Sustainability LIVE Chicago Q&A: Chris Wyatt, Finexio

Chris Wyatt, Chief Strategy Officer at Finexio, brings a wealth of expertise to the B2B payments space, driving forward AP Payments as a Service to support more efficient, transparent and ethical business practices.

His background in the healthcare sector’s complex payment landscape laid the groundwork for scalable, sustainable payment solutions across wider B2B markets, including work with several Fortune 500 companies.

Having overseen transactions worth hundreds of billions, Chris continues to prioritise simplification, accountability and measurable value across finance operations. He also partners with major institutions like Mastercard, Discover and J.P. Morgan to shape responsible innovation in the payments ecosystem.

At Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE, Chris joined the Spend Management Strategies panel to explore the role of technology, including AI, in enabling smarter and more sustainable financial systems.

Could just introduce yourself, tell us about your role and a little about Finexio?

I’m Chris Wyatt, the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Finexio. That means I've effectively had most jobs at Finexio. We were a startup 10 years ago and have evolved to process multiple billions of dollars each month. 

Finexio is really focused on the last mile of the procurement lifecycle. That means everything that happens upstream from API automation, workflows and so on. Where we really focus is on how to actually make sure the vendors and suppliers are getting paid effectively, efficiently and on time, and if companies are able to monetise payments. 

So that's really where we fit into the entire lifecycle. We do this mostly domestically in the US but it's fantastic to see all the international representation at the conference.

What were the key discussion points of the panel you've just been part of?

A lot of it revolved around technology. I think we've all heard about AI, ChatGPT, agentic AI and what that's doing. A lot of the topics really revolved around how to deal with the change that's coming. 

It really feels like it's more of an inflection point than in prior years. Again, that's primarily driven by these large language models and AI really having a very huge impact on how supply chains function, finance and operate - we think we're just at the tip of the iceberg.

A lot of the conversations were on how do you get ready for a lot of that, as well as what does it actually mean for your organisation. It feels like change is coming, whether you like it or not. That was one of the themes. You can bury your head in the sand if you want to, but like it or not, we think it's well on its way.

The event brings together executives from supply chain, sustainability and procurement. What do you think are the potential benefits of this approach?

They're all very interrelated whether you deal with each of those separately, individually or altogether. But I think it's interesting to get the various perspectives because, often, each of those different departments has different mandates in terms of what they're trying to achieve and what their goals are. But ultimately, there's sort of a shared vision for what the companies are trying to achieve. 

Getting various perspectives has been super interesting and super helpful for us. We focus a lot on the procurement side of the house, especially facilitating payments. We've had some great conversations with folks that are just about sustainability - how do you make sure you're dealing with suppliers that are reputable or carbon neutral, for example.

I think having the sort of cross pollination of ideas, concepts and business practices can only help make everything stronger.

Do you have any takeaways from the event?

For me, a lot of openness to technology and change was on show. I think in prior years we've seen a lot of sort of inertia trying to prevent change, and we don't really want to do too much that's different - we're busy doing some type of ERP integration or swap out. I've seen a lot more openness so far towards technology and where things are heading.

I think, again, a lot of people are reading the writing on the wall, things are just headed this way, so how do we start to think about this?

There has been a lot of great conversations that are more forward looking compared to just how we maybe do things just a little bit better than we did last year, and that's been great to see. I expect we'll see more of that throughout the conference.

Explore the latest edition of Sustainability Magazine and be part of the conversation at our global conference series, Sustainability LIVE. 

Discover all our upcoming events and secure your tickets today.

Sustainability Magazine is a BizClik brand