Cards Making Gains With Commercial Payments, But Greenfield Opportunity Still is Massive

The death of the paper check may be a ways off — certainly that’s the case with B2B transactions.

In interviews with PYMNTS, executives have noted the fact that nearly half of commercial transactions are done through checks. Through PYMNTS Intelligence’s own reports, we’ve found that 75% of companies still use them. Given the trillions of dollars that flow back and forth between firms, that may be a bit of a head scratcher.

But there’s been a growing willingness to use credit cards, and as PYMNTS has found, virtual cards, as a way to not just cut out the (literal) paper from payments, but to lengthen days payable (for buyers) and shorten days receivable (for suppliers), improving cash flow across the board.

Recent data from the second edition of the “Growth Corporates Working Capital Index” done in collaboration between Visa and PYMNTS Intelligence, has found that virtual cards are being used more often, finding a strong place as a working capital solution, and the use of these cards have grown by nearly a third, year over year. In fact, virtual cards and negotiated terms (such as discounts for early payments) are the hallmarks of the top performing middle-market growth companies (with $50 million to $1 billion in top lines). The actual savings, on average, for the top performers translates to $11 million.

Elsewhere, as detailed in the November edition of the B2B and Digital Payments Tracker, nearly three in five U.S. businesses contend with late B2B payments — a pain point that can be addressed with cards — with one-third enduring delays exceeding 90 days. Eighty percent of B2B buyers prefer working with vendors that accept these cards, and we found that more than half of executives working within accounts receivable departments have said that not accepting virtual cards can negatively impact the buyer experience and potentially harm long-term partnerships.

To get a sense of the untapped potential, consider the fact that earlier this year, Paul Christensen, CEO of B2B payments accelerator Previse, told Karen Webster that though 80% of buyers favor virtual cards, their use accounts for just 2% of their accounts payable transactions. And though the Visa study cited above illustrated the financial benefits of those cards, the survey also indicated that only 18% of middle-market firms reported using virtual cards in the last year. Just 3.3% adopted the cards as their primary payment method.

Their usefulness is especially apparent in cross-border trade, where, as Dean Leavitt, founder and CEO of Boost Payment Solutions, said that the $190 trillion cross-border commercial payments landscape is marked by several touch points, intermediaries, FX considerations and a general lack of transparency. He defined commercial cards as a “working capital weapon” that improve vendor relationships, especially when additional data shows that 41% of smaller firms have said that they grapple with high costs (tied in part to manual and inefficient processes) when making B2B payments.

Double-Digit Growth

In a Federal Reserve survey released Monday (Nov. 18) on payments usage — including the use of cards — the growth of card use has been notable. Credit cards are the type of cards most used by businesses, accounting for 9% of credit card payments by number and 26% by value in 2022.

“The average credit card payment by a business — $259 — is almost three times the size of the average credit card payment by a consumer at $78. Some of these payments by businesses are likely payments that in past years would have been made with paper checks,” the Atlanta Fed noted on its own site. The Fed’s data tables indicate that the value of credit card payments surged 24% in between 2021 to 2022, to about $5.4 trillion.

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