B2B payments innovation tends to scale in lockstep with supplier acceptance.
For years, that dynamic slowed the progress of corporate back offices. Buyers were reluctant to push new payment methods if suppliers couldn’t or wouldn’t accept them. Suppliers, in turn, had little incentive to modernize if checks still arrived reliably in the mail. The result was a self-reinforcing equilibrium that favored inertia, or at least inertia in the form of paper checks, wires and manual approvals.
But news this week from American Express (AmEx), Truist and Visa underscores how that inertia is finally breaking as momentum builds around optimizing business payments. AmEx on Thursday (Feb. 5) launched a new Flexible Payment Option (FPO) for small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), while Visa, also on Thursday, launched a new platform designed to help small business owners access capital, reach customers and adopt modern business tools.
On Tuesday (Feb. 3), Truist Financial launched an AI-enabled platform to automate corporate receivables.
The announcements show the growing momentum behind digital business payment solutions that can create win-win outcomes for both sides of a B2B transaction. After all, against a shifting combination of economic pressures, new platform capabilities and changing expectations inside finance organizations, digitizing payments is becoming a key resiliency unlock for finance organizations.
At the center of this transition might be two rails that, together, are reshaping how companies move money: virtual cards and ACH.
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See more: How CFOs Can Put Some Numbers Against Payments Modernization
The Supplier Acceptance Flywheel
Historically, checks persisted because they were familiar and flexible. They didn’t require technical integration, and they worked across virtually any supplier relationship. Today, those same qualities can look like liabilities. In an environment where B2B leaders are measured not just on cost control, but on their ability to support growth, resilience and scalability, continued reliance on checks sends the wrong signal.
But in today’s uncertain operating landscape, supplier expectations are changing as quickly as buyer priorities. Small and mid-sized vendors now manage cash flow in real time, often through cloud-based accounting platforms that make digital payments easier to receive and reconcile than paper ones.
According to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Time to Cash™: A New Measure of Business Resilience,” payments modernization can be viewed as a balance sheet issue rather than a process upgrade. Shortening Time to Cash™ is not about optics, but about reducing the amount of capital the business must carry to function.
Forward-thinking organizations are treating supplier enablement as a core part of their B2B payments strategy. That means clear communication, easy onboarding experiences and flexibility in honoring vendor preferences. It also means recognizing that digitization can be a two-way value exchange. Faster payments, reduced errors and improved remittance data benefit suppliers as much as buyers.
Virtual cards and ACH align more naturally with this reality. They support digital onboarding, automated approvals and straight-through processing; and they are able to integrate with procurement, accounts payable and treasury systems. One of their biggest selling points is in reducing the friction that arises when payments live in a separate, analog universe.
“Those companies that do it right are starting to see benefits by using digital payments as a strategic tool,” Daniel Artin, head of strategic partnerships at Boost Payment Solutions, told PYMNTS last month.
See also: The Classic ERP Model Is Dying. What Comes Next?
Choosing the Right Rail for the Right Moment
Beyond speed and efficiency, digitized payments generate data that was previously locked away in paper files or bank statements. Virtual cards provide granular transaction-level insights, while ACH integrations offer real-time status updates and settlement confirmations.
Payments are a connective tissue that touches procurement, finance, IT and supplier relationships. Modernizing them unlocks benefits far beyond the payments function itself.
One of the most significant shifts in modern B2B payments is the move away from one-size-fits-all approaches. Digitization is not about forcing every payment onto a single rail, but about intelligently routing payments based on context.
Virtual cards excel when acceptance exists and control is paramount. ACH shines when cost efficiency and scale matter most. Advanced payment platforms increasingly abstract these choices away from end users, allowing finance teams to define rules that determine how payments flow based on vendor preferences, transaction size, urgency and risk.
This orchestration layer is where digitization delivers its highest returns. Instead of manual decisions made invoice by invoice, companies can codify payment strategy into software.
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