Alternative Payments Launches Alti: The AI Agent Closing the Fintech Profitability Gap

Alternative Payments has launched Alti, an AI-powered financial intelligence tool designed to automate accounts receivable, payable, and analytics for service businesses. For fintech professionals, this represents a shift toward agentic workflows where AI doesn't just display data but executes financial tasks, directly addressing the widening profitability gap caused by rising labor costs.

What was announced

Alti is designed to act as a financial intelligence layer across the Alternative Payments platform, specifically targeting service businesses such as IT solution providers. The tool functions across three core areas: Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and Analytics. In Accounts Receivable, it automates the lifecycle of invoicing, payments, and reconciliation. The Accounts Payable module centralizes vendor bills and approvals, while the Analytics component provides custom dashboards for monitoring cash flow and utilization. A specialized "Benchmarking" add-on allows firms to compare their financial performance against industry peers.

The tool works by answering natural language questions from live business data, suggesting next steps, and carrying out actions once approved by a human operator. This includes client health scoring, identifying overdue balances, and drafting follow-up emails or scheduling recurring reminders. Across the more than 1,000 companies currently using the Alternative Payments platform, the company reports that teams have reduced their days to collect by 42% and saved more than five hours per week for each accounts receivable operator.

Alti is now widely available following a soft launch period. The system integrates with a wide range of existing financial and management software, including QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics 365, ConnectWise, Autotask, HaloPSA, and SuperOps. Alternative Payments will showcase the new capabilities at IT Nation Connect Global, scheduled for November 4-6, 2026, in Orlando, Florida.

The companies involved

Alternative Payments is a New York-based fintech firm that provides an AI-powered financial operations platform specifically tailored for the needs of service-oriented businesses. The company focuses on bridging the "profitability gap" often seen in the professional services sector, where median firms frequently see significantly lower EBITDA margins compared to best-in-class performers. By integrating accounts receivable, accounts payable, and reporting into a single environment, the firm aims to reduce the "tool sprawl" that often hampers back-office efficiency for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and other IT firms.

Led by founder and CEO Baxter Lanius, the company positions itself as a solution for firms that need to maintain disciplined execution and operational maturity without expanding their administrative headcount. Its platform is designed to connect directly with the Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems that these businesses already rely on, ensuring that financial data remains synchronized across the organization's tech stack.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has closely tracked the evolution of Alternative Payments as it scales its automation capabilities for the Managed Service Provider market. In early 2025, the company secured significant capital to fuel its growth, as seen when Alternative Payments Raises $22 Million to Modernize B2B Payment Offerings. Following this injection of funds, the firm focused on technical accessibility, and FF News reported that Alternative Payments Debuts API to Accelerate MSP Growth Through Automation. Most recently, the company has looked beyond its domestic market to support a broader client base, a move covered in Alternative Payments Expands Internationally with Canadian Launch.

What this means

The launch of Alti signals a transition in the fintech sector from passive data visualization to active "agentic" automation. For years, financial platforms have focused on showing users what happened in the past; this move pushes the industry toward systems that suggest and execute the next logical step in a workflow. This puts significant pressure on legacy ERP and accounting software providers who rely on manual data entry and human-triggered processes. The central question for the market now is one of trust: as AI moves from reporting data to sending follow-up emails and scheduling payments, how much oversight will human operators require before these agentic workflows become the industry standard?