Mastercard’s Tulsi Narayan Talks Procurement Modernisation

Tulsi Narayan leads Mastercard’s Commercial and New Payment Flows business across Europe, focusing on modernising supply chain payments and enabling seamless, digital business transactions. 

She and her team deliver a host of innovative solutions including commercial cards, B2B payables/receivables and non-carded payments, aiming to make business and trade more efficient.

Here, Tulsi speaks to Procurement Magazine about outdated legacy procurement systems and how they can cause inefficiencies, high costs and payment delays across Europe, impacting businesses and public sector spending.

Why do manual invoice and payment workflows persist across Europe, despite significant advances in digital transformation? 

Manual workflows persist because many organisations are still using outdated internal systems to manage their procurement and payment operations. These systems were not designed to support automation or modern digital tools, which often result in finance teams having to rely on manual processes for approvals, data entry and reconciliation. 

In many cases, businesses have prioritised improving customer-facing technology, but have been slower to update back-office infrastructure.  

This is understandable. Procurement is often complex and heavily integrated with legacy systems, making change difficult to implement, and consequently, modernisation is frequently delayed. 

This has created a clear gap between expectations and reality. While consumers benefit from instant transactions and seamless, smart experiences, many businesses still operate with manual, paper-heavy workflows behind the scenes. This results in inefficiencies, increases the risk of errors and delays, and makes it harder to respond with agility in a fast-changing environment. 

How do legacy procurement systems contribute to organisations losing up to 70% of their invoicing budgets and what are the broader economic implications?

Legacy systems tend to involve manual work at every stage of the invoicing cycle, which can increase costs and the likelihood of errors. Without digital tools to manage on-boarding, contracts and payments, companies can face higher labour costs, missed early payment discounts and frequent revisions.  

As mentioned these legacy systems can drain up to 70% of IT budgets, which can instead be used to modernise internal payment processes and drive greater operational efficiency.  

Suppliers are also impacted. Manual processes can lead to payment delays and hamper visibility over the payment timeline. This can be particularly challenging for small and medium-sized businesses that rely on predictable cash flow, with these delays disrupting operations, affecting payroll and limiting growth potential. 

At a wider economic level, public procurement is one of the largest areas of government spending in the EU, with an estimated €2tn spent annually. Improving public procurement processes therefore presents a opportunity not just for businesses, but for entire economies. 

In what ways do these procurement inefficiencies impact economic resilience, public sector performance and ultimately, taxpayers? 

As one of the largest areas of government spend, public procurement is not just a cost centre, but a critical lever that governments can use to drive public policy objectives.  

Governments stand to benefit significantly from centralising and digitising their procurement and payments efficient processes, which can ultimately deliver cost savings, stimulate SME inclusion and fuel economic growth. 

Slow or fragmented procurement processes increase administrative burden and cause delays in reconciling payments. It can also affect supplier relationships and their ability to deliver essential services, and this is especially true for small businesses that rely on regular cash flow and don’t have the working capital to wait for payment, which on average can take more than 90 days.  

This all ultimately impacts the public sector’s ability to maximise public spending efficiently. Utilising their procurement budgets as effectively as possible and leveraging a more agile, streamlined and transparent procurement system is therefore one of the most direct ways to drive greater value to the public and local economy.

How do Mastercard’s procure-to-pay solutions help businesses and governments reduce fraud, improve working capital and achieve greater end-to-end efficiency?  

Businesses deal with tough operating conditions as they strive for growth, and procurement processes shouldn’t be the reason that holds them back.   

Our goal is to enable greater efficiency and transparency, ultimately ensuring working capital flows easily through every stage of the procurement cycle, and our procure-to-pay solutions are designed to streamline and secure every stage of this process.  

By embedding virtual card payments directly into existing procurement platforms, organisations can automate invoice approvals, accelerate settlement and eliminate the need for paper-based processes. 

Each transaction is tokenised and uniquely identifiable, which adds a layer of protection against fraud and misuse of funds. Virtual cards and embedded financial experiences also offer key data-driven benefits, such as immediate settlement allowing businesses to have real time visibility into business spend. This transparency enables finance teams to identify cost-saving opportunities, mitigate risk and improve compliance. 

With faster payments on approval, both buyers and suppliers benefit. Buyers can optimise their payment cycles and working capital, while suppliers gain quicker access to funds. This creates a more balanced and resilient ecosystem that supports better planning, improved cash flow and long-term supplier relationships. 

Can you share specific examples of organisations successfully modernising their operations with embedded payment and digital procurement tools?

One organisation I can point to is GEP, a leading provider of procurement and supply chain software. We partnered with them to integrate Mastercard’s virtual card capabilities into their platform, helping businesses manage B2B payments more efficiently as part of a broader source-to-pay workflow. 

What makes this so valuable is the way it simplifies and digitises the payment process within procurement. Buyers can issue secure virtual cards automatically once a purchase is approved, which removes the need for manual invoicing, speeds up reconciliation and strengthens compliance. 

For GEP’s customers, that means fewer steps, faster payments and much better visibility across procurement and finance teams. It’s a practical example of how embedded payment tools can deliver real operational gains when built into the systems businesses already use every day.