US and Canadian Middle-Market Firms Gain Working Capital Edge With AI Cash Forecasting

Cash is king when uncertainty reigns. But for many firms, profit is not disappearing due to macroeconomic forces alone. In many cases, it is being forfeited through slow processes, limited visibility and outdated assumptions about how their payments operations and accounts receivables (AR) functions must work.

In an environment where growth is harder to come by and costs remain elevated, preserving earned revenue is as valuable as generating new revenue.

New data in the “2025–2026 Growth Corporates Working Capital Index: North America Edition,” a collaboration between PYMNTS Intelligence and Visa, reveals a widening performance gap between firms that have modernized their receivables and working capital infrastructure and those that continue to rely on manual, legacy processes.

The difference is no longer marginal. It is showing up directly in profitability, cash flow stability and revenue preserved rather than lost to late payments.

The data suggests that receivables innovation, including the use of automation and artificial intelligence (AI), is no longer optional for growth corporates, or mid-market firms, seeking to protect margins. Late payments are not just a customer issue; they are a design issue. Firms that redesign how customers pay can increasingly come to see tangible results.

This shift is forcing savvy finance leaders to rethink priorities. Instead of focusing solely on collections efficiency, they must consider payment experience, automation and data integration. Receivables becomes a strategic lever rather than a back-office function.

The Working Capital Index (WCI) shows that firms embracing this reality are already outperforming peers.

The New Divide in Working Capital Performance

Across North America’s mid-market firms, working capital performance has improved in recent years, but the gains are not evenly distributed. Firms that integrate digital tools into their working capital strategy are realizing materially stronger bottom-line benefits than those that do not.

What is notable is not just the size of the gains, but how accessible they are. AI adoption among mid-market firms has reached meaningful scale, yet remains far from universal. Commercial and virtual cards, despite their well-documented benefits, are still used by a minority of firms, particularly in the United States. The same pattern holds in receivables, where card acceptance has proven effective at reducing days sales outstanding, yet adoption varies widely.

The Index highlights a striking contrast between Canada and the United States. Canadian firms have accelerated adoption of commercial and virtual cards at a much faster pace, driven by a recognition of their efficiency and control advantages. U.S. firms, despite acknowledging similar benefits, continue to rely more heavily on traditional payment methods.

This hesitation has consequences. Manual payments introduce friction at every stage of the working capital cycle. They slow execution, increase error rates and obscure visibility into cash positions. They also consume finance team capacity that could be directed toward higher-value activities such as analysis and planning.

Read the report: 86% of North American Growth Corporates Plan Working Capital Expansion in 2026

The divergence between U.S. and Canadian firms underscores the point. Where card acceptance is more widely used as a receivables strategy, revenue losses are lower. Where adoption lags, losses remain higher. The gap is not driven by customer behavior alone, but by firm-level choices about payment infrastructure.

A few extra days in DSO may not trigger alarms on their own. Manual reconciliation may feel tolerable when spread across a team. But when multiplied across hundreds or thousands of transactions, these inefficiencies quietly erode margin.

The most striking implication of the report is that competitive advantage no longer lies in access to innovation, but in execution. AI, commercial cards and card acceptance are not speculative technologies. They are mature enough to deliver immediate returns.

The WCI data shows that AI is most commonly applied in areas such as customer and supplier onboarding, identity verification and financial planning. These use cases may appear administrative, but their downstream effects are strategic. Faster onboarding accelerates revenue realization. Better forecasting improves decision-making. Cleaner data reduces exceptions that slow collections.

As the working capital landscape evolves, the question is no longer whether technology can improve performance. The evidence is clear that it can. The question is which firms will act, and which will continue to leave profit waiting on the table.

At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.