Firms rely on third-party providers to deliver several of the key digital technologies they need to optimize their businesses’ payment operations.
The digital innovation that firms most commonly obtain from third-party providers is blockchain/smart contracts, with 70% of the firms that use it reporting that they have outsourced that technology, according to Accelerating The Time To Realized Revenue, a PYMNTS and Mastercard collaboration based on interviews of 400 corporate executives.
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Just over half the firms that use two other digital innovations have obtained them from third-party providers: artificial intelligence (AI) systems and dynamic terms. About one-third have outsourced another technology, supplier portals.
Third-party providers are poised to play a central role in expanding firms’ blockchain and AI capabilities in the future.
The survey found that 51% of the U.S. firms and 49% of the Canadian firms that are innovating blockchain and smart contract technologies in the next five years plan to do so with outside providers.
Among those that are adding AI systems, 42% of Canadian firms and 34% of U.S. firms plan to use outside providers.
Mid-market firms are more likely than large-market firms to plan on using third-party providers to enable their five-year innovation plans in these two technologies.
Fifty-one percent of the mid-market firms and 50% of the large-market firms that are looking to add blockchain and smart contract technologies in the next five years intend to tap third-party providers to deliver them.
Among those that are adding AI systems, 41% of the mid-market firms and 25% of the large-market firms plan to source them from third-party providers.
Third-party providers can help mid-market firms avoid the high costs and long timeframes associated with building their own technologies from scratch, often providing access to technologies and domain area expertise that might otherwise be out of reach.
