Britain’s CFOs are waking up to a payments crisis hiding in plain sight. New research from global corporate payments company Corpay has exposed a striking contradiction at the heart of UK finance: the people responsible for managing billions in corporate spend know their processes are broken and they know rivals are already pulling ahead.
The numbers are hard to ignore. A full 83% of UK CFOs admit their spend management is more manual than it should be. Meanwhile, 84% say their organisation has moved too slowly to modernise how it pays suppliers and manages expenses. For an era defined by real-time data and digital-first operations, that’s a damning self-assessment from the executives who should know best.
The operational cost is stacking up quietly but relentlessly. More than eight in ten CFOs report their finance teams are burning over six hours per person, per week on expense, invoice, and supplier payment admin, with more than a quarter absorbing between 11 and 15 hours. That’s not inefficiency but a structural drain on some of the most strategically valuable talent inside any business.
And the opportunity cost is becoming impossible to ignore. When asked what they’d do with 25-50% of that reclaimed time, CFOs didn’t reach for cost-cutting. They pointed to business partnering, cash flow forecasting, and strategic planning — the exact activities that separate resilient organisations from reactive ones.
Now, competitive anxiety is entering the equation. Nine in ten CFOs (91%, to be exact) say they’re concerned that competitors are already ahead on automated, card-led payment processes. That’s not a fringe worry. That’s near-universal unease spreading through the upper floors of UK finance. Card-led payments, once a back-office consideration, are now viewed as a competitive weapon by 81% of respondents.
The priorities CFOs have locked in for 2026 reflect the urgency. Improving working capital management, tightening spend controls, and gaining real-time visibility over outgoing cash are the top three focus areas. Almost every respondent (99%) says additional working capital flexibility would be at least somewhat valuable.
Piero Macari, VP Product Corporate Payments at Corpay, said: “The message from UK CFOs is clear. Payment automation is increasingly being viewed as a strategic priority. When so many finance leaders believe competitors are ahead, we can see that there are a competitive few that are setting the pace. Many view card-led payments as one of the most practical ways to begin modernising spend management, improving how spend is controlled and analysed. This reflects the growing importance of more automated and integrated payment infrastructure.”
The Corpay research, conducted by Censuswide among 300 CFOs across retail, wholesale, manufacturing, and IT, all at organisations turning over £20m or more, lands at a moment when the gap between knowing and doing is becoming dangerous. A confident few are already setting the pace. The rest are running out of time to catch up.
