Building a Payment Economics Function: From Insight to Authority
The Payment Economics Journal, Issue 9
Published: January 12, 2026
Last week we explored the Payment Economics Practitioner: the skills, the orientation, the work. This week: why talented practitioners fail, and what organizational design has to do with it.
The Question Everyone Asks
When organizations get serious about Payment Economics, the first question is always the same: Where should it live?
Treasury? They own cash and capital decisions. Procurement? They own supplier relationships. Finance? They own measurement and reporting. AP? They execute the payments.
This is the wrong question. Or rather, it's a question that obscures the one that actually matters.
The right question: What authority will the function have?
Why This Is a Coordination Problem
Payment Economics touches AP, Treasury, Procurement, and Finance. Each optimizes locally. AP optimizes for processing efficiency. Treasury optimizes for cash position. Procurement optimizes for supplier terms. Finance optimizes for reporting accuracy.
Nobody optimizes for Payment Yield across all of them.
This is textbook coordination failure. Research from McKinsey confirms what practitioners observe: in many companies, ownership of processes and information is fragmented and zealously guarded, roles are designed around parochial requirements, and the resulting internal complexity hinders cross-business collaboration.
Cross-functional problems require cross-functional governance. Payment Economics functions fail when designed as measurement initiatives. They succeed when designed with optimization authority.
The natural instinct is "measure first, earn authority later." This leads to the Observatory trap, where you can see everything and change nothing. Dashboards no one uses. Analysis that doesn't become action.
Three Conditions for Success
The honest answer about where Payment Economics should report: it matters less than you think, as long as three conditions are met.
Condition 1: Executive Sponsorship
Payment Economics crosses organizational boundaries. A mandate from below creates turf battles. A mandate from the CFO creates permission.
McKinsey's research on CFO-led transformations found that CFOs who report transformation success largely see convening cross-functional colleagues as a top priority. Building a strong transformation team with a range of skills is the most effective step a CFO can take at any stage.
This doesn't mean the CFO runs the function. It means the CFO has explicitly blessed the function's authority to work across silos. "This person has my support to optimize our payment economics" is the sentence that matters.
Condition 2: Defined Decision Rights
Can you change which payment method gets used? Can you contact suppliers about acceptance? Can you modify payment processes?
A function that can only measure but not act will produce dashboards, not outcomes.
Gartner's research on Revenue Operations, a parallel discipline that faced similar coordination challenges, found that by 2026, 60% of B2B organizations will fail to create a functioning end-to-end revenue process and revert to functional silos because they consolidated commercial execution through organizational design alone. The implication: structural change without decision authority produces regression.
Condition 3: Outcome Accountability
Payment Yield becomes someone's number. Not a report they produce. A result they own.
The Pattern from Other Disciplines
Customer Success began as "someone should call unhappy customers." Early practitioners worked in awkward org chart positions. The discipline emerged in the early 2000s alongside the growth of software as a service and subscription-based business models, where ongoing customer satisfaction directly impacts recurring revenue.
The discipline institutionalized when companies tied Customer Success to retention metrics with real authority to intervene. According to Gainsight's Evolution of Customer Success Report, nearly half of companies now have either a Chief Customer Officer or SVP of Customer Success, emphasizing the critical role of CS at the executive level.
Today, Customer Success is a C-level function with dedicated teams, tools, and career paths.
Revenue Operations began as "Sales Ops and Marketing Ops should coordinate." Early practitioners sat in awkward positions, reporting to Sales but needing Marketing cooperation, or vice versa.
Gartner predicts that by 2026, 75% of the highest-growth companies will adopt a RevOps model, up from less than 30% today. Forrester research shows that organizations with mature RevOps see up to 36% more revenue growth and 28% higher profitability.
The ones who succeeded started with optimization mandates: improve lead handoff, reduce pipeline leakage, accelerate deal velocity. They built measurement to prove impact. Today, RevOps is a recognized discipline with its own technology category.
The pattern:
Discipline emerges from observable problem
Early practitioners work with borrowed authority
Success comes from action + proof, not analysis + advocacy
Institutional legitimacy follows demonstrated value
Formal structure codifies what worked
Payment Economics is in stage 2. The practitioners working today are borrowing authority, convincing AP to try a different method, persuading Procurement to have supplier conversations, asking Finance for data access.
The ones who succeed will be those who deliver measurable Payment Yield improvement. The structure will follow the results.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Kristi Gorton, Director of Client Payments at Sakon, describes the shift:
"We went from struggling to get our suppliers to accept virtual cards to 52% adoption in 4 months. AP Copilot solved what we couldn't solve for years."
The key phrase is "what we couldn't solve for years." The opportunity always existed. But increasing Supplier Acceptance manually requires sustained outreach, supplier education, and relationship management that most organizations aren't resourced to prioritize. Industry-wide acceptance rates reflect this: the work is possible, but heavy enough that it rarely gets done.
Platforms that automate supplier engagement change the equation. They turn a multi-year initiative into a four-month result.
52% Supplier Acceptance in four months is the kind of outcome that earns expanded authority. It's proof that the discipline works when the conditions are right.
What This Means for Practitioners
Do not begin by building measurement infrastructure. Begin by securing coordination authority for a specific, bounded objective. "Improve Supplier Acceptance among our top 30 suppliers" is a bounded objective. "Optimize payment economics" is not.
To obtain executive sponsorship, you need a credible estimate of the value at stake. This requires enough measurement to size the opportunity, but not a complete measurement infrastructure. A rough estimate based on sample data is sufficient to start the conversation.
Once you have coordination authority for a bounded objective, execute against it. Build the measurement infrastructure you need to track progress. Build the cross-functional relationships you need to produce results. Document the outcomes.
Then expand. Use demonstrated results to justify broader coordination authority. Use broader authority to produce larger results. This is how organizational capability compounds.
McKinsey's research on team-focused transformations found that this approach can lead to 30 percent efficiency gains in organizations that implement these strategies effectively, especially when teams with cross-functional skills come together to achieve difficult outcomes.
Let results create structure. A practitioner who improves Payment Yield by $200,000 has earned the conversation about dedicated resources. A practitioner with a beautiful measurement framework and no impact has earned nothing.
The Longer Arc
The goal is not to optimize this quarter's payments and declare victory. The goal is to build organizational capability that compounds.
Year one, you're proving the concept. You demonstrate that Payment Economics produces measurable value and learn what works in your specific organizational context.
Year two, you're systematizing. You build the infrastructure, relationships, and processes that make optimization repeatable rather than heroic.
Year three, you're institutionalizing. Payment Economics is how the organization thinks about payment decisions, not a special initiative run by specific people.
The organizations that begin building action authority now will have structural advantages that are difficult to replicate quickly. Not because the framework is proprietary, but because organizational capability requires time to develop.
Competitors can copy your strategy. They cannot copy your two-year head start.
What would it take to make this happen in your company?
Not in theory. In practice. What is the first conversation you would need to have? Who would need to be convinced? What data would you need to assemble?
The answer to that question is the beginning of the function.
The discipline exists. The path is defined. The capability is buildable.
What happens next is a choice that someone will make.
It might as well be you.
Next week: The Measurement Stack. What data infrastructure actually enables Payment Economics, and what's expensive distraction.
Platforms Applying Payment Economics
AP Copilot: Virtual card platform maximizing supplier acceptance and cashback. apcopilot.com
About The Payment Economics Journal
The Payment Economics Journal establishes Payment Economics as a formal business discipline. Each issue builds the intellectual foundation for treating enterprise payments as intentional economic decisions rather than operational transactions.
Daniel Jasinski is the founder of Clear Paths Growth and creator of the Payment Economics framework. After more than twelve years in Boston's payments and fintech ecosystem, he now works with finance leaders to bring intentionality to how their organizations move money.
Suggested Citation
Jasinski, D. (2026). Building a Payment Economics Function: From Insight to Authority. The Payment Economics Journal, Issue 9. Clear Paths Growth.
Authorship & Intellectual Property
The Payment Economics framework was originally published by Daniel Jasinski in The Payment Economics Journal (2025-2026).
All models, frameworks, and definitions presented herein are the intellectual property of Clear Paths Growth LLC. Brief quotations are permitted with proper attribution. Commercial reuse or derivative implementation requires written permission.
© 2026 Daniel Jasinski. All rights reserved.
References
AP Copilot. (2026). Customer Testimonials. Retrieved from https://apcopilot.com
Gainsight. (2024). The Evolution of Customer Success Report. Retrieved from https://www.gainsight.com/resource/the-evolution-of-customer-success-report/
Gartner. (2024). Revenue Operations: The What, Best Practices & RevOps Guide. Retrieved from https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/topics/revenue-operations
Forrester. (2024, February). Revenue Operations Past, Present, And Future. Retrieved from https://www.forrester.com/blogs/revenue-operations-past-present-and-future/
McKinsey & Company. (2016, March). Making collaboration across functions a reality. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/making-collaboration-across-functions-a-reality
McKinsey & Company. (2024, December). A new approach to organizational transformation. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/all-about-teams-a-new-approach-to-organizational-transformation
McKinsey & Company. (2025, June). Four dos and don'ts for CFOs leading transformations. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/four-dos-and-donts-for-cfos-leading-transformations