Danny Martucci, President and GM of Commercial Cards at Corpay, shares how small and medium-sized businesses can leverage emerging technology such as payment automation to drive success.
In this episode, Brennan Robison speaks with Danny Martucci about the critical role technology plays in supporting small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), especially in a volatile economic climate. Despite ongoing challenges, 85% of SMBs surveyed by Corpay are optimistic about their growth prospects in 2025, largely driven by the adoption of new technologies.
Martucci explains how Corpay’s commercial card solutions help businesses improve cash flow, access funding, and streamline financial operations. He describes the evolution from manual, paper-based processes to digital systems, emphasizing how automation has transformed invoice processing, accounts payable, and overall financial management.
The conversation highlights the growing importance of cloud-based tools, the increasing affordability and ease of adoption for SMBs, and the measurable return on investment through time and cost savings. Martucci also addresses concerns about cybersecurity, noting that digital systems often offer better security and visibility than traditional methods.
Looking ahead, he shares insights on the integration of AI into financial tools—especially in AP automation—and suggests that AI will continue enhancing software capabilities in intuitive, context-aware ways. For SMBs hesitant about technology adoption, Martucci advises starting with one clear use case to demonstrate value and build from there.
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Martucci teaser bite: It's just been a significant evolution over the last 10 or 20 years in how businesses really operate fundamentally and ultimately saves them a lot of cost and time in managing their business.
Robison: About 35 million U-S small businesses are navigating the uncertainty of a fluid and volatile economy, trying to avoid becoming one of the half million that close each year. The good news is that despite these unprecedented challenges, 85% of the small and medium sized businesses are optimistic about their growth prospects in 2025, according to Corpay’s annual survey of companies with one to f$50 million in annual revenue. This is Brennan Robison, Director of Corporate Communications at Corpay. On this episode of Smarter Payments by Corpay, we’re joined by Danny Martucci, President and G-M of Commercial Cards at Corpay, to discuss the importance of adopting new technology to drive small business success. Here’s our conversation.
Robison: Well, hey, Danny, thank you for joining us.
Martucci: Yeah, nice to be with you, Brennan. Thanks for having me.
Robison: Well, why don't we start by having you share a little bit about your background and how it led to Corpay.
Martucci: Absolutely.. So, I started my career in management consulting. So, back then it was working with large retailers on how to go digital. And then I spent some time at AT&T in a strategy role before joining Corpay about eight years ago. At the time, I was looking for a place that was well positioned in a growth industry and where I felt like I could have a big impact. And it's been a good fit since then.
Robison: And your undergrad is Vanderbilt University. You've got to be liking the direction of their football program.
Martucci: Yeah, some signs of improvement for sure. We're going in the right direction. Maybe not knocking on the door of national championships here, but yes, yes, we feel all right.
Robison: And you do make it back to Nashville often.
Martucci: That's right, yes, we have a unit there, so I get an excuse to head back to Nashville quite a bit.
Robison: Very nice. So, you are president and GM of Corpay commercial cards, and that falls under the payables group at Corpay. Tell us how the solutions you oversee support the success of small businesses.
Martucci: Yes, we work with a number of small and medium businesses basically to help them manage their expenses better. Right. And that takes a few shapes for how we can do that. One, it's helped them with funding for their business. So, we actually provide credit lines and terms and that allows them to put money back into their business. Second, we help them to optimize cash flow. So, we provide rebates based on the spend that they put through our network. We optimize that through our vendor network and using our controls and ultimately put more cash back into the business. And then finally, we help them run their business more efficiently. So, many small and medium businesses still use paper and manual processes. And we come in with solutions that help them automate that with smart tools to help them save time and money to manage their finances.
Robison: As I noted in the open that most of the 326 small businesses that took our survey are optimistic about their outlook for 2025. Given all that's going on in the world, does that surprise you and why or why not?
Martucci: So, I did find that slightly surprising, frankly. We see, of course, in the broader economy, a lot of volatility, a lot of uncertainty that small businesses are encountering. And so, I was a little bit surprised by that. One thing to know about our survey methodology is this is the first time we've asked that question. So, perhaps maybe that's worse than it was had we asked the question last year. So, I look forward to getting some more trending around how that sentiment is changing. But at the same time, there's a lot of reasons for confidence, which we're going to talk about.
Robison: That's a good point. We'll certainly ask that question again next year and this year’s responses can serve as a baseline. Well, the small businesses in the survey credit new and evolving technology as the leading reason for their confidence and positive outlook, specifically using technology to better control and manage expenses, which is what you alluded to, what your group provides. They're also looking for ways to automate more of their processes. Tell us how that applies to how businesses use their finances and accounting in particular, that automation aspect.
Martucci: Yeah, I think it's helpful to just like to kind of paint a picture of the environment that businesses are in as far as really how they use technology across the board. So, thinking about how they're using technology has really become fundamental to their operations. So, probably five or 10 years ago, things like CRM or how they manage their customer base, order management or inventory management, marketing, right? Those would all be really disjointed and siloed functions that perhaps were not very automated, right? And then in the finance and accounting sphere, all the more so. So, really this started with accounting or ERP systems. As those emerge really on the on-prem side in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s with accounting systems for small businesses. Since then, cloud systems have emerged over the last 10 or 15 years. And that's really kind of the central nervous system for the financial management of a small and medium business. And what we've seen since then is really the expansion of that central nervous system into other parts of the business and other parts of the financial operations of the business. And that's where we at Corpay can really help. So, think about a few key functions like payment processing, for example. Five or 10, 20 years ago, there may have been a POS system or even a cash register, and they're doing you know, managing credit card, incoming credit card receipts and cash management and doing manual matching of receipts to payments, balancing the cash register at the end of the day, those types of things. To that now all being, you know, on a tablet, fully integrated into their accounting system, receipt management almost 100 % digitized today, and all of that happening in one place. So, to give you just kind of one example of how, you know, starting with that accounting system, the automation and, you know, really the softwareization, if you will, of that function has just expanded over time. And so that's one example of such, but more where we sit on the outbound payment side, on the purchasing side, it's been really the same evolution. Again, five or 10 or 20 years ago, businesses and small businesses would have been using paper receipts, right, or paper invoices. So, a supplier would have dropped an order off at, again, to continue maybe the restaurant or retail analogy, they drop off an order at the, you know, at the dock and there'd be an invoice that's sent via mail or dropped off. And that would end up with a, you know, stack of invoices on a desk somewhere for an accountant or an accounts payable person to process, to actually set payment for those invoices, and then ultimately enter the information into an accounting system so that that business could balance their books at the end of the month or quarter or year. Fast forward to today, and that experience for say a retail, small business or a restaurant is much more automated using solutions like ours. The invoice comes in, perhaps to an email inbox, our software can pull the data off of that invoice, ingest it into our AP automation tools, schedule the payment, route for approval workflow, and then ultimately sync back to their accounting system and take all of that manual processing out of that entire experience. So, just wanted to give you a couple examples to try to make that come alive. But it's just been a significant evolution over the last 10 or 20 years and how businesses really operate fundamentally and especially in the finance and accounting sphere. And we're really proud to be a part of that and is really fundamental for how businesses operate and ultimately saves them a lot of cost and time in managing their business.
Robison: Yeah, as the solutions have moved to the cloud and are less often on-prem, how does that affect the ability of smaller businesses to take advantage of these solutions? I've got to imagine it's a lot more affordable.
Martucci: Yeah, absolutely. More affordable and easier to get going. So, much lower cost to adoption. you know, again, the on-premise software world or the manual world, those would be probably hiring someone, right? Either maybe an outsourced accountant or outsourced accounts payable team. And, you know, that has all kinds of complexity with managing a vendor or managing another employee versus in this world, it can be procuring software, right? That takes minutes or maybe an hour to set up online to integrate to your accounting system and to ultimately integrate into your processes. So, a much, much easier way to get going and achieve the value.
Robison: If an SMB is going to make that investment in the technology, they have to justify it. What are some of the key metrics that demonstrate the return on that technology investment?
Martucci: Yeah, the return on that investment is really kind of goes back to those dimensions that I mentioned where how we help businesses. Right. So, it's first and kind of the straight cash flow or bottom line impacts, which could be in the form of a of a rebate and, in a card landscape or the, you know, the cost per the software itself. So, that's kind of the net cash flow versus the efficiencies that the business would get, right? From either having to hire less folks to work on that type of function, or it's just really being able to redevote resources to doing higher value added things, right? So, that's the primary ROI they would get from a solution like this.
Robison: Well, as companies adopt more digital and automated processes, security can be a concern. What would you tell companies that are reticent to take on new technology because it might open them up to hackers, for example?
Martucci: Yeah, security is always something that should be top of mind. And generally speaking, these solutions are more secure than the status quo or the old way of doing things. The old way of keeping paper on a desk somewhere or in a file cabinet is maybe susceptible to different types of risks, but susceptible, nonetheless. Whereas these solutions have really great controls around access security, logs around who accessed or changed different data, and then ultimately provide more visibility on a real-time basis to be able to identify threats should they exist.
Robison: Now let’s talk about AI. Every conversation includes AI these days. In our survey, 89% of the respondents planned to test or pilot some sort of AI in their processes. That was sharply up from just a year earlier, just 34% last year. If you would, look into your crystal ball and tell us what you think the future holds for AI in the payment space.
Martucci: Yeah, certainly a hot topic and certainly I think a transformation is underway with AI becoming part of the tools that we use. And that's really how I see it. I see AI becoming really just integrated into many of the existing tools that we have today and making those tools all the more powerful. One example is within our AP automation tools where we leverage AI and GenAI specifically to read invoices, right? So, in the past, it would be an optical character recognition or OCR model that would identify a certain field and would pull that data into that field. And it'd be a pretty rudimentary kind of one-to-one sort of translation logic versus with AI, our tools can now understand the context of the invoice in order to pull in data. And then also use that data in order to tell a story or answer questions around the, you know, that would be powerful for a business person trying to draw insights from all of their data in one place. So, just one example of how our tools are leveraging AI. And I see that for many small businesses, small business tools. To leverage that as just kind of a fundamental building block and how the solution works.
Robison: Now to come full circle and bring it all together in a nice, neat bow, incorporating new technology at large companies is standard practice, but it's not so easy for small businesses. What are some of the barriers that small businesses face when they want to make that digital payment transition, and how can they overcome them? What's a good first step?
Martucci: Yeah, I'd say for overcoming the barriers with adopting new technology, a good first step is really to just find, I think, a really clear use case to try to leverage technology. It probably depends on your industry or your stage, but just start with one use case. I we mentioned a few today around automating the accounting process or the accounts payable process or the serving customers and how order management and receipts work, for example. So, many of those are, I think, prime for adoption in your business, for example. So, that'd be a way to take the first step. And I just say, for large businesses, oftentimes, those businesses are more on the forefront of adopting technology and especially more advanced technology. But there's all kinds of challenges with large businesses adopting technology or adopting some of these emerging solutions also. Budgets and committees and, you know, there's often a reluctance to change within larger companies. So, I think that advice would still stand, right? Find a really clear use case where the value is, you know, the value in the business case is just really clear and apparent, and start small, right? And start small and prove out that case and use that as a proof point to scale from there.
Robison: Well, we appreciate your time and your insight. Danny Martucci, president and GM of Corpay commercial cards. Thanks, Danny.
Martucci: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
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That's it for this episode of Smarter Payments. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, So, you don't miss an episode. Smarter Payments is a production of Corpay Incorporated, copyright 2025. I'm Brennan Robison. And we'll see you next time.