Issue 13 built the internal business case: the architecture for translating Payment Yield results into sustained organizational investment. That case rests on a foundation of specific economic knowledge about how each payment method contributes to or diminishes financial return. The practitioner presenting a quarterly review needs to explain why one method yields 150 basis points of net value while another yields 2. This issue provides that explanation.
Every B2B payment method carries a full economic profile. Processing cost is one variable. Settlement speed, rebate potential, float value, reconciliation burden, fraud exposure, and supplier impact are the others. Organizations that evaluate payment methods based solely on processing costs view only one dimension of a six-dimensional decision. Payment Economics evaluates each method by its net economic contribution: the total financial value it creates minus the total cost it imposes, expressed as basis points per dollar of payment volume.
Net Economic Contribution: The Measurement That Changes the Conversation
Processing cost is the metric most finance teams use to compare payment methods. The logic is intuitive: sending a check costs $2 to $4, sending an ACH costs $0.26 to $0.50, so ACH is the better choice. That logic holds when cost is the only variable. It breaks apart when you introduce what each method returns.
Net economic contribution measures the full financial picture. It captures the cost of executing a payment method, the rebates or yield it returns, the float value it generates, the reconciliation and exception-handling savings, and the fraud exposure and supplier friction it incurs. The result is a single number, expressed in basis points, that tells a practitioner exactly what each dollar of payment volume produces or consumes when routed through a given method.
This measurement reorders the hierarchy of payment methods. The cheapest processing method is often a low contributor to overall Payment Yield. The most expensive processing method can be the highest contributor when rebate economics and float value are included in the calculation. A Payment Portfolio Manager who understands net economic contribution makes method selection decisions that align with the organization’s financial objectives. Payment economics starts where payment processing ends: with the question of what each method produces, after accounting for everything it costs.
Check Economics: The Full Cost Picture
The 2025 AFP Digital Payments Survey reports that checks still represent 26% of B2B payments in the U.S. and Canada, down from 33% in 2022 and 81% in 2004 (AFP, 2025). The decline is real and steady. The persistence is equally real. More than a quarter of B2B payment volume still moves through a method whose full economics penalize the sending organization on nearly every dimension.
The direct processing cost of a check runs $2 to $4 per payment. That figure covers printing, postage, and bank fees. It is the number most organizations cite when discussing check costs. It is also the smallest component of the check’s true economic burden.
Levvel Research reports a fully loaded cost of $15 to $26 per invoice for manual invoice processing (Levvel, 2024). Checks typically accompany manual processing workflows: paper invoices, manual approvals, physical signature requirements, and manual reconciliation. The check itself costs $3. The workflow it anchors costs $20. A practitioner evaluating check economics counts both.
Float economics on checks are often misunderstood. A mailed check takes three to seven business days to reach the supplier, clear the bank, and settle. During that window, the sending organization retains cash in its account, which creates an incidental float benefit. A $50,000 payment that takes 5 days to clear at a 5% annual rate generates approximately $34 in float value for the sender. The challenge is that check float is unpredictable and uncontrollable. The sender has no visibility into when the recipient will deposit the check or when it will clear. Virtual card float, by contrast, follows a known billing cycle that the Payment Portfolio Manager can optimize. Check float is real, but it is accidental rather than strategic, and the processing costs, fraud exposure, and reconciliation burden that accompany checks overwhelm that incidental benefit on a net economic basis.
Fraud exposure compounds the burden further. Check fraud remains the most prevalent form of payment fraud in B2B transactions. The AFP’s 2024 Payments Fraud and Control Survey found that 65% of organizations experienced attempts at check fraud. Each incident carries direct costs in investigation time, bank fees, and potential loss recovery, plus indirect costs in disrupted supplier relationships and delayed payments.
Reconciliation costs close the loop. Manual check reconciliation requires staff time to match issued checks against cleared checks, investigate outstanding items, and resolve discrepancies. Organizations with high check volumes dedicate significant AP labor hours to this process. Those hours have a calculable cost that further erodes the check’s net economic position.
The net economic contribution of a check, when the analysis includes all dimensions, runs approximately negative 50 to negative 150 basis points, depending on payment size, processing workflow maturity, and fraud incidence. Every dollar routed through checks costs the organization money on a fully loaded basis. The economic case for checks rests entirely on the supplier requirement: some suppliers accept checks exclusively. Even that constraint is shrinking as acceptance of digital payments expands.
ACH Economics: Efficient, Neutral, and Precisely That
The Nacha ACH Network processed 35.2 billion payments valued at $93 trillion in 2025, with B2B volume surging 155% from 2015 to 2024 (Nacha, 2025). ACH has become the default electronic payment rail for B2B transactions, and the economics explain why: it is inexpensive, reliable, and universally accepted.
Processing costs for ACH payments run $0.26 to $0.50 per transaction. Settlement occurs in one to two business days for standard ACH and same-day for Same Day ACH, with a modestly higher fee. The reconciliation burden is low because ACH payments carry remittance data that facilitates automated matching. Fraud exposure is lower than with checks, though ACH fraud still requires monitoring and controls.
The economic profile of ACH is clean and straightforward: low cost, minimal friction, broad acceptance. ACH produces efficiency. It carries zero rebate potential. The revenue component is zero. The float value is minimal given one- to two-day settlement windows. The net economic contribution of ACH hovers near zero: slightly positive when measured against the check alternative it replaces, precisely neutral when measured on its own terms.
This makes ACH the baseline in a Payment Economics framework. It is the benchmark against which all other methods are compared. A practitioner evaluating payment method mix asks two questions about every supplier: Can we move this payment to a method that generates a positive return? And if the answer is that the supplier accepts only ACH, the payment is already at baseline efficiency. The optimization opportunity lies with suppliers who can accept a solution that yields results.
ACH plays an essential role in a healthy payment portfolio. High-volume, low-dollar payments where virtual card acceptance is unavailable belong on ACH. Recurring fixed payments to established suppliers should be processed via ACH. The discipline recognizes ACH as the default. It also recognizes that every dollar in ACH that could be moved to a yield-generating method represents uncaptured value.
Wire Transfer Economics: Speed at a Premium
Wire transfers occupy a specific niche in B2B payments: high-value, time-sensitive transactions where same-day guaranteed settlement justifies the cost. Domestic wire fees typically run $15 to $30 per transaction on the sending side, with receiving fees of $10 to $20 at many banks. International wires add currency conversion costs, intermediary bank fees, and longer settlement windows, pushing total costs to $30 to $80 per transaction.
The net economic contribution of wire transfers is consistently negative. The processing cost is the highest among standard B2B payment methods. Rebate potential is zero. Float value approaches zero given same-day settlement. The economic case for wires rests entirely on urgency: a payment that must arrive and clear today, with guaranteed finality, justifies the premium. Time-critical vendor payments, real estate closings, international settlements with currency exposure, and certain regulatory-driven payments fall into this category.
A Payment Portfolio Manager treats wires as a targeted instrument. Every wire in the payment portfolio should have a clear justification tied to settlement urgency or counterparty requirement. Organizations that route routine payments by wire because the process is familiar or because the approval workflow defaults to it are paying a premium for convenience. That premium is measurable, and the quarterly review captures it.
Virtual Card Economics: The Yield Engine
Virtual cards generate the highest net economic contribution of any standard B2B payment method. PYMNTS Intelligence estimates the B2B virtual card market at $14.65 billion in 2025, projected to quadruple to $61 billion by 2032, with nine in ten firms either actively using or pursuing virtual card programs (PYMNTS, 2025). The growth reflects what the economics demonstrate: virtual cards are the only common B2B payment method that generates a positive return to the paying organization.
Rebate economics drive the value. Industry data consistently shows rebates of 1% to 3% of spend volume, tiered by annual volume, file turn speed, and average transaction size (Visa, 2024). Minimum thresholds typically require at least $2 million in annual card spend to be eligible for rebates. Forrester’s 2024 updated Total Economic Impact study for Visa’s Commercial Cards documents net benefits of 420 basis points per transaction over a three-year period, translating to 132% ROI with payback under six months for a composite organization.
Float adds a second layer of return. Virtual card transactions settle on the card issuer’s billing cycle, typically 30 to 60 days after the transaction date. The paying organization retains cash during that window. For a $100,000 payment on a 45-day billing cycle at a 5% annual rate, the float value is approximately $616. Scale that across a $50 million annual virtual card program, and float alone contributes meaningful basis points to Payment Yield.
Processing costs for virtual cards are low for buyers. The card program handles transaction routing, and remittance data travels with the payment. Reconciliation is automated in most platforms. The cost to the buyer is effectively absorbed into the card program’s infrastructure.
The binding constraint is supplier acceptance. Suppliers who accept virtual cards absorb interchange fees, typically 1.5% to 2.5% of the transaction value. That cost creates the friction point that limits virtual card coverage. Mastercard’s 2025 global survey found that 93% of B2B suppliers say digitizing payments is a top priority, yet two-thirds still fall short of buyer expectations on digital payment acceptance (Mastercard, 2025a). A Versapay survey found that 67.5% of B2B sellers have had to refuse virtual card payments at some point. Issue 12 addressed the supplier conversation that navigates this constraint. Issue 17 will address what happens when that conversation meets resistance.
How Straight-Through Processing Changes the Acceptance Equation
The supplier acceptance constraint described above assumes that virtual card payments require manual processing on the supplier side. For years, that assumption held. A supplier who received a virtual card number via email had to log in to a portal, manually enter the card data, reconcile the payment against open invoices, and match remittance details across disconnected systems. The interchange fee was one cost. The labor was another. Together, they formed the resistance that kept Supplier Acceptance rates in the single digits across most B2B programs.
Straight-through processing infrastructure is restructuring that equation. Mastercard launched Commercial Direct Payments in July 2025, a network-level solution that automates virtual card payment delivery and reconciliation through a single connection between issuers and acquirers (Mastercard, 2025b). The payment flows directly to the supplier’s bank account. Rich remittance data, including PO numbers, invoice references, and line-item details, accompanies the transaction and feeds into the supplier’s ERP system. The supplier’s manual processing burden drops to zero on every STP-enabled payment.
Mastercard Receivables Manager, now available globally, extends this automation to supplier-side acceptance workflows. Mastercard’s survey data show that 42% of U.S. suppliers cite manual processing and reconciliation as the top barriers to virtual card acceptance (Mastercard, 2025b). STP eliminates both barriers simultaneously. The supplier still absorbs interchange. Previously compounded operational costs, in addition to interchange, disappear.
AP Copilot became the first U.S. platform to deliver Commercial Direct Payments, integrating Mastercard’s STP infrastructure into its payment workflow. Dan Hughes, President of Sakon and head of AP Copilot, described the integration as “a significant step in accelerating and scaling virtual card-enabled straight-through processing technology in the US” (Hughes, 2025). The platform’s 50% virtual card acceptance rate, 10x the industry average, reflects what becomes possible when the technology removes the operational friction that previously sat between a supplier’s willingness and a supplier’s capacity to accept.
The economic shift is measurable. When manual processing costs $5 to $15 per virtual card transaction on the supplier side, the effective acceptance cost exceeds the interchange rate alone. When STP reduces that processing cost to near zero, the supplier’s net cost of acceptance falls to interchange only. A supplier who previously faced 4% total cost of acceptance (2% interchange plus $10 in processing on a $500 payment) now faces 2%. That recalculation opens acceptance conversations that were previously closed on the math.
The net economic contribution of virtual cards for the buyer is approximately 100–300 basis points, depending on rebate tier, float duration, and payment volume. This is the yield engine of a Payment Economics function. Every percentage point of spend that shifts from checks or ACH to accepted virtual cards increases the portfolio’s overall Payment Yield. The Supplier Acceptance metric in Issue 4 quantifies the portion of the portfolio that can access this yield.
Dynamic Discounting and Early Payment Programs
Dynamic discounting occupies a different economic category than the rail-based methods above. It is a timing instrument: the buyer offers early payment in exchange for a discount on the invoice amount. The economics are straightforward and, when the math is visible, striking.
The classic trade term 2/10 net 30 offers a 2% discount for payment within 10 days on an invoice due in 30 days. The buyer accelerates payment by 20 days to capture 2% of the invoice value. Annualized, that 2% discount over a 20-day acceleration period yields approximately 36% return. Few other uses of short-term cash generate comparable returns.
Dynamic discounting platforms extend this logic across the entire invoice population, allowing suppliers to request early payment at any time before the due date, with discounts that scale with the timing of the payment. A supplier requesting payment 15 days early might offer a 1.2% discount. A supplier requesting payment 25 days early might offer 2.1%. The buyer’s return depends on the discount rate, the acceleration period, and the cost of capital deployed.
The net economic contribution of dynamic discounting depends entirely on available cash and the organization’s cost of capital. An organization with surplus cash earning 4% in money market accounts can redeploy that cash into dynamic discounting at annualized returns of 15%–36%, generating significant positive basis points. An organization that would need to draw on a 7% credit facility to fund early payments narrows the spread. The math is specific to each organization’s treasury position.
Supply chain finance programs, in which a third-party funder provides early-payment capital, extend the economics of dynamic discounting to organizations without surplus cash. The funder earns the discount spread. The buyer extends DPO. The supplier receives early payment. The economics are distributed across three parties, and the buyer’s net contribution comes primarily through DPO extension value and supplier relationship strengthening.
A Payment Portfolio Manager evaluates dynamic discounting as a complementary instrument alongside virtual cards and ACH. Suppliers who accept virtual cards generate rebate-based yield. Suppliers who prefer ACH but value early payment generate a discount-based yield. The portfolio’s total Payment Yield reflects the combined contribution of all methods and timing strategies active across the supplier base.
How Method Economics Shifts at Volume
The economics of each payment method shift at different volume thresholds, and practitioners benefit from understanding where those shifts occur.
Virtual card rebate tiers reward volume concentration. An organization routing $2 million annually through virtual cards might earn 100 basis points in rebates. The same organization routing $20 million might earn 175 basis points. At $100 million, rebate negotiations can push toward 200 basis points or higher. Each volume threshold unlocks a higher rebate tier, so every supplier conversion that adds volume to the virtual card program improves the economics for the entire program. The compounding effect is real: more volume yields better rates, which in turn drive higher yields, strengthening the business case for further supplier conversion.
ACH economics remain flat across volume. The per-transaction cost remains consistent whether an organization sends 100 ACH payments per month or 10,000. This stability is a strength for budgeting and a limitation for yield improvement. ACH contributes zero basis points of return regardless of scale.
Check economics worsen at volume. Manual processes scale linearly: twice the check volume requires roughly twice the reconciliation labor and twice the fraud monitoring effort. The incidental float benefit of checks does scale with volume, but it remains unpredictable and is overwhelmed by the compounding operational costs. Organizations with high check volumes face the steepest economic penalty and have the greatest optimization opportunity. Moving 1,000 checks per month to electronic processing can eliminate $60,000 to $180,000 in annual fully loaded costs, before accounting for any rebate upside.
Wire transfer economics improve slightly with volume through negotiated bank-fee reductions, though per-transaction cost remains the highest among methods. High-wire-volume organizations can negotiate fees down from $25 to $15 per transaction, which helps, but it still leaves wire transfers as a negative-contribution method.
Dynamic discounting economics depend on the depth of the supplier pool willing to offer discounts and the organization’s available cash. Increasing volume here indicates more suppliers are participating, broadening the discount-capture opportunity. The annualized return per dollar deployed stays consistent. The total dollar return increases with the breadth of participation.
The Capital Return Ceiling by Method
Each payment method has a Capital Return ceiling: the maximum financial contribution it can produce per dollar of payment volume under optimal conditions. Understanding these ceilings helps practitioners set realistic targets and allocate effort where the return potential is highest.
Checks have a Capital Return ceiling of zero. Under the best possible conditions, a check adds zero to Payment Yield. Every optimization effort directed at checks aims to reduce losses, and the ceiling for that effort is reaching zero. Check elimination is often the first initiative a Payment Economics function pursues because the gains come entirely from removing a negative contributor and redirecting volume to positive or neutral methods.
ACH has a Capital Return ceiling near zero. The processing cost savings relative to checks are real, and switching from checks to ACH captures those savings as a one-time improvement. Once the switch is complete, ACH contributes baseline efficiency with minimal ongoing yield.
Virtual cards have the highest Capital Return ceiling among standard methods: 150 to 300 basis points under optimal conditions, combining rebate income and float value. The ceiling depends on rebate tier (driven by volume), billing cycle length (driven by card program terms), and supplier acceptance breadth (driven by the practitioner’s conversion work). This ceiling is why virtual card programs anchor most Payment Economics functions.
Dynamic discounting has a variable Capital Return ceiling determined by supplier participation rates and discount terms. Under optimal conditions with broad supplier participation and strong discount rates, the ceiling can exceed virtual card returns on a per-dollar basis. The constraint is scale: dynamic discounting requires either available cash or a supply chain finance partner, and the total addressable spend is typically a subset of the supplier base.
Wire transfers have a Capital Return ceiling that is permanently negative. The method exists for speed and finality. Optimization means minimizing wire volume to only the transactions that genuinely require same-day guaranteed settlement.
The Payment Portfolio Manager uses these ceilings to construct a method allocation strategy. The goal is to maximize the share of spend routed through high-ceiling methods (virtual cards, dynamic discounting) while maintaining efficient coverage with baseline methods (ACH) and minimizing volume in negative-contribution methods (checks, wires). The $289 billion aggregate opportunity introduced in Issue 2 lies between where organizations currently route their payments and where the economics indicate they should. The Hackett Group’s finding that $1.7 trillion in excess working capital is trapped across the top 1,000 U.S. public companies reflects, in part, the accumulated cost of suboptimal payment-method allocation (Hackett Group, 2025).
Building Your Organization’s Payment Method Map
The practical output of this issue is a payment method map: a document that captures every payment method your organization currently uses, the percentage of spend routed through each, the estimated net economic contribution of each, and the target allocation that maximizes Payment Yield given your supplier base’s acceptance profile.
Building this map takes a week of focused analysis. Pull your payment data for the trailing twelve months. Categorize every payment by method: check, ACH, virtual card, wire, dynamic discount, or other. Calculate the percentage of total spend in each category. Apply the net economic contribution ranges from this issue to estimate the yield and cost profile of your current mix. Then identify the gap between your current allocation and the allocation that your Supplier Acceptance data (from Issue 12’s outreach) suggests is achievable.
That gap is an opportunity to optimize your method. It is a specific, measurable number that feeds directly into the quarterly review framework from Issue 13 and the Payment Yield calculation from Issue 10. It tells you exactly how many basis points of improvement are available through method reallocation alone, before any new supplier conversions.
The AFP data provide national benchmarks for comparison: 26% of checks, with electronic payments accounting for 68.3% of enterprise volume, according to Ardent Partners (Bartolini, 2025). If your organization’s check percentage exceeds the national average, the opportunity for method optimization is greater. If your virtual card percentage is below the market adoption curve tracked by PYMNTS, the yield capture opportunity is proportionally wider. The method map makes these comparisons visible and actionable.
Questions Worth Asking
What percentage of your organization’s B2B payment volume flows through each method today, and what is the net economic contribution of that allocation?
How does your organization currently evaluate payment method selection: by processing cost alone, or by net economic contribution across all dimensions?
What is the total float value your organization captures annually from virtual card billing cycles, and how does that structured, optimizable float compare to the incidental, unpredictable float your organization receives from check settlement timing?
If you moved your top 20 check-receiving suppliers to ACH, and your top 20 ACH-receiving suppliers to virtual cards, what would the combined Payment Yield impact be?
What is the annualized return on early payment discounts currently available from your supplier base, and how does that compare to your organization’s current return on short-term cash holdings?
Building Forward
Issue 15 examines Payment Timing as Strategic Lever: when you pay creates value, and the question is whether anyone captures it. The gap between paying on time and paying strategically represents millions in working capital value. The issue breaks down timing economics: early payment discount capture, float optimization, and the relationship between payment timing and supplier behavior.
Payment Economics in Practice
AP Copilot: The AP platform built for AP teams. AP Copilot turns accounts payable into a profit center through workflow tools designed for the people actually processing payments. The platform achieves 50% virtual card acceptance, 10x the industry average, by making supplier conversion and daily payment work visible, collaborative, and rewarding. 1% of all revenue goes to planting trees. Learn more: https://apcopilot.com
About The Payment Economics Journal
The Payment Economics Journal examines how organizations measure and capture economic return from payment operations. Published weekly. Created by Daniel Jasinski.
Payment Economics Framework
For the complete Payment Economics framework, including Payment Yield, Capital Return, Supplier Acceptance, and the Payment Portfolio Manager role, see the Payment Economics Executive Summary.
Suggested Citation
Jasinski, D. (2026). Payment Method Economics: The True Cost and Return of Every Payment Rail. The Payment Economics Journal, Issue 14. Clear Paths Growth.
Authorship & Intellectual Property
© 2026 Daniel Jasinski. All rights reserved. The Payment Economics Journal, Payment Yield, Capital Return, Supplier Acceptance, Payment Portfolio Manager, Payment Economics Practitioner, Payment Efficiency Index (PEI), and Payment Cost Ratio (PCR) are original frameworks and terms introduced by Daniel Jasinski. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without prior written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews and academic citations with proper attribution.
References
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AFP. (2025). 2025 AFP Digital Payments Survey Report. Association for Financial Professionals. https://www.afponline.org/training-resources/resources/survey-research-economic-data/Details/digitalpayments
Bartolini, A. (2025). AP Metrics That Matter 2025. Ardent Partners. https://ardentpartners.com/ap-metrics-that-matter/
Forrester. (2024). The Total Economic Impact of Visa Commercial Card Programs. Forrester Research / Visa. https://corporate.visa.com/en/solutions/commercial-solutions/knowledge-hub/forrester-total-economic-impact-of-commercial-credit-card-acceptance.html
Hackett Group. (2025). 2025 U.S. Working Capital Survey. The Hackett Group. https://www.thehackettgroup.com/insights/2025-working-capital-survey-2508/
Hughes, D. (2025). Quoted in Mastercard Accelerates B2B Payment Automation Globally With Acceptance Innovations. FFNews. https://ffnews.com/newsarticle/paytech/mastercard-receivables-manager-global-launch/
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Mastercard. (2025b). Mastercard Accelerates B2B Payment Automation Globally. Mastercard. https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2025/july/mastercard-accelerates-b2b-payment-automation-globally-with-acce.html
Nacha. (2025). ACH Network Volume and Value Statistics. Nacha. https://www.nacha.org/content/ach-network-volume-and-value-statistics
PYMNTS. (2025). Why 2025 Could Be the Year of the Virtual Card. PYMNTS Intelligence / American Express. https://www.pymnts.com/tracker_posts/why-2025-could-be-the-year-of-the-virtual-card
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