B2B card payments are projected to grow from $5.9 trillion to $11 trillion by 2030, approximately 16% CAGR over the period vs 4% for the wider B2B payments market . This adoption is forcing B2B businesses to adapt and absorb the sharp difference in costs between card payments and other legacy B2B payment methods. In this article, Chelsey Kukuk, Director of Payments Advisory US, details the factors pushing card adoption, and what businesses can do to minimize the largest disadvantage of card payments: processing costs.

B2B Card Payments, The Trajectory of Adoption

The global B2B payments market is one of the largest economic flows on the planet. Estimates vary depending on the source and calculation method, but consistently land somewhere between $120 trillion and $150 trillion per year, with the United States alone accounting for over $30 trillion in annual B2B value movement.

Historically, the vast majority of those flows have moved via check, ACH, and wire transfer. While this is still the case, the latest AFP Digital Payments Survey (2025) shows that card payments for B2B Accounts Receivables have doubled between 2022 and 2025.

Figure 1 – Percentage of payments received annually by payment method. Even if they still represent a small percentage of AR, card payments are slowly gaining wallet share against checks and ACH credits.

The use of cards for B2B transactions is driven by several behavioral and economic considerations, stemming from organizations themselves and addressed by the payments supply chain. From the buyer’s side, B2B card payments have very few disadvantages.

Rebates & incentives – Large corporates and enterprises with material commercial card volume may be positioned to negotiate economically positive arrangements with individual card issuing banks or card networks. Achieving this is challenging for businesses that have not negotiated this before, so being armed with the data, facts and communication strategies is critical to achieve prior to attempting it.. This is one example among a range of similar levers a large merchant can apply to influence the economics of card acceptance and gain advantage.

Fraud reduction and payment controls – Cards can be set with single-use functionality, spend limits, spend date ranges, or even specific geographies and Merchant Classification Codes (MCCs – a categorization of the receiving merchant’s business model set by their Payment Service Provider in accordance with card network rules) they can be used for. Thus, cards can make payments more secure and easier to control. Defining an optimal risk and acceptance control framework for cards requires specialist knowledge.

Data & Visibility – Card payments generate richer data than other payment methods, enabling advanced analytics, expense categorization, reporting, and audit capabilities. Ensuring that the correct data is captured and populated effectively in card transaction flows and tools is critical.

From the buyer’s side, there are almost no negatives to paying with cards. But what about the supplier’s side?

The Advantages for Suppliers Who Accept Card Payments

Faster settlement and working capital – Cards settle quicker than other payment methods, typically 1-2 days against a 30-60+ range for other payment methods terms. The working capital opportunity can be significant and increase win line with the growth card payment volume.

Credit risk transfer and lower collection costs – The supplier is paid once the transaction is settled. Any insolvency or dispute is dealt with according to robust and comprehensive dispute (“chargeback”) rules defined by the card networks, which every participant in the card ecosystem must abide by. Accordingly, card payments can be perceived as having a form of in-built ‘insurance’ for businesses dealing with other businesses that may incur non-settlement or non-fulfilment risks. . This “guarantee” of being paid reduces lengthy and expensive collection processes, operational disputes, and manual processing costs.

Customer experience and market opportunities – With the deployment of virtual cards amongst enterprise-level companies, and the advantages associated listed in the previous paragraph, being able to accept card payments can be a differentiator against competition and provide companies with market-access opportunities they wouldn’t have a chance to reach otherwise.

The Other Side of the Coin

Cost of acceptance – Card acceptance costs can trend higher than other B2B payment methods. Individual transaction costs can range up to 3.5%, and higher, depending on several characteristics such as card type, cross-border profile, card network, or channel. On each transaction, a supplier can sacrifice a significant share of margin just to process the payment. In addition, costs grow proportionally with volumes and only a limited portion of the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) is negotiable based on volumes . Decomposing card acceptance costs to achieve a granular understanding of the underlying drivers and how they are influencing the overall cost of acceptance is therefore critical. Once understood, there are many levers available to reduce these costs when armed with the niche expertise to achieve it.

Figure 2 – External cost to receive payments, by method. With a high average transaction value in B2B, the percentage-based fees of card payments typically make these payment methods the most expensive to accept for any ticket above $388.

Unclear and shifting cost structures – Card fees are extremely complex, opaque and vary based on the card brand, type, payment channel, geography, MCC, acquiring contract, and others. The sheer complexity makes it extremely difficult to understand, reconcile, and optimize card processing costs. The card networks typically publish updates twice a year around April and October, with acquirers responsible for passing these changes onto merchants, and merchants to understand, quantify, and often mitigate the impact of these changes on their current strategy and setup. The dynamics of the card value chain are weighted in favor of those parties that gain a profit from processing fees, and against the merchant who must pay them and is left to make sense of this complexity on their own.

There are real benefits in accepting card payments as a B2B merchant. But as always, the real question is, does the business case stack up? Does the value exceed the cost of acceptance? Am I paying a fair price and is the ROI sustainable over time?

The consumer retail sector has been on the frontlines of this challenge for decades, and there are interesting takeaways that can be applicable to the B2B space..

In 2018, debit cards overtook cash as the most used payment method in the US by transaction count. The Fed’s 2025 diary highlighted that card payments now represent over 65% of all US consumer payments (fact check – by volume, count?). This overwhelming preference creates a reliance on card transactions for consumer companies, despite the ever-increasing cost of “swipe fees”. Accepting card payments for any sizeable business has turned from an advantage to a competitive necessity. Locked in a dynamic where consumers want to pay by card, and the cost of acceptance keeps rising, merchants have no other choice than to face ever-increasing processing costs and complexity.

According to the Nilson Report, card processing fees in the retail industry totaled $198 billion in 2025 and have been steadily increasing year on year since 2021. One could argue that the increase in processing fees is tied to the increase in card volume growth, however the data shows that fees are increasing at a faster pace than card volume growth.

Figure 3 – Fees growth vs volume growth. Since 2021, the growth of fees has outpaced the growth of card payments volume. One argument that’s often raised to justify the increase in total fees is that this increase is only the consequence of increased card usage. However, the data proves that fees have grown faster than usage over the same period. While 2025 volume growth isn’t available yet, fees have increased by 5.9% between 2024 and 2025.

For some industries such as convenience stores , grocers, or restaurants , swipe fees are among the three largest operating costs after labor and premises. Several attempts to regulate swipe fees were made by major economies, including the EU, USA, and Australia, however costs keep increasing beyond expectations.

In the United States specifically, interchange for debit cards was capped in 2011 as part of the Dodd-Frank Act (Durbin Amendment). The amendment set debit cards interchange at $0.21 + 0.05% per transaction (plus $0.01 for fraud prevention) for banks with over $10bn in assets. However, interchange isn’t the only component of swipe fees, and despite being the largest, acquirer margin and assessment fees are totally unregulated. Acquirer margins are subject to intense competition between processors, but assessment fees are set by Visa and Mastercard, controlling over 80% of the card payments market. This lack of competition is partly the reason for the rise in swipe fees, despite the 2011 regulation that initially saved merchants about $9.4bn per year. To conclude, one must remember that this regulation only covers debit cards. In the US, credit cards are still totally unregulated while representing 56% of the total transactional value. There is currently a proposition to extend the regulation to credit cards called the CCCA, but it’s yet to be adopted, and the card networks are fiercely lobbying against it.

Why B2B is Uniquely Exposed

The B2B sector is now increasingly exposed to card payments, and some of its specificities make it a priority for treasury and finance teams to proactively manage these costs. As shown in Figure 1, card payments still represent less than 10% of AR on average across the industry. However, the associated costs detailed in Figure 2 should incentivize businesses to scrutinize and proactively work to contain these costs.

Structurally higher costs – As previously mentioned, only consumer debit cards are regulated in the US. B2B cards are for the vast majority, Commercial Credit cards, and therefore do not fall under the regulation. On top of it, card processing fees are mostly charged as a % of the transaction value. For B2B companies where ticket size consistently exceeds several thousand dollars, the cost of processing a card transaction is disproportionate compared to other payment methods.

No in-house payments expertise – Large retailers and tech companies usually have an in-house payments team dedicated to reducing the cost of acceptance, optimizing approval rates, and turning payments into a lever of growth (or at least minimizing their impact on the P&L). This isn’t the case yet for most B2B organizations, where responsibility, if acknowledged, is often shared across several departments or isn’t seen as a core duty. As the value of payments processed by cards grows, this lack of expertise turns into unnecessary costs as opportunities exist to optimize and reduce the cost of card acceptance. The cost of passive management adds to the inherent cost of payments processing.

Complex surcharging opportunities – While surcharging is increasingly common, it remains commercially and legally complex in many B2B contexts, particularly with large strategic customers who will not tolerate it. The surcharging opportunity must be assessed carefully and could possibly disappear once card payments have become so prominent that buyers will expect this method to be available every time. In highly competitive markets, maintaining surcharging policies could redirect customers to competitors.

What Can B2B Merchants Do?

Clarify ownership

Given how significant card processing costs already are, it’s crucial that organizations define which department owns the P&L for card payments. For most companies this cost is managed by treasury, but as previously mentioned, the most proactive organizations have created entire teams dedicated to managing payments costs and turning it into a value driver. Given the strategic aspect of B2B payments and the importance of balancing cost vs benefits, B2B organizations could also develop internal payments teams focused on maximizing the tradeoff.

Proactivity

With fast shifting trends, new and amended fees published twice per year, and ongoing regulatory conversations, the winners are the ones staying on top of the industry’s latest movements. Optimizing your payments strategy requires you to proactively seek opportunities to reduce costs and increase the benefits offered by card payments acceptance. This means engaging with your supply chain, analyzing your own data, and understanding the impact of any market shift on your current strategy. But without benchmarking data and dedicated expert resources, how can teams achieve this?

Collaboration

Retailers have understood that working together is crucial to tackling the payments challenges faced by their industry. Through associations such as the Merchants Advisory Group, Merchant Risk Council, PaymentsEd, and other payments-specific committees’ part of wider retail trades bodies, retailers are collaborating to try and shift the dynamic in their favor or at least make it fairer.

Look outside your organization

Data and expertise are the most precious allies to optimize payments. That’s where Redbridge fits in the picture.

Our unique combination of benchmarks, datasets, and software are unmatched. Our team of experts will help you take full advantage of payments, and make it work in your favor.

What Type of Results Can Be Achieved??

• Redbridge delivers on average a 20% reduction in card acceptance costs. For many clients, we have been able to secure millions in annual cost savings.
• Every card acceptance costs component decomposed, audited and optimized.
• Transparent, actionable reporting and dashboards supported by our proprietary technology.
• A future-proofed payments strategy that scales smoothly with the growth of your business.

To understand how we can help your business unlock all the advantages of B2B card payments, while minimizing the downsides, get in touch.