Author: Gayathri

The 2025 BNPL Reset: From Frictionless Checkout to Financial Discipline Black Friday 2025 painted a telling picture of how far the Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) model has evolved. A customer fills her online cart, clicks “Pay in 4,” and is declined. Moments later, she completes the same purchase on a competitor’s site. Behind this friction lies a fundamental shift: BNPL is no longer the free-flowing credit experiment it once was. The BNPL market in 2025 has reached a critical turning point. After years of hypergrowth driven by pandemic-era e-commerce and near-zero interest rates, the industry now faces rising capital costs, regulatory crackdowns,…

Card management systems (CMS) are no longer just operational backbones that ensure cards work behind the scenes. They have become central to the payments value chain, orchestrating not just issuance and settlement, but also expense management, ERP integration, and AI-powered fraud protection. The SPARK Matrix™ for Card Management Systems from QKS Group illustrates how rapidly this market is maturing. A comparison of the 2023 and 2024 editions highlights not only the vendors that held their ground, but also those that rose into leadership positions and those that slipped. Together, the findings paint a picture of a market that is shifting…

A Family’s Story in Every Transaction A young nurse in London finishes her shift, opens her phone, and in seconds sends $200 to her parents in India. Within moments, the money reflects in a mobile wallet that her mother uses to pay for groceries. A decade ago, this transfer might have taken days, cost 7–10% in fees, and required hours in line at a money transfer shop. Today, fintech is rewriting that story. The global remittance transformation is not just about cheaper payments. It is about trust, speed, financial inclusion, and embedding cross-border transfers into everyday platforms. More than $800…

A Carbon Score May Soon Matter More Than a Credit Score Imagine applying for a corporate loan in 2028. Your balance sheet looks strong, and repayment capacity is clear, but the bank still rejects the application. The reason? Your company’s carbon emissions trajectory fails the bank’s AI-powered sustainability threshold. At first glance, this seems futuristic, but truthfully, we are already entering a world where green finance meets artificial intelligence to create a new class of sustainable risk scoring models. These models are redefining how banks assess risk, price products, and comply with growing ESG regulations. What Are Sustainable Risk Scoring…

The Bank That Turned Bonds into Code Picture this: a global bank informs its institutional clients that their bond portfolios are no longer static entries in custodial ledgers, but rather programmable smart contracts on a blockchain. These assets can be transferred instantly, fractionalized, and embedded with logic for automated coupon payments or compliance checks. What once seemed like speculative blockchain hype is now quietly becoming embedded in the operating fabric of banking. In 2025, the narrative around tokenized assets in banking has shifted. The question is no longer whether tokenization will take hold, but how rapidly banks will industrialize it…

Beyond The Black 2025 in Las Vegas was more than another technology showcase; it was a defining moment for finance and accounting leaders. Hosted annually by BlackLine, a recognized leader serving the office of the CFO, the three-day event brought together over 1,500 finance professionals, partners, and industry stakeholders to explore the future of financial transformation. Tailored for finance and accounting leaders and their teams, BeyondTheBlack 2025 stood out by incorporating independent analyst perspectives this time. Divya Baranawal, VP Research & Principal Analyst at QKS Group, joined the event, highlighting the growing convergence between practitioner priorities and industry research. The…

The Death of the Digital Broker? Imagine purchasing a new car online. Within moments, insurance coverage for theft, accidents, and roadside assistance appears seamlessly as part of the checkout. The policy activates instantly. If an accident occurs, the car’s sensors trigger a claim, contractors are dispatched automatically, and settlement happens within hours. No phone calls. No paper trails. No human bottlenecks. This is the direction in which insurtech is heading in 2025. The once-dominant model of digital brokers and aggregators, middlemen that simplified price comparisons, is giving way to something larger and more integrated. We are witnessing the rise of…

The commercial loan origination systems (CLOS) market has shifted sharply between 2023 and 2024. What was once a race for digitization has become a contest of orchestration: who can embed AI, automate decisioning, and interoperate at scale. The SPARK Matrix™ reflects this change by rewarding vendors that went beyond point-automation to deliver composable, AI-operated lending journeys with faster time-to-value. In 2023, the market clustered around digital transformation basics: document management, automated spreading, and workflow automation. By 2024, leaders distinguished themselves by operationalizing AI models, building unified platforms, and moving to cloud-native microservices. Vendors that stagnated on legacy deployments saw their…

The Accounts Receivable (AR) applications market transformed between 2024 and 2025. Vendors are no longer competing on invoice automation alone but on orchestrating outcomes with operational AI, predictive analytics, and embedded finance. The 2025 SPARK Matrix™ captures this inflection point: Leaders doubled down on AI-first strategies and payment orchestration, while Contenders and Aspirants differentiated through modularity, ecosystem reach, and cost-effective deployments. From 2024 to 2025, several vendors rose into the Leader quadrant by demonstrating AI-driven cash flow visibility and embedded payment orchestration. Others retained position but enhanced depth through ERP interoperability and composability. At the same time, regional and integration…

The Accounts Payable Automation (APA) market has moved decisively from digitization to intelligent orchestration. The 2025 SPARK Matrix™ shows that leadership is now determined by operational AI, compliance resilience, and embedded payment orchestration. Vendors that matured their AI-driven touchless processing and regulatory capabilities advanced strongly, while others lost ground due to weak adoption, limited regional scope, or dependency on legacy workflows. The year-on-year shifts are striking. Medius climbed from contender to leader by integrating payments at scale. MHC rose from emerging leader to strong leader with its configurable, AI-powered workflows. Stampli ascended into the leader zone by proving its AI…