{"id":83945,"date":"2026-02-20T16:38:02","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T16:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/?p=83945"},"modified":"2026-02-20T16:38:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T16:38:02","slug":"why-ai-agents-will-be-trusted-teammates-of-accounts-paybable-qa-with-jason-kurtz-ceo-basware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/ai\/why-ai-agents-will-be-trusted-teammates-of-accounts-paybable-qa-with-jason-kurtz-ceo-basware\/","title":{"rendered":"Why AI Agents will be trusted teammates of Accounts Paybable – Q&A with Jason Kurtz, CEO, Basware"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>With the deadline for mandatory electronic invoicing in France fast approaching, European Business spoke with Jason Kurtz, CEO of\u00a0Basware<\/a>\u00a0during his visit to the country, including his vision for the use of Agentic AI and its impact on the Accounts Payable (AP) function.<\/p>\n

Basware, which works with over 6,500 customers globally, including Mercedes and Heineken says it reported 20% year-over-year increase in sales in 2025, primarily driven by a surge in interest in AI-empowered products.<\/p>\n

Q: Mandatory electronic invoicing will begin in France as of 1st September 2026. What challenges will businesses face in preparing for this deadline, and what are the consequences of failing to do so?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The deadline puts pressure on businesses to update their accounts payable and ERP processes, systems, and data to align with the new compliance rules to make sure every invoice meets the new e-invoicing standards.<\/p>\n

Failing to comply will carry hefty costs – French authorities estimate they could recoup up to \u20ac3 billion annually from invoices previously subject to VAT fraud, late or incomplete payments and errors in reporting \u2013 and fines<\/p>\n

For CFOs and finance teams, overhauling invoicing processing to meet the new standards isn\u2019t just about avoiding penalties. It\u2019s about protecting future revenue, reducing risk, and maintaining trust with regulators and stakeholders.<\/p>\n

Q: Your recent report on AI to ROI suggests that finance leaders are under pressure \u2018to do something\u2019 with AI, but many are struggling to do so effectively. What role will AI play in helping French businesses meet the deadline?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many leaders feel pressure to \u201cdo something\u201d with AI, and the ones that get technology adoption right will be the ones who succeed. AI\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0a magic wand and requires a clear strategy and governance to make a meaningful impact, anchored in areas where value can be proven and scaled – like AP. AI\u2019s role is AP is threefold. First, it accelerates automation across invoice processing, procurement, and financial workflows, reducing manual intervention and enabling teams to scale without adding cost. Second, it improves decision quality by turning fragmented financial data into real-time insights, helping CFOs manage cash flow, risk, and supplier relationships more proactively. Third, and most important for deadline-driven initiatives, AI shortens implementation timelines by identifying process gaps, recommending optimizations, and continuously learning from transaction data to improve accuracy over time.<\/p>\n

Q: The research also says that 72% of finance leaders see accounts payable (AP) as the most obvious starting point for agentic AI. How can Basware help in this area, and what might the future look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the end of the day. AP is a data problem, and Basware is solving it with AI. Over the last 40 years, we\u2019ve built the industry\u2019s largest set of structured, high-quality AP data of over 2.5 billion invoices. And we\u2019re applying AI trained on this data to deliver context-aware predictions and recommendations to finance teams so they can spend less time analyzing and more time deciding and acting. The future of finance involves Agentic Finance, where AI entities transact on behalf of the enterprise to drive faster, smarter decisions and\u00a0real business\u00a0outcomes. We accomplish through designing trust into the processes and AI capabilities – this is the future we are creating at Basware and preparing our customers for today.<\/p>\n

Q: Should finance leaders fear an \u201cAI Armageddon,\u201d and what impact will artificial intelligence have on their jobs?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201cAI is coming for your jobs\u201d narrative makes for good headlines, but we\u2019ve heard this story before. Every major technological shift has sparked anxiety about widespread job loss. But the doomsday scenarios didn\u2019t really play out. AI is one of the most disruptive technologies we\u2019ve ever seen. And it\u2019s certainly going to change the nature of work. But it isn\u2019t going result in the wholesale replacement of people. What it will do is free us to do the work we want to do and make us better at it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s historical precedent for the argument. The assembly line was going to kill manufacturing jobs. Instead, it turned skilled artisans into specialized machine operators. And it actually boosted overall factory employment.<\/p>\n

The same scenario is playing out today in AP – an area that would seem ripe for AI to wipe out an entire category of jobs.\u00a0 AI isn\u2019t replacing AP teams, it\u2019s replacing the manual tasks that bog them down so they can do work that is more strategic and meaningful. When they don\u2019t need to spend hours chasing invoices and routing them for approval, AP teams can focus on things like cash flow optimization that impact the bottom line.\u00a0 We\u2019re designing a world where AI Agents will be trusted teammates that today\u2019s AP clerks and managers will oversee.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day. AI isn\u2019t about getting rid of people. It\u2019s about getting more out of the people you have by empowering them to be and do their best. The reality is, most companies that are eliminating jobs are not doing it because of AI. They either over hired or don\u2019t have the right people in the right roles and are using AI as an excuse to right the ship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Kurtz is CEO of Basware<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the deadline for mandatory electronic invoicing in France fast approaching, European Business spoke with Jason Kurtz, CEO of\u00a0Basware\u00a0during his visit to the country, including his vision for the use of Agentic AI and its impact on the Accounts Payable (AP) function. Basware, which works with over 6,500 customers globally, including Mercedes and Heineken says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":68208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1070,34,36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-83945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"category-business","9":"category-profiles"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83948,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83945\/revisions\/83948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/europeanbusinessmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}