How Top-Performing Middle-Market CFOs Create Working Capital Efficiency

Working capital used to sit in the background of corporate strategy.

In 2025, however, chief financial officers across the middle market rediscovered working capital as one of the most powerful and underleveraged sources of competitive advantage.

“The Growth Corporates Working Capital Index 2025-2026,” a Visa report published in collaboration with PYMNTS Intelligence, found that working capital efficiency can unlock $19 million in average savings for middle-market companies.

As supply chains were stress-tested by tariffs, and cash discipline became the lifeblood of the business for finance teams, the gap between average and top-performing finance leaders widened in 2025. The difference was not access to capital, but how effectively they mobilized that capital once on the balance sheet.

The highest-performing middle-market CFOs, according to the Working Capital Index (WCI), are not simply managing working capital defensively. They are using it strategically to fund growth, absorb volatility, and improve operating efficiency at scale.

In 2025, the CFOs and treasurers surveyed were 64% more likely than in 2023 to use working capital tools for unplanned growth, including accelerating payment to strategic suppliers for time-sensitive business needs and buying just-in-time inventory.

In the middle market, where margins are thinner and shocks hit harder, that advantage can be decisive.

Read also: Uncertainty Is Complicated, but Working Capital Strategies Should Be Simple

From Liquidity Management to Strategic Architecture

Working capital has traditionally been framed as a hygiene metric. Keep receivables tight, inventory lean and payables stretched just enough.

However, top-performing CFOs have moved beyond this transactional mindset. What emerged over the past year was a distinct playbook for working capital efficiency, shaped by CFOs who see cash not as a buffer, but as a timing tool.

Supply chain disruptions, customer payment delays and demand swings have become structural features of the operating environment. The CFOs who outperform are not those who predict volatility perfectly, but those who can move faster when it appears.

The WCI segmented CFOs into three categories, including Strategic, Adaptive and Tactical. Each cohort uses working capital solutions in different ways.

For strategic and adaptive CFOs, efficiency begins with visibility. The study underscored that cash that cannot be seen cannot be used.

Nearly 58% of growth-oriented middle-market firms now use generative or agentic AI to improve cash flow forecasting, integrate suppliers and automate finance workflows. Those that do report better outcomes, including sharper liquidity forecasts and materially higher savings from working capital solutions, nearly two-thirds more than peers who rely on manual processes.

One of the most counterintuitive findings in the index is how aggressively top performers pay suppliers early. Conventional wisdom suggests stretching payables to preserve cash. High-performing CFOs do the opposite, selectively.

Surveyed growth corporates reported integrating roughly 45% of their suppliers into digital payment systems and paying more than 37% of invoices ahead of schedule. The payoff is not altruism. It is leverage. Early payment secures inventory, locks in pricing, improves allocation during shortages, and strengthens supplier relationships when competitors are slower to act.

See also: 3 Ways CFOs Balance the Capital Stack to Drive Growth

Technology as an Enabler, Not as a Strategy

If payables strategy defines one side of the equation, receivables discipline defines the other. Late payments remain a persistent drain on middle-market liquidity. The index estimated that firms lose, on average, nearly $18 million annually to delayed customer payments, roughly 3.8% of revenue.

Top-performing CFOs are responding not with stricter terms alone, but with structural changes to how customers pay. More than half now accept commercial and virtual card payments to accelerate settlement, reduce late-payment risk and gain richer transaction data. Cards replace extended invoice terms with faster, issuer-backed settlement while simplifying reconciliation and approvals.

Commercial cards, virtual cards, AI-powered forecasting and integrated payment platforms appear repeatedly in the WCI. But the differentiator is not adoption alone. It is integration. High performers connect these tools into a coherent system that aligns procurement, treasury and operations. Faster cash in, paired with strategic cash out, is the foundation of working capital efficiency.

Tenure plays a role in performance. Longer-tenured CFOs and treasurers are roughly one-third more likely to treat working capital as a strategic lever rather than a liquidity safeguard. They are also more likely to have institutionalized practices such as early payment programs and supplier integration.

Yet the data also suggested that mindset, not age, is the decisive factor. Younger finance leaders who adopt the same strategic framing—seeing working capital as growth infrastructure rather than accounting hygiene—close much of the gap. Those who do not remain trapped in reactive cycles, even with modern tools at their disposal.

Top-performing CFOs gravitate toward providers that offer speed, digital integration and flexibility, particularly tools that can scale with demand cycles. For banks and FinTechs, the implication is that winning the middle market now requires embedding into operational workflows, not merely extending credit.

For all PYMNTS B2B coverage, subscribe to the daily B2B Newsletter.