Author: Callum Gracie, founder of Otto Media and Co-Founder of GiaAI.
A junior bookkeeper costs between $35,000 and $49,000 a year. An AI bookkeeping tool costs $240 to $6,000. That gap tells you everything about where SME spending is headed.
I run an SEO agency and work with dozens of small business owners across trades and services. I also co-founded GiaAI, an AI platform built to automate lead generation for service businesses. So I see both sides of this shift every day. The business owners I work with are not making grand statements about the future of work. They are making simple math decisions. And the math keeps pointing them toward software instead of staff.
This is not a marketing story. It is a fintech story. Because the platforms capturing those redirected salary dollars are fintech companies, whether they call themselves that or not.
The numbers are hard to ignore
The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report surveyed 1,000 employers representing 14 million workers globally. It found that clerical roles, admin assistants, and data entry positions are among the fastest-declining job categories worldwide. At the same time, Goldman Sachs estimates that 46% of administrative tasks and 35% of business financial operations can now be automated.
Meanwhile, SME adoption of AI tools jumped from 39% to 55% in a single year. Average SaaS spending per employee hit $4,830 in 2025, up nearly 22% year-over-year. And 46% of small business owners say AI will make them less reliant on employees going forward.
Those dollars are flowing directly into fintech platforms. For instance, QuickBooks holds 62% of the US small business accounting market with 6.5 million subscribers. Xero passed 4.59 million subscribers globally. Stripe processed $1.4 trillion in payments last year, adding roughly 1,000 new businesses daily. As a result, these platforms are growing because SMEs are choosing subscriptions over salaries.
Embedded finance is the part most people miss
The most powerful version of this shift is nearly invisible. It happens when financial automation gets baked into the operational tools businesses already use. For example, a plumber’s scheduling app that also handles invoicing and payment collection does not feel like “adopting AI.” It feels like using your work software. But every invoice auto-generated and every payment reminder sent without a human represents work that used to require a junior employee.
This is embedded finance, and the market is projected to reach $454 billion by 2031, growing at nearly 24% annually. BCG and Adyen estimate that over 80% of the opportunity in North America and Europe remains untapped.
ServiceTitan is a good example. On this platform, a home services business gets scheduling, dispatch, CRM, invoicing, payments, customer financing, and reporting in one system. Field technicians process payments from their phones. Reconciliation happens on its own. On top of that, businesses offering ServiceTitan’s embedded financing see 12% higher close rates and 13% higher average ticket sizes. There is no separate bookkeeper involved.
In addition, independent software vendors now originate an estimated 40 to 65% of new SMB payment contracts in North America. The financial plumbing of small businesses is increasingly built into their operational tools rather than managed by dedicated finance staff.
This is a global shift, not a regional one
Different markets experience this at different speeds, but the direction is the same everywhere.
In India, 63 million MSMEs employ roughly 110 million people. UPI processes 640 million transactions daily, and a major ICRIER-OpenAI study of 650 IT firms found AI is causing modest hiring slowdowns concentrated at the entry level. Across the UK, job ads for AI-exposed roles declined 38%, compared to 21% for low-exposure positions. Meanwhile, Southeast Asia’s digital payments already exceed $1 trillion in gross transaction value, with platforms like Grab and Gojek replacing informal manual processes. Similarly, Nubank in Latin America has reached over 118 million customers with operating costs far below traditional banks.
Each region has its own dynamics. However, the underlying pattern is consistent. Fintech tools keep getting cheaper, and junior employees keep getting more expensive.
What this means for fintech
The WEF projects 92 million jobs displaced globally by 2030 alongside 170 million new roles created. The net gain of 78 million jobs is encouraging. However, those new roles will require different skills and may not be accessible to the same workers displaced from bookkeeping and payment processing positions.
For fintech platforms, the commercial opportunity is massive. Essentially, every dollar shifted from a junior employee’s salary to a SaaS subscription represents recurring revenue. Fintech-driven institutions recorded the highest SME revenue growth at 22% year-over-year in 2025.
For SME owners, the decision keeps getting easier. Tools keep improving, costs keep dropping, and the gap between what a subscription can do and what a junior hire can do keeps narrowing.
The question for fintech is no longer whether this shift is happening. It is who builds the platforms that make the transition seamless, and who takes responsibility for the workforce it leaves behind.