TRENDS AND INSIGHTS How SMBs in Europe Can Gain the Competitive Edge

How SMBs in Europe Can Gain the Competitive Edge

The playing field for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across Europe is changing and becoming ever more complex. From increased competition to new technology and tools, getting a competitive edge has never been more difficult. 

Ambitious SMBs, creators, and entrepreneurs are up against companies many times their size, with more capital and resources. What we're seeing is that a growing number are able to compete effectively, not by matching size or spending, but by building competitive edges of their own, driven by new technology. Five ‘edges’ in particular stand out: digitalisation, visibility and control, AI-powered security and fraud defence, global reach, and vertical payments.

Individually, these changes can be small. Together, they’re helping smaller businesses remove the friction from running a business, levelling the playing field and powering the next wave of digital commerce in Europe.

Streamlining operations through digitisation

Historically, running a small business has often meant looking backwards: reconciling last month's numbers, responding to cash flow pressure once it's already arrived, and piecing together spreadsheets to understand what happened, rather than anticipating what's next. A lot of manual work! 

That's beginning to shift. Digitalisation, the move from manual and reactive processes to connected, automated ones, is redefining how SMBs operate day to day. Our SMB Acceptance Research¹ found that 60% of European SMBs now accept card payments, including via digital wallet. In the UK, for example, our report with Public First found that a further £5.1 billion a year² could be unlocked if more SMBs use digital payments as the front door to wider digital innovation. 

What began for many as a reactive effort to keep pace with change has matured into something more deliberate. Simple tools, like automatic invoicing, are freeing up time that used to disappear into admin. For many SMBs, this shift from reactive to proactive is now a real advantage, not just a cost saving.

Improving control through better visibility

For many SMBs, financial information doesn’t sit in one place. It’s spread across payment providers, accounts, invoices and platforms, each holding part of the picture, but none of them telling the whole story. Visa research found that 58% of surveyed SMBs use more than one payment provider, while 56% want a single platform to manage their finances³.

When payments and expense data are brought together, this changes. Owners can see how their business is actually performing, not a picture pieced together at month end, but a current one. Tools like Visa Spend Clarity for Business are already helping smaller businesses do this, automating expense management and simplifying reconciliation so less time disappears into the admin of understanding cash flow and expenses, and more goes into running the business.

The real advantage is having the right view of data at the right time, rather than simply more data. As financial tools become more deeply embedded in the software businesses already use, through accounting platforms, open banking connections and integrated payment management, that clarity becomes less of a periodic finance exercise and more of a natural part of how day-to-day decisions get made. But while better visibility helps businesses prepare, not every challenge can be predicted. This is where resilience becomes essential.

Building confidence through security

Uncertainty isn’t going away, and businesses know it. Economic conditions shift quickly, and the businesses that hold up best tend to be those that have diverse, flexible ways of taking and moving money, rather than relying on a single system that could let them down. This isn’t a hypothetical risk. 46% of small businesses⁴ identified a cyberattack in the past 12 months. The impact extends further than the attack itself: 455,000 UK businesses⁵ may have paused adopting new digital technology because of fraud, and 79% say secure payments are central to their wider technology adoption. Increased cybersecurity investment is an understandable response.

That resilience extends to fraud prevention too. AI-driven approaches to detecting fraud can now analyse patterns across billions of transactions in real time, catching genuine threats without slowing down legitimate ones⁶. For a small business, that’s a meaningful difference; catching fraud early protects revenue and reputation, without adding friction for the customer trying to pay. And this means a reduction in the cost and distraction of fraud.

Expanding opportunity through global reach

Visa’s cross-border research shows that, among European SMBs looking to expand, 75% expect their cross-border payment values to grow in 2026, and 81% say they are open to trying new solutions⁷ to get there. But friction remains real: 32% of SMBs cite high bank fees or FX conversion costs as a top challenge, and 40% of those holding multi-currency accounts experience hidden FX spreads⁸. Cross-border payments are now getting faster and easier to track and closing that gap matters because for a growing number of SMBs, international payments are no longer a peripheral activity. They already account for 38% of total business expenses for those making them regularly⁹.

Geography has traditionally created complexity for smaller businesses. Different payment methods, currencies and customer expectations can make expansion costly and difficult. Digital payments and global acceptance networks help reduce some of those barriers, allowing SMBs to reach customers beyond their home market with greater confidence.

But global reach is only part of the picture.

Meeting business-specific needs through vertical solutions

Growth also depends on having infrastructure that aligns with how a sector operates – this is the promise of vertical payments. Generic, one-size-fits-all payment tools don’t always account for the workflows, timing and regulation that shape how money moves in different industries. A single-use virtual card built for B2B travel is solving a different problem to an embedded card built for insurance claims processing. 

A restaurant worries about something different from a doctor, accountant, transport operator, marketplace seller or field engineer. The competitive advantage comes from having tools that fit the reality of how that business operates.

The businesses that benefit most tend to be the ones working with providers who have taken the time to understand their sector’s specific challenges.

Bringing these to life within the creator economy

Nowhere is this shift more apparent than in the creator economy. Over the past decade, content creation has grown from side hustle to serious career. Almost half of UK creators, 49%¹⁰ according to Visa’s research, say inconsistent payments have affected their ability to run their business.

These are entrepreneurs running real businesses, often with irregular income and payouts from multiple platforms that move faster than traditional financial infrastructure was built for. What they're asking for is straightforward: they want their business payments to work as smoothly as their personal ones already do. Solving this problem has a knock-on benefit; the tools built to meet their needs are already proving useful for freelancers and small businesses facing similar challenges.

The opportunity ahead

These advantages play out differently by industry, but the direction is clear. This is what we mean by competitive edge: not one dramatic breakthrough, but a series of technology adoptions that, applied consistently, add up to something significant over time. 

For Visa, this is about supporting the banks, fintechs, platforms and partners that serve these businesses to give them the practical tools they need to compete and grow. The businesses paying attention now are the ones likely to stay ahead – regardless of the size of the competitor they're up against.