CFOs have lots to see in Q3: Finance’s second half trends begin

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Welcome—or welcome back—to our trending series for CFOs and finance pros! If you’re new here, this is where we team up with the finance experts at Paystand to outline what’s trending in-quarter so readers can better understand the current financial landscape.

(If you’re catching up, here are our Q1 and Q2 trend recaps for your perusing.)

Here in Q3, we’re talking agentic AI, Stablecoin, and geopolitical risk factors to keep CFOs in the know. The leaders at Paystand, whose mission is to decentralize commercial finance, will be helping translate three key finance trends for us.

We’re past the halfway point now, so let’s see what Q3’s been cooking.

1: Agentic AI: Experimentation to accountability?

Is it actually time? Is agentic AI finally moving from its experimentation phase into an era of *gasp* accountability for its work and actions?

Paystand shares that the AI conversation in finance has shifted. CFOs aren’t asking whether to adopt agentic AI anymore. Now, they’re asking how to prove it’s working.

More and more C-suite leaders want to know if their sizable AI investments have paid off, and they’re looking to prove this through visible improvements, not hypothetical conversations centered on the future.

According to the Citizens 2026 AI Trends in Financial Management, in 2025, midsize company CFOs reported an average 35% ROI on their AI investments, just shy of the 41% they say would be needed to call it a clear success. Agentic AI has moved fast to close that gap: 82% of midsize companies report implementing agentic AI, up from being an afterthought in prior years.

The use cases leading to adoption share one trait: they’re high-volume, judgment-adjacent workflows where agents can operate within policy without replacing human decision-making.

Paystand notes that in accounts receivable, this looks like an agent working from a customer’s full payment history, not just whether an invoice is late. It tracks which past invoices cleared, when, and how the pattern is trending. When a payer starts falling outside their normal behavior, the system flags it before it becomes a write-off. That intelligence gets built directly into the collection cadence, applied automatically instead of assembled by hand.

Accounts get treated according to how they actually pay, not a fixed day-5, day-10, or day-15 script run against everyone. Paystand cites a 23% higher invoice payment rate against merchant-built plans as the result. Collection rates go up: The relationship stays intact.

It seems that the companies moving the fastest aren’t buying AI features and seeing what sticks, or just copying what the company next door is buying. They’re adopting systems where agents execute the work and humans stay accountable for the outcomes. Human touch, as predicted, remains essential.

2: Stablecoins: Entering the infrastructure?

Paystand shares that they see Stablecoins moving from crypto-native use cases to mainstream corporate treasury in 2026. They’re not just seen as alternative assets anymore, but rather, as liquidity tools in and of themselves.

Paystand explains that CFOs have noticed this, too, and are adopting Stablecoins for:

• Cross-border B2B payments
• Hedging against currency volatility
• Faster settlement and reduced FX/banking fees
• Timely funding across regions

On top of this, Paystand notes that recent regulatory frameworks like the GENIUS Act in the US and MiCA in the EU are giving stablecoins increasing legitimacy as programmable infrastructure, reducing adoption barriers for more widespread enterprise access.

We discussed Stablecoins quite a bit in our Q2 finance trends article, if you’d like to refresh your memory. Here, we’ll reiterate: Paystand explains that Stablecoins are emerging as settlement rails, fostering same-day, low-cost global transactions and helping reduce strict reliance on correspondent banking systems.

3: Geopolitics: Driving US liquidity buffers?

From trade tensions to cybersecurity to global disputes, it’s no secret that geopolitical conflict has dominated much of the conversation in 2026. (At least we have the World Cup as an offset?)

And CFOs aren’t sitting idly by. They’re likely trying to understand and control what they can internally to fortify against any potential oncoming instability.

Paystand’s CFO Pulse Survey shares that geopolitical instability is the greatest risk to company growth at 37%, with trade policy changes ranking second at 32% (more than triple the proportion from 2025). Paystand notes that within their network, they see North American CFOs tracking tariffs and trade barriers, which makes it a leading geopolitical concern.

In response, 60% of CFOs are prioritizing increasing cash/liquidity buffers as their top mitigation strategy for 2026, followed by market diversification (43%) and optimizing supply networks (32%).

Paystand’s advice to the Office of the CFO: A liquidity buffer only protects you if it’s built on cash you can actually see and move. Holding more reserves doesn’t help if half of it is sitting uncollected in receivables or stuck for days in transit between banks. Before adding to the buffer, know exactly what’s already collectible and how fast it can convert.

Paystand explains that this is the real lever CFOs have right now. Tariff policy isn’t something finance controls—but the speed at which your business turns revenue into usable cash is. Paystand’s counsel is to treat cash velocity as part of the liquidity strategy itself, not a separate operational concern: tighten collections, shrink the reconciliation lag, and free up the capital that’s already yours before reaching for more.

You, me, and Q3

With Q3 off to the races, keep these trends in mind as the finance world does what it always does: Grows and perseveres. Here’s to growing and persevering along with it as another quarter brings fresh opportunities to get ahead and stay ahead.

Happy Q3—we’ll see you in the next one.

And if you’re ready to bring AR, AP, and spend management onto one agentic, on-chain network, start here with Paystand.