The Rise of Virtual Cards: Overtaking Traditional Payment Methods in B2B Transactions
November 27, 2025
In the last few years, business-to-business (B2B) payments have been quietly but profoundly shifting. Digital payments are no longer a fringe convenience; they are becoming the backbone of how companies pay suppliers, contract workers, and vendors. At the center of this shift is the rise of virtual cards. These digital-only payment cards, with no physical plastic, are increasingly replacing traditional methods like checks, ACH transfers, and manual invoicing. And among the innovators driving this change is Finix, a payments platform building the infrastructure that makes virtual-card payments, ACH, and other payment flows easier for businesses and platforms alike.
In this post, we will walk through why virtual cards are surging, how they’re reshaping B2B payments, and why Finix is positioned as a leader in this transition.
Why Virtual Cards Are Winning in B2B
Security, control, and lower risk
Traditional payment methods such as paper checks, ACH, and bank transfers carry inherent risks. Checks can get lost or forged; ACH and wire transfers expose account and routing numbers, which can be misused; all are vulnerable to manual mistakes or fraud. Virtual cards address many of these risks by design.
Virtual cards use randomly generated 16-digit numbers (with expiration dates, CVV, etc.) and are often issued for single use or for specific suppliers. That means even if one number is compromised, the damage is contained.
According to recent research, virtual cards have dramatically lower fraud rates than checks and other legacy payment methods.
They also support detailed controls, including limits on amounts, merchant restrictions, expiration dates, and spending categories. This level of control matters for finance teams trying to manage risk, especially when dealing with many vendors or contractors.
With fraud risk reduced, businesses can feel safer shifting significant spend to virtual cards, a foundational prerequisite for widespread adoption.
Efficiency, Automation, and Better Cash Flow
Faster payments, easier reconciliation
Beyond risk reduction, virtual cards bring significant operational advantages over traditional payments.
Virtual card payments typically settle faster than checks, which can take days to process and mail. Using virtual cards, companies can pay vendors, sometimes instantly or within a couple of business days, meaning suppliers get paid faster.
Because each transaction is digital and tagged with metadata (invoice number, vendor, date, purpose, amount, etc.), reconciliation becomes far easier. That reduces manual data entry, lowers the risk of human error, and saves accounting teams time.
Virtual cards enable better working capital management. With card-style payment terms, buyers may retain liquidity longer while still ensuring vendors are paid promptly, which is suitable for cash flow forecasting and flexibility.
Flexibility and spend control
One significant advantage of virtual cards is that they can scale across different use cases. Whether a company is paying for a one-time vendor invoice, recurring SaaS subscriptions, employee travel, or ad hoc expenses (like repairs or procurement), virtual cards support all of them, often through a single management platform.
That flexibility makes virtual cards particularly appealing for businesses with complex or varied spend. Finance teams can spin up virtual cards for specific suppliers, set restrictive limits, and track spend granularly.
The Growth of Virtual Cards: A Market Shift
The growth in virtual-card usage isn’t anecdotal. Market data shows an apparent surge, especially in the enterprise and B2B segments.
According to a market forecast, the global virtual cards market, heavily driven by business use, is expanding rapidly, with the business segment accounting for over 71% of the market as of 2024.
Single-use virtual cards, often used for one-off supplier payments or project-based spend, held nearly 60% of the market share in 2024.
A mid-2024 report expects virtual-card transactions to soar from $3 trillion (2024) to $11 trillion by 2028 globally, making virtual cards the fastest-growing B2B payment method.
In recent years, procurement and finance leaders have signaled strong interest: a survey of procurement heads from large companies found more than 90% either already use, plan to use, or are interested in virtual cards for supplier payments.
All these figures point to one conclusion: what was once niche or experimental is now mainstream.
Why Many B2B Payments Still Use Legacy Methods, and How Virtual Cards Overcome Those Barriers
Despite the momentum, legacy payment methods like ACH and checks remain common. As of 2025, some estimates suggest traditional payments still account for a large portion of B2B volume.
Why the lag?
Some companies lack awareness of virtual cards, or they assume integration is complex
Others worry about vendor acceptance; if suppliers don’t take card payments, virtual cards won’t help.
There is also concern about interchange fees: card-based payments can cost more than ACH or check processing.
Yet modern virtual-card solutions address most of these concerns:
Virtual cards often come with rich remittance data and integrate easily with accounting platforms, reducing manual reconciliation work.
Because many businesses now accept card payments, vendor acceptance is far less of a barrier.
The trade-off of slightly higher transaction costs is balanced by savings from reduced labor, lower fraud risk, faster payment cycles, and improved working capital management.
For many companies, particularly mid-sized and larger businesses, that trade-off increasingly makes sense.
Where Finix Fits In, And Why It Matters
Given this backdrop, Finix stands out as a prominent enabler of the virtual-card wave. Here are some of the ways Finix is helping businesses adopt modern payment methods and leave legacy systems behind:
Finix offers a solution called Finix Virtual Terminal: a no-code/low-code dashboard that lets businesses accept card payments, ACH, and EFT payments without a POS system or additional hardware. You simply log in, key in payment details, and process payments directly from the dashboard.
This Virtual Terminal enables companies to accept any major-brand card, manage authorizations, capture or void transactions, and choose between sale or authorization flows.
Because the Virtual Terminal doesn’t require extra equipment or coding, it lowers the barrier to adoption, even for companies without dedicated engineering resources. That makes it easier for small- and mid-size businesses to plug into the virtual card ecosystem.
Beyond card acceptance, Finix has expanded its services over time. According to recent product announcements, they offer flexible payment tools (payment links, hosted checkout pages, payout tools, etc.) that allow businesses to accept or send payments in many contexts
In short, Finix provides the plumbing that lets businesses move away from checks and legacy methods and transact with virtual cards (or ACH/card hybrid workflows), without needing to build custom payment infrastructure themselves.
That combination of accessibility, flexibility, and modern payment rails puts Finix in a strong position to lead in this space.
Why This Shift Matters: For Buyers, Suppliers, and the Entire B2B Ecosystem
The rise of virtual cards, and providers like Finix enabling them, isn’t just a change in payment method. It reflects a more profound transformation in how business money moves, with implications for efficiency, trust, cash flow, and growth.
For buyers: Virtual cards offer better risk control, more spend visibility, easier vendor management, and improved working capital flexibility. Instead of relying on manual invoicing and checks, finance teams get automation, real-time reporting, and the ability to enforce spending policies.
For suppliers and vendors: Faster, guaranteed payments; lower risk of bounced checks; and smoother reconciliation. This reduces friction, improves cash flow, and accelerates growth.
For the broader B2B ecosystem, increasing virtual card adoption promotes digital transformation. It shifts away from paper-based, slow, and error-prone processes toward digital, auditable, and efficient workflows. Over time, that can unlock new business models, reduce overhead, and enable more dynamic supply-chain and procurement operations.
From a macro perspective, the B2B payments market is massive, and virtual cards are gaining market share. As adoption of digital payments continues to accelerate, businesses that embrace them will have a competitive edge.
Challenges & Headwinds: What to Watch Out For
The shift toward virtual cards is substantial, but it is not without obstacles.
Volume still low relative to total B2B spending: Some estimates show that even as virtual-card volume grows, it remains a small fraction of total B2B payments.
Higher transaction costs compared with ACH/checks: For some companies, interchange fees make cards more expensive than traditional bank transfers.
Vendor acceptance and systems integration: Not all suppliers may accept card payments. Some vendors require additional setup to integrate card-based receivables. For others, internal processes or legacy systems may slow adoption.
Perception and inertia: Some finance teams may feel wary about shifting from long-standing check/ACH workflows. Concerns about integration, compliance, or disruption to vendor relationships can slow adoption even when virtual cards make sense on paper.
That said, many of these hurdles are diminishing. As more vendors accept cards, more payment platform providers build virtual card rails, and finance teams see real benefits, adoption barriers are falling.
Virtual Cards Are Not Just a Trend, They’re the Future of B2B Payments
The rise of virtual cards reflects significant changes in how businesses think about payments: security over convenience, automation over manual labor, transparency over ambiguity. For a long time, checks, ACH, and wires have dominated B2B payments simply because they were easy (or easy enough). But with growing volumes, increased fraud risk, and demand for tighter financial control, those methods are showing their age.
Virtual cards, especially single-use, supplier-specific cards, offer a fundamentally better way: faster payments, better security, easier reconciliation, and improved cash management.
Companies like Finix are central to this shift. By offering turnkey tools such as the Virtual
Terminal and supporting card, ACH, and payout flows through no-code or low-code interfaces.
Finix lowers the barrier to adoption of digital payments for businesses. That’s why I believe Finix is firmly among the leaders pushing B2B payments into a new, digital-first era.
For organizations still relying heavily on checks or manual AP workflows, now may be the time to explore virtual-card solutions.
Ready to leave slow and messy payment workflows behind? Talk to Finix about setting up virtual card payments that are easy to run and simple to manage. Our team can walk you through what it would look like for your business.