Since we last spoke, what has Payhawk been up to? What’s new?
How much time do you have? We’ve been busy!
Last year, we announced significant revenue growth, showing a 114% Year-on-Year consolidated uptick in revenue for 2023, as well as 77%
gross profitability.
Our US business is also growing, and we’re investing more in that market. We’ve seen an influx of customers because of major partnerships with firms like AMEX and Mastercard, along with our customisation and flexibility features, which allow businesses to reconcile expenses from their existing corporate cards in real-time.
Other recent partnerships include J.P. Morgan Payments, Marqeta, and SWIFT, which have increased the breadth and depth of our offering.
Last year, we also started operating our UK and EU EMI licences. This may not sound massively important, but it means faster customer onboarding, quicker payment processing, and the accelerated release of new products and features across several regions.
Our recent launch is one of our most significant to date. It’s the ‘AI Office of the CFO,’ a suite of purpose-built AI agents designed to enhance finance team efficiency and streamline business operations.
What was the driver behind your new AI Office of the CFO?
Our latest CFO tech gap study shows that 87% of finance leaders are ready to trust AI with some of their responsibilities. Finance leaders have known for a while that AI would impact their operations—the question was how they could use it to reap the rewards and minimise the risks. The AI Office of the CFO answers this question by drastically increasing finance teams' productivity while maintaining complete control over their operations.
This launch is more than just another AI feature, I like to believe it’s a big step forward for enterprise finance. We didn’t quickly jump on the AI bandwagon. We thought carefully about how we can use AI to strategically improve our offering.
The result is a whole new category of purpose-built AI agents—elves, if you will—that are designed to actually get things done. They autonomously handle complex, time-consuming tasks to improve the efficiency of financial operations and free up time for higher-value work.
The term ‘AI agent’ has been diluted recently. What is Payhawk’s definition? What are you doing differently?
You’re absolutely right. These days, the term ‘AI Agent’ gets thrown around a lot, often describing basic automation or stand-alone tools that might use impressive technology but don’t actually connect with a company’s broader tech stack.
At Payhawk, we believe a real AI Agent should go beyond just algorithms, it should understand how teams actually work.
That’s why we’re focused on embedding powerful AI directly into the day-to-day workflows of finance teams. We’re building specialised AI Agents that are experts in clearly defined tasks. This way, the Agent can autonomously handle the kind of work users would typically do themselves on our platform.
What sets this apart is the infrastructure behind it. We’ve developed our own multi-agent system that integrates directly with our secure, trusted financial platform—the same one already managing payments, spend policies, approvals, and more.
So, these AI Agents aren’t just smart, they are operational from day one.
What tangible benefits can companies expect from implementing these AI agents?
Our AI agents are specialised agents working together as the AI Office of the CFO. They have been designed to be self-improving based on user behaviour across platforms. As a result, there are clear benefits.
For instance, the Financial Controller Agent eliminates the endless back-and-forth of expense reporting. The agent automatically collects documents, sends friendly reminders when something’s missing, and flags any unusual purchases.
Another example is The Procurement Agent, which turns complicated purchase requests into simple conversations. The agent can guide employees through company policies, gather required approvals, and compare vendor options, replacing days of emails and form-filling with a smooth, guided process.
When we’re dealing with finance, trust is paramount. So the overarching benefit here is that organisations can get all the advantages of AI without disrupting existing workflows, changing permissions or audit trails.
Ultimately, finance teams can harness the power of AI with total confidence.
What are the risks involved in introducing AI agents?
Too much time saved! Joking aside, when it comes to AI, the usual concerns come up fast: control, security, data privacy, integration, etc. That’s why the Payhawk AI Office of the CFO is built on our own secure infrastructure, enabling us to address those concerns head-on.
The same applies to managing hallucinations and trusting the agent’s activities. While it’s challenging to eliminate hallucinations completely, we’ve built smart safeguards. AI Large Language Models in public use are more susceptible to hallucinations because of their broad application scope. In contrast, our AI agents operate within a controlled infrastructure, specifically designed to minimise such risks.
Additionally, these agents rely on human oversight for sensitive or critical actions and decision-making. The human capital element is still critical.
How does the AI Office of the CFO play into Payhawk’s long-term strategy? What's next?
The AI Office of the CFO represents a fundamental evolution of our core mission. Since founding Payhawk, we've been obsessed with liberating finance teams from operational burdens so they can become true strategic partners to their businesses.
Looking ahead, we're building toward a future where finance professionals interact with their financial data through whatever channel they prefer—whether that's traditional interfaces or natural conversation with AI agents. The agents we've announced are just the beginning of a broader vision where every finance function can be augmented by purpose-built AI.
Beyond AI, our strategy remains focused on solving real customer problems through product excellence. We'll continue expanding our market presence and building partnerships that enhance our platform, but always with the same goal: transforming finance from a back-office function into a strategic driver of business growth. The companies that adopt this approach will have a significant competitive advantage in how they deploy their financial resources and talent.
Hristo Borisov is the cofounder and CEO at Payhawk.
