Forget Travel, WEX’s Next Act Is B2B Payments

WEX Inc.’s (NYSE: WEX) second-quarter results , reported Wednesday (July 22), were flattered by forces outside its control. Higher fuel prices and favorable foreign exchange movements helped lift revenue 14.2% to $753.5 million, while adjusted earnings per share climbed 35.4% to $5.35.

Excluding those macro effects, revenue grew a more modest 4.2%.

But the most consequential number shared during Thursday’s (July 23) second-quarter 2026 earnings call was not the companywide growth rate. It was the 20% increase in direct accounts-payable (AP) volume inside WEX’s Corporate Payments business.

That acceleration suggests the long-anticipated rebound in B2B payments is beginning to materialize, although not necessarily through the channels that historically defined the market.

“Within Corporate Payments, in the places we’ve been making investments, which are the embedded payments outside of travel and AP direct, we are seeing really strong growth in our pipelines,” Melissa Smith, WEX’s president and CEO, told analysts.

Those pipelines, she added, are beginning to translate into revenue and stronger payment volume.

Instead of relying primarily on travel activity or broad corporate spending growth, WEX is expanding through direct AP, embedded payments and virtual cards designed to operate inside the systems businesses already use to pay suppliers.

Direct AP Becomes a Growth Engine for WEX

WEX’s Corporate Payments revenue increased 5.8% to $125.1 million during the quarter, and total travel volume rose 6.4%. Direct AP now accounts for roughly one-fifth of segment revenue and is expected to maintain mid-teens growth through the remainder of the year.

The product is straightforward. A business sends WEX an accounts-payable file, and WEX executes payments to suppliers through virtual cards and other methods. The important shift is that the payment is no longer treated as an isolated transaction. It becomes part of a managed operational workflow. Companies are not merely replacing checks with electronic payments. They are outsourcing supplier enablement, payment routing and transaction execution to providers capable of managing those processes at scale.

That outsourcing pitch is resonating with new customers. Approximately two-thirds of WEX’s direct AP growth during the quarter came from new business, with the remainder tied to increased activity among existing over-the-road customers. The mix matters because it suggests the acceleration was not simply the result of stronger spending by incumbent clients.

Some of that new-business growth traces back to technology. WEX credited an artificial intelligence-based lead-generation tool with helping identify likely customers more efficiently.

“We’re doing an even better job of identification of leads,” CEO Smith said.

AI is not changing how a virtual card clears. It is improving the economics of finding, underwriting and onboarding the businesses most likely to use one.

Embedded Payments Creates New Distribution for WEX Products

Direct AP is only one part of WEX’s strategy. The other is embedded payments, particularly outside travel. WEX built much of its Corporate Payments franchise around online travel agencies and other intermediaries. That business remains important, but management is increasingly focused on embedding payment capabilities into FinTech platforms and software providers whose core product is not payments.

Those companies may need to move money on behalf of customers or may view payments as a way to generate additional revenue. WEX can provide issuing, settlement, compliance and virtual-card infrastructure without requiring the software provider to build those capabilities internally.

The model expands the addressable market beyond companies actively shopping for a payment product. Platforms serving procurement, logistics, insurance, travel or business spending can themselves become distribution channels. WEX said its embedded-payments pipeline remains strong and is beginning to convert into revenue. Together with direct AP, the business is expected to support the company’s goal of returning to its long-term organic revenue growth range of 5% to 10%.

The rebound, in other words, is not simply more transactions flowing through existing channels. It is the creation of new channels.

Travel Recovers, but No Longer Defines the B2B Growth Story

Travel remains a major part of Corporate Payments. Yet the quarter also showed why reported volume alone can obscure the segment’s underlying performance.

Although travel volume increased 6.4%, total Corporate Payments purchase volume declined 3.6%. Management attributed much of that decline to timing involving a large online travel-agency customer that shifted activity into the second half.

WEX estimated that customer timing and contractual factors reduced reported volume by approximately 5%. The company expects purchase-volume growth to improve during the second half, although changes in customer mix could place modest pressure on interchange yield.

That trade-off is typical of a maturing payments platform. Growth does not always come from maximizing the economics of every transaction. It can come from processing more transactions across a broader network at a slightly lower average yield.

Card Acceptance Remains B2B Payments’ Unsolved Problem

Yield mechanics are not the only friction point in WEX’s network. Virtual cards remain attractive to buyers because they offer security, control, automated reconciliation and potential rebate revenue. Suppliers, however, may see them differently, because accepting a card often means paying interchange fees that would not accompany a check or ACH transfer.

That tension can lead suppliers to discourage card acceptance or request another payment method. WEX acknowledged that it encounters such suppression within portions of its direct AP and bill-pay businesses, but said the effect remains limited.

“It’s not for us a big headwind in any given period of time,” Smith said.

Still, supplier acceptance remains one of the central competitive challenges in commercial payments. The providers best positioned to win will be those able to route payments through methods suppliers are willing to accept while preserving value for buyers and software platforms.

WEX’s quarter illustrates why the next phase of B2B payments growth may look different from the last. The original digitization thesis centered on replacing paper checks. That transition continues, but it is no longer enough to differentiate a platform. The larger opportunity lies in controlling the workflow surrounding the payment: ingesting AP files, identifying suppliers, selecting payment methods, managing compliance, reconciling transactions and returning data to customers’ financial systems.