The Commercial Card Industry May Be Solving the Wrong Problem
Virtual card spend reached $5.4 trillion globally in 2025 and is projected to grow by more than 160% by 2030, making it one of the fastest-growing segments in B2B payments. Yet despite years of investment in buyer adoption, programme innovation, and supplier enablement, virtual cards still account for only a small proportion of overall B2B payment volumes.
The industry’s diagnosis has largely been consistent: suppliers are reluctant to accept virtual cards because of interchange costs, operational complexity, or a lack of awareness of the benefits. Consequently, much of the industry’s effort has focused on educating suppliers, improving onboarding journeys, and refining the economics of acceptance.
But what if the industry is solving the wrong problem?
The challenge may not be supplier acceptance at all. It may be the assumption that suppliers should be required to change the way they operate in order to accept virtual cards.
The Real Barrier is Operational Change
When a mid-market supplier declines a virtual card, the decision is typically driven less by the payment method itself and more by the operational implications of accepting it. Most suppliers are not opposed to receiving payment faster, improving cash flow, or reducing credit risk. The objection is operational.
Accepting virtual cards often requires suppliers to adapt existing receivables processes, introduce new reconciliation workflows, train staff, and manage payment data differently from traditional bank transfers. For many mid-market organisations, particularly those without dedicated treasury or payments teams, the perceived operational burden outweighs the perceived benefit.
This challenge is particularly acute in the mid-market segment. Large enterprises often have the resources and infrastructure to absorb change, while smaller businesses frequently rely on payment providers that already support card acceptance. Mid-market suppliers sit somewhere in between. They process meaningful payment volumes and operate established finance processes, yet they remain highly sensitive to disruption.
As a result, supplier acceptance becomes less of a commercial decision and more of a change management exercise.
Rethinking the Role of the Acquirer
An alternative way of framing the challenge is to shift the focus from supplier adoption to ecosystem orchestration. Rather than asking how suppliers can be encouraged to adapt their processes to support virtual cards, the more relevant question may be how the ecosystem can absorb that complexity on their behalf.
In this model, the supplier does not need to receive, process, or even understand the virtual card. Instead, the acquirer acts as the orchestration point between virtual card programmes and supplier receivables processes. The acquirer processes the transaction, translates the associated remittance data, settles funds to the supplier, and delivers reconciliation information in a format that can be consumed by the supplier’s existing systems and workflows.
From the supplier’s perspective, nothing changes. They receive funds and the information required to reconcile them, using the tools and workflows they already have in place.
This is, in many ways, the promise of Straight Through Processing (STP). The complexity does not disappear. It is simply absorbed by a party better positioned to manage it at scale.
When viewed through this lens, the challenge is no longer persuading suppliers to change. It’s redesigning the ecosystem, so they don’t have to.
The Opportunity for Acquirers
This creates a significant opportunity for acquirers.
Historically, acquiring has focused on payment acceptance, settlement, and transaction processing. However, as supplier acceptance becomes the primary constraint on commercial card growth, acquirers have an opportunity to expand their role.
By taking on the complexity of processing and reconciling virtual card payments, acquirers can help remove one of the biggest barriers to wider adoption. In doing so, they position themselves not simply as payment processors, but as strategic infrastructure providers embedded within supplier workflows.
The commercial implications are significant. Acquirers that successfully solve this challenge stand to unlock new payment volumes, deepen supplier relationships, and differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive market.
Where Schemes Need to Lead
The challenge is that most acquirers currently have limited incentive to invest in these capabilities.
Building supplier-facing STP solutions requires investment in integration, data translation, reconciliation tooling, and onboarding support. While the long-term value is compelling, the short-term economics are often less clear.
This is where card schemes have a critical role to play.
To date, much of the investment in commercial card growth has focused on the demand side of the market through issuance programmes, buyer enablement, and spend conversion initiatives. However, if supplier acceptance is increasingly the bottleneck, greater attention must be paid to enabling the supply side of the ecosystem.
There are three areas where schemes can have the greatest impact.
First, commercial incentives should encourage acquirers to invest in supplier enablement capabilities. If acquirers are expected to play a greater role in removing supplier friction, the business case for doing so must be compelling.
Second, schemes should continue to strengthen data standards, remittance frameworks, and integration models that make STP easier and less costly to implement at scale.
Third, schemes can play an important role in establishing supplier enablement as a recognised area of competitive differentiation, creating visibility and incentives for acquirers that invest in these capabilities.
The strategic question for the industry is therefore becoming increasingly clear: should we continue focusing on convincing suppliers to accept virtual cards, or should we focus on enabling acquirers to make virtual cards invisible to suppliers?
The latter may ultimately prove to be the more scalable and sustainable path to growth.
How We Can Help
At Be Shaping the Future, we work across the payments ecosystem to help schemes, acquirers, issuers, and fintech’s navigate exactly these types of strategic questions.
Whether assessing the commercial viability of supplier enablement models, defining STP and reconciliation strategies, designing incentive frameworks, or developing go-to-market approaches for commercial card growth, we help clients translate industry shifts into actionable strategies.
If your organisation is exploring how to unlock the next phase of B2B payment growth, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss how these ideas apply within your market and operating model.
The future of supplier acceptance may not depend on teaching suppliers how to process virtual cards. It may depend on ensuring they never have to.
