Instant Payments Unlock Working Capital by Allowing Treasury to Pay Later

The unexpected advantage of instant transactions for B2B firms is not faster payment but removing settlement float from payment terms.

Real-time settlement does not merely accelerate money. It makes time negotiable, particularly across B2B.

If a supplier must be paid Friday, a company should not have to surrender the cash Wednesday just because the payment rail needs two days to get it there. On paper, the company has 30 days. Operationally, it may only control the cash for 28.

By contrast, for large corporate payers, real-time infrastructure can allow treasury to hold cash until closer to the actual contractual deadline while still delivering money exactly when promised.

That turns settlement latency into a working capital variable.

See also: Working Capital Is Becoming a Priced Portfolio for CFOs

Real-Time B2B Lets Firms Stop Negotiating for Days They Already Own

While instant payments are usually sold as a speed story, for corporate treasury, that misses the more valuable point. A company that wants to move suppliers from net 30 to net 45 is asking counterparties to finance another 15 days of its operations. Suppliers notice. They may raise prices, resist the change or seek financing elsewhere.

Removing settlement float produces a different result. If a company releases cash two days before a payment is due, eliminating those two days does not change the commercial bargain. The supplier still receives the money on the agreed date. The buyer simply stops allowing its payment infrastructure to consume part of the term.

That makes instant payments unusual among working capital tools. They can improve liquidity without necessarily transferring more financing burden onto the supplier.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “The Bankers’ Playbook: The ROl Case for Instant B2B Payments,” a collaboration with The Clearing House, found in July that 88% of financial institutions surveyed rated the return on investment from real-time B2B payment rails as high or very high.

At the same time, the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Time to Cash™: A New Measure of Business Resilience” found in October that 77.9% of chief financial officers see improving the cash flow cycle as “very or extremely important” to their strategy in the year ahead.

Holding $500 million for one additional day at a 4% annualized return is worth roughly $55,000. Stretch the effect across recurring payments throughout the year, and the economics become meaningful. The benefit can also appear elsewhere, including lower revolver usage, reduced prefunding, more investable cash or greater flexibility around intraday liquidity.

The point is not that every corporation will earn millions of dollars by delaying payments a few hours. It is that settlement time has an economic value, and treasury departments are gaining greater control over it.

Read also: At 3%-Plus Rates, Forecasting Errors Have a Real Price Tag for CFOs

Faster Rails Change the Treasury Economics for Enterprises

Traditional corporate payments have been designed around a logistical question: How early must we send this transaction for it to arrive on time? Real-time settlement changes the question to: How long can we economically retain the cash while still meeting the obligation?

The same systems that help treasurers determine which account should fund a payment, which rail should carry it, and which currency should be used can also optimize the moment of release. Real-time payments are not simply another rail added to the corporate payment stack. They allow the payment stack to become more responsive to the balance sheet.

“We’ve seen a shift in moving away from the batch mindset,” Matthew Miller, managing director, treasury product executive at Bank of America, told PYMNTS in an interview published Thursday (Aug. 20). “It’s no longer nine-to-five. It’s now happening nights and weekends. The digitization of our environments is driving more to that single flow.”

In addition to moving from batch to individual transaction flows, future-proofing also begins with understanding the shift toward 24/7 business operations, Miller said.

As a result, the best payment method may depend on when the cash needs to arrive and what treasury can do with the money in the meantime. A company might use slower rails for predictable low-value obligations where settlement buffers have little economic consequence, while reserving real-time payments for transactions where timing precision allows it to retain balances longer.

The 2025-2026 Growth Corporates Working Capital Index, a Visa report in collaboration with PYMNTS Intelligence, 7 in 10 “Adaptive” CFOs and treasurers use working capital solutions to pay suppliers faster, stay agile and strengthen supplier relationships in a volatile economy.

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