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Small business

October 28, 2026

 

How small businesses are adapting to a marketplace changing in real time

Entrepreneurs are putting AI to practical use, finding new paths to capital and preparing for agentic commerce.

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Dr. Ann Nguyen-Chung, left, founder of Hippotanicals, chats with customers at the Mastercard and Intuit Small Business Marketplace in San Francisco earlier this month. She launched the plant-based personal care brand after an allergic reaction inspired her to seek simpler products with recognizable ingredients. (Photo credit: Lizzie Green Photography)

Vicki Hyman

Director,

Global Communications,

Mastercard

Call Feli Ortega an accidental restaurateur.

The daughter of a Filipino migrant who worked the fields and vineyards of California’s Central Valley, Ortega earned an MBA and founded Felicita Wine Company there in 2015, producing small-batch wines sold online. But when she wanted to expand her business with a tasting room, she discovered it would take a year longer than it would to open a wine lounge with a menu of small bites.  

Faster, but perhaps not simpler. Speaking at Mastercard’s Small Business Summit in San Francisco earlier this month, she ticked off what it takes to run her restaurant in the heart of Old Sacramento: inventory planning, managing food costs, hiring, staffing — all in addition to winemaking. Even with her formal training, she said, “It’s all still new to me to run a small business.”

That constant learning curve surfaced repeatedly throughout the summit. Technology is evolving. The way shoppers discover businesses is changing. How entrepreneurs market, sell and manage their operations is shifting. How do small business owners keep up — let alone grow — as the marketplace evolves in real time?

“I’m trying to move into this lane where I’m working on the business, and not in the business,” said  Donataye Ball, the chef-owner of Gumbo Social, which brings the classics of his New Orleans childhood to the city’s Bayview neighborhood and beyond.

Across conversations about AI, cybersecurity, access to capital and social commerce, a common thread emerged: Small business owners want tools that save time, strengthen customer relationships, improve financial confidence and help them build businesses on their own terms. And amid so much change and so much to manage, they just want things to be simple.

 “You certainly didn’t start businesses so you could deal with spreadsheets and hiring and costs and inflation,” said Ginger Siegel, Mastercard’s small business lead for North America. “We believe that you started a business because of a passion, because of a dream.”

Here are three takeaways from the summit, the latest in a series across North America that Mastercard hosted this year — from New York City to Atlanta to Toronto — to help small businesses learn from experts (including each other) and explore the latest trends in commerce.

 

Tony Lutz of Verizon stands in front of a photo booth.

In photo at left, Ankit Agarwal, center, the chief technology officer of Skyfire, speaks about the rise of AI agents and what agentic commerce could mean for small businesses. In photo at right, Mastercard's Ginger Siegel, right, chats with Jamie Gentner, of San Francisco's Center Hardware, about longevity — the business dates back to the 1880s — and what the future holds as technology, commerce and consumer expectations change rapidly. 

 

The best AI doesn’t replace entrepreneurs. It helps them make better decisions.

The next wave of AI will help small businesses protect, predict and simplify, said Marian Smith, Mastercard’s vice president for Research and Insights, who shared data from the company’s new Dreamonomics global survey of small business owners. More than six in 10 entrepreneurs say they are excited about AI’s possibilities, and 40% say AI is already saving them time on routine tasks.

“They’re thinking about this technology in a very practical, prismatic way,” Smith said. “What’s it going to do for my business? What’s it doing to help me save time, find new customers, manage my cash flow, and ultimately protect the data [of the business] I work so hard to grow?”

Darion Frazier is the content creator behind Bay Area Foodz, a social account that spotlights mom-and-pop restaurants that don’t have the marketing budgets of the big chains or the cachet of Michelin-starred restaurants. Last year, he opened Hyphy Burger, a widely acclaimed smashburger spot with breakfast-cereal-inspired shakes, in Oakland, followed by a second location across town later that year.

He said he uses AI to analyze labor costs, payroll, food costs and sales performance. By adjusting store hours based on those insights, he was able to reduce unnecessary labor expenses and improve efficiency.

As the founder and CEO of Vera Jean Media, which helps Fortune 500 companies and other organizations partner with small businesses, Jourdan Guyton uses tools like ChatGPT and Claude to transcribe customer conversations to identify themes, messaging and language that could be used in marketing. “To be able to pull that information and to be able to utilize those insights … the ads are converting, that’s what I can say.”

They also want AI built into the work they already do — rather than another technology they have to manage. 

 

Shani Jones founded Peaches Patties around recipes inspired by her Jamaican mother, nicknamed Peaches, and grew the business from a home kitchen into a storefront at San Francisco’s iconic Ferry Building. (Photo credit: Lizzie Green Photography)

 

 

Cash flow can determine whether a business captures an opportunity or misses it.

Growth isn’t just about demand. It’s about having enough capital to act.

To help more small businesses access that capital, lenders are creating more routes to approve funding, going beyond the traditional lending criteria, like years in business and credit scores.

Some lenders are looking more closely at current cash flow, revenue and business health. ”We don’t have a minimum credit score,” said Bulbul Gupta, the CEO and president of Pacific Community Ventures, a community development financial institution. “We have to make sure that we’re making a responsible loan based on cash flow.”

Open finance — the ability to securely share financial data with third parties — makes these strengths more visible.

“Data for you right now is your ticket to a seat at the table that you would not have otherwise,” said Art Flores, co-founder and CEO of Dao, an AI-powered financial platform and small business credit card provider that helps newly formed LLCs build credit history and access financing.

Panelists advised small business owners to keep their books and documents up to date, reconcile their lending application figures with their financial records, stay current on business finances. Reiterated several times across discussions: Separate personal and business finances, which otherwise makes it difficult for banks to understand whether a small business is creditworthy. Of financial institutions that don’t require that of the small business they serve, Siegel said, “it’s financial malpractice.”

Recent Intuit QuickBooks research shows that nearly two in five small business owners say a single late payment made it difficult to cover payroll or personal or business bills. Being consistent and firm on payment terms is critical, said Niall Wall, an Intuit senior business development leader. 

 

At the summit, entrepreneurs shared ideas, challenges and lessons learned from running and growing their businesses. (Photo credit: Lizzie Green Photography)

 

The shopper may be an AI agent. The customer is still human.

Agentic commerce — in which AI agents search, compare and buy on a customer’s behalf — could open paths to growth for local shops and specialty businesses.  

New research from the Mastercard Economics Institute compared spending during the 2025 holiday season by AI power users and those who didn’t subscribe to AI services. It found that AI power users spent across a wider set of merchants, particularly for beauty services, florists and restaurants. That offers a significant opportunity for smaller merchants to reach them, said Roiana Reid, MEI’s lead economist for North America.

To be discovered by AI agents, businesses will need to think beyond traditional search engine optimization, ensuring agents can access and understand their products, prices and services  through websites, catalogs, APIs and other machine-accessible interfaces, experts say.

“As agents become active participants in commerce, businesses will need to rethink how they get discovered,” said Bonnie Shnayerson, a Mastercard vice president for Small Business in North America. “Ecosystem players will have to adopt new approaches to trust, identity and authorization. Buyers will expect greater convenience without sacrificing one ounce of control over security.”

Trust will be more critical than ever. If an AI agent arrives at a merchant’s site ready to buy, the merchant needs confidence in both the agent and what the person behind the agent has given it permission to do. “You need to know who the agent is, sure, but you need to know who the human is,” said Ankit Agarwal, the chief technology officer of Skyfire, which is working with Mastercard to help build this identity infrastructure. “The human that the agent is happening on behalf of, that’s your customer.”

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Morgan Buckert holds her custom cowboy boots in her studio.