Mastercard Targets the Hidden Cost of Late B2B Payments

There’s a digital reckoning reshaping the B2B landscape.

Buyers, conditioned by seamless consumer experiences, are bringing new expectations into corporate purchasing. Suppliers, in turn, are discovering that payment acceptance is no longer a back-office utility but a frontline competitive differentiator.

That tension is already visible in the data: large B2B suppliers now accept five to six different payment methods on average, yet nearly one-third say about a third of their payments arrive late, according to recent Mastercard research.

This evolution is forcing suppliers to rethink not just how they accept payments, but how those payments integrate into the broader flow of business operations.

“Payment choice in B2B is not about offering more methods; it’s about delivering the right method in the right workflow at the right moment,” Marc Pettican, global head of corporate solutions at Mastercard, told PYMNTS.

“Good acceptance also means aligning with your supplier’s needs,” Pettican added, stressing the need for aligning payment types, timing and data flows with the realities of how businesses operate.

While expanding payment options was once seen as progress, the challenge today is one of orchestration.

Rethinking B2B Payment Acceptance in the Age of Digital Choice

The traditional B2B model treated payments as a discrete step at the end of a transaction. Today, that model is giving way to one where acceptance is embedded directly into the systems where suppliers already operate

Payments are increasingly becoming embedded directly into workflows across enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, accounts payable (AP) platforms and vertical SaaS tools, so that acceptance becomes a seamless extension of business operations.

In this environment, “good acceptance,” said Pettican, is less about the number of payment rails and more about how intelligently they are deployed.

“The goal isn’t to have more payment options and add that complexity,” he said. “It’s about making sure that there are fewer decisions for the supplier.”

“We are working with companies like Mastercard to bring good solutions to market that make payments easy and get to the point where we can ‘consumerize’ the B2B environment,” Paul Uher, head of commercial and corporate banking merchant services at Wells Fargo, told PYMNTS in a separate interview.

That vision speaks directly to the friction many suppliers continue to face today. Mastercard found nearly 7 in 10 suppliers report recurring challenges with payment visibility, processing costs and manual processes — underscoring how complexity still stands in the way of a more seamless, consumer-like experience.

As businesses layer in additional payment rails to meet evolving needs, that complexity can quickly multiply — introducing new formats, reconciliation requirements and operational overhead. Orchestration helps cut through this, enabling systems to intelligently route payments based on context — balancing cost, speed and data richness without requiring suppliers to make trade-offs.

Pettican described this shift as moving “from single rail thinking to what I would probably call portfolio thinking.”

In practice, that means using different payment methods for different scenarios, depending on factors such as invoice size, urgency and working capital considerations.

At the same time, the hidden inefficiencies of traditional methods, like the labor involved in tracking down late payments, are becoming more visible as organizations take a more holistic view of payment economics.

Cards are increasingly being reassessed through a broader, outcome‑based lens. Suppliers that accept card‑based payments report greater payment visibility (32%), faster processing (30%), and lower processing costs (24%) once operational efficiencies are factored in, according to Mastercard research.

Future-Proofing B2B Payments

As payment portfolios expand, routing decisions are becoming more complex and more strategic.

“We’re moving toward a world where B2B payment is dynamically routed,” Pettican said, noting that while much of the routing logic today is manual, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven platforms are beginning to automate it.

“Ninety-six percent of firms surveyed want AI to start recommending how they pay and get paid,” Pettican said — a sign that routing decisions are becoming both more complex and more strategic.

Still, despite the growing role of AI, many organizations struggle to turn payment data into actionable insight. Suppliers often lack visibility into which customers might adopt more efficient payment methods, where delays occur, or what manual processes truly cost.

While 93% of suppliers say digitizing payment processes is a top priority, far fewer have visibility into where delays occur, which customers might adopt more efficient rails, or what manual processes truly cost.

Across the industry, working capital challenges and visibility gaps remain widespread. The opportunity lies in using analytics to identify bottlenecks, recommend payment strategies and shift from reactive to proactive decision-making.

“What’s definitely not missing is data,” Pettican said. “The data is there. It’s the actionable insights … most suppliers are data rich. It’s just they don’t know, or can’t get to, the insights to automate and drive out efficiencies.”

For networks like Mastercard, the role is to provide the infrastructure, the rails, data, security and scalability, so that businesses focusing on operations aren’t distracted or even derailed by payment-driven working capital challenges and visibility gaps.

“The payment bit is the last mile,” Pettican said, but “delays are all around the processes.”

Addressing that may require integrating rich remittance data and automation directly into the payment flow. This faces suppliers with a new imperative: build flexibility into their acceptance strategies. That can mean integrating with the ecosystems where transactions originate while maintaining the ability to operate across multiple rails. Ultimately, by enabling real-time reconciliation, suppliers can reduce manual work, minimize disputes and accelerate cash application.

And that’s not just the future of B2B. That’s what’s happening right now, this very second.

“Supplier needs are moving fast,” Pettican said. “But it’s important to not forget about the payment bit. It can be the most painful if you’re not careful.”