Supplier Enablement Is Missing Link in B2B Payment Innovation

The digital transformation of business-to-business (B2B) payments is viewed as a technological inevitability.

Corporate buyers are under constant pressure to automate payables, wring efficiencies out of treasury operations, and deliver real-time visibility into cash flows. At the same time, FinTechs and banks are each racing to tout new rails for instant payments, card rails, even blockchain-based settlement that promise new frontiers of speed, security and reduced friction.

Yet amid this burst of innovation, a stubborn truth persists: the majority of B2B payments in the U.S. still move on paper checks. Electronic payments may be growing, but the transformation has been slower than in consumer payments, where mobile wallets and peer-to-peer apps have leapfrogged traditional methods.

Why the lag? The answer lies less in the technology and more in the network effect. In B2B, it’s not just challenging but also expensive for one party to modernize payments in isolation.

To make digital B2B payments work at scale, at the end of the day, suppliers must be willing and able to accept them.

Supplier enablement can frequently serve as the “last mile” of B2B payments. Just as eCommerce depends on logistics to fulfill the digital order, payments transformation hinges on enabling suppliers to receive money in a way that benefits both sides.

Read more: B2B Payments Enter Their Trust-Building Era

Supplier Enablement as Strategy

Supplier enablement sits at the messy intersection of buyer goals and supplier realities. It involves not just technical onboarding but also education, relationship management, and in some cases, incentive design.

As a result, despite its importance, supplier enablement is often underfunded or treated as an afterthought.

According to “Virtual Mobility: How Mobile Virtual Cards Elevate B2B Payments,” done in collaboration with WEX, almost 73% of businesses have yet to automate supplier payments, limiting their ability to gain a comprehensive view of money movement.

The digitization of B2B payments is not a technology challenge but a coordination challenge. Buyers have clear incentives to modernize, but the transformation stalls without supplier buy-in. The give and the get in B2B payments must be balanced: buyers seek efficiency and control; suppliers seek speed, predictability and fairness.

Companies may invest heavily in ERP modernization and FinTech partnerships but can neglect the human-intensive work of outreach, onboarding and support.

“Many companies in the middle market struggle with unpaid invoices,” Boost Payment Solutions Chief Financial Officer Mariana Lamson told PYMNTS. “Sometimes as much as 30% go unresolved monthly. That’s not just an efficiency problem. It’s a business continuity risk.”

That’s against a backdrop where, as separate data from “The 2024-2025 Growth Corporates Working Capital Index,” a PYMNTS Intelligence report commissioned by Visa, found that the digital integration of suppliers’ billing and buyers’ payments can improve cash flow for both parties, and by extension, create B2B ecosystems that are efficient.

Read more: B2B Firms Are Betting on Time to Cash to Manage Uncertainty

B2B Payments Remade in Gen Z’s Image

The conversation about supplier enablement cannot ignore a generational shift already underway. By 2030, Gen Z will make up a sizable share of the workforce. Many are already moving into entry- and mid-level roles in procurement, finance and operations, where decisions about payments are made and influenced. Their digital-native expectations will accelerate pressure on B2B payments.

As Gen Z exerts more influence over B2B payment decisions, the definition of enablement could broaden. It may no longer be enough to onboard suppliers onto ACH or card programs; enablement will mean building trust-based systems where suppliers and buyers co-create payment processes that are fast, transparent and equitable.

Gen Z doesn’t think in terms of standalone systems; they expect platforms to integrate seamlessly. For B2B payments, that means AP automation and supplier portals must feel as intuitive as consumer-facing FinTech apps. They are less tolerant of swivel-chair processes between ERP, banking portals and email threads. Supplier enablement, in this context, will need to prioritize user experience as much as payment choice.

“At least half of B2B payments are still paper-based, particularly checks, and that creates multiple pain points,” Finexio Chief Strategy Officer Chris Wyatt told PYMNTS in November.

“These aren’t isolated problems. Everything is interconnected, and the inefficiency of manual processes all compound,” he added.