment operations.

“These survey results paint a picture of companies facing a paradigm shift in payments. They are adopting modern payments technology to keep up with a rapidly changing world, yet legacy infrastructure limits their ability to capitalize on such innovations,” said Dimitri Dadiomov, Modern Treasury CEO and co-founder. “Modern Treasury’s software helps companies navigate these changes and embrace AI and automation to stay ahead in a real-time world.”

Companies are also planning investments in AI and instant payments to prepare for the fast-approaching real-time future. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of companies currently use AI to help automate their payment operations, while 95% are using or planning to use AI to automate their payment operations. Almost all, 94%, are excited about the opportunity of AI-assisted financial and accounting workflows. More than half (56%) use instant payment rails, and another 37% plan to do so in the next year.

Deloitte predicts instant payments will replace up to $37 billion in B2B ACH and check payments by 2028. Instant payments not only deliver a better customer experience and improved liquidity, but they also require companies to have the back-office infrastructure to track and reconcile money in real-time to achieve complete visibility into payment status throughout its lifecycle.

“Instant access to goods and services is now expected and, as this research shows, companies need efficient, real-time, and scalable payment operations to deliver that access,” said Rachel Pike, Modern Treasury Chief Operating Officer. “As businesses scale and transaction volumes grow, investing in modern payments infrastructure is no longer optional.”

View the full survey results here.