When it comes to banking services directed at small businesses, the playing field is always changing, providing opportunities for those who seek them. The new 2026 Small Business Banking Trends report from Javelin Strategy & Research showcases three areas that should continue to help banks connect with small businesses: cross-border payments, Zelle for Business, and new use cases for AI.
Cross-Border Payments
Although cross-border payments have been available in commercial banking for a while, several trends are aligning that will allow them to be more available to small businesses, which are increasingly operating internationally. If customers are using international suppliers or contractors, banks would have to process outgoing payments, and if small businesses have international customers, the bank would have incoming payments.
In most cases, banks do not offer something like this to small businesses unless they’re working within a specific industry. Smaller banks doing it today are likely turning to fintechs like Wise and Payoneer or consumer-centric services like PayPal. But with stablecoins being adopted more frequently by banks and real-time payment rails becoming more connected internationally, there’s an opportunity for banks to make these services readily available to small business owners.
“Most of the biggest banks are working at an international level to figure out what that’s all going to look like, what the technical aspects of that are going to be,” said Ian Benton, Senior Analyst in Digital Banking at Javelin and the lead author of the report. “It’s not going to be next year, it’s going to be in a few years, but they are currently working on how they can incorporate that into international transfers.”
Zelle for Business
Despite Zelle’s popularity as a peer-to-peer payment service, the business side has lagged behind. But Benton thinks that is ripe for a change.
“Most banks have not rolled it out yet for small businesses, or at least not until recently,” Benton said. “They’re still trying to figure out how they are communicating this to folks. A lot of business owners might not even know that they have Zelle for Business, or if they do, what the capabilities are or what they should be using it for.
“The quintessential use case that we like to point out is if I’m a service provider, out and about providing a service to a consumer, that’s where it’s really good. With a consumer-to-business payment, they can just scan a QR code or use my tag or whatever to find me and send me a business payment, because consumers are already used to using it. It’s like a Venmo or a PayPal replacement in that case. Moving beyond that is where it’s going to be a little bit more difficult.”
Adding to the attraction is that Zelle is going international, with its announcement earlier this year that it is considering developing its own stablecoin. While it’s unclear exactly how that would operate, it’s likely to apply to certain Zelle banks that also have international presences.
Zelle also offers payment tools within it to create offerings like a cash-flow analysis or to help with scheduling or collections. That’s where smaller banks are especially going to see the value.
Concerns About Fraud
One drawback to Zelle is that its payments are final and usually irrevocable, which makes executing refunds through the system difficult. It can also be vulnerable to fraud. So it makes sense for banks to limit its use to transactions with entities where they already have a relationship. Banks will have to help their customers understand what Zelle should be used for—and, more important, what it should not do.
“Business payments in general have so much inertia,” Benton said. “If they started using PayPal five years ago to accept payments from customers, they’re living within that environment. The bank should be able to say, OK, with Zelle, you get instant access to your funds, whereas PayPal takes two or three days to make the transfer and get access. That’s probably the main selling point, as well as just having everything integrated in one place, rather than having to go to this third party with only a limited view of your finances.”
Use Cases for AI
The chatbot today is positioned as a customer service tool: How do I find this? How do I do this? But there are so many more questions bots could field, such as when payments will be processed or the status of a fraudulent transaction report.
“The next frontier is going to be insights into your business,” Benton said. “Here’s what your performance looks like compared to the holiday season last year. And you can go back and forth and say, OK, what does it look like over the past five years or what were my expenses versus this time last year. If you’re a business owner and you’re technically savvy, you know where to find the information. But this is a massive time saver, and it’s also proactive about the sort of insights it can give you.”
QuickBooks is already doing this with Intuit Assist, providing proactive insights such as what a business’ cash flow looks like in the next 14 days and what the business can do about it. Candescent also has a live feature offering conversations with a generative AI chatbot that can talk about the finances of the business.
“Forty years ago, you’d walk in and have a conversation with a teller or a business banking specialist,” Benton said. “We’re trying to move back toward that conversation and have that advisory relationship with your bank. The problem in small business is that every business is so different that a bank can’t dedicate a relationship manager to have those conversations all the time.
“Being able to at least start them through the digital space would be a big help, and if we need to go to a product discussion, we can go to a human. It has the potential to reformulate how we interact with our bank.”
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