How platforms got started in payments processing
The payments revolution began with a simple observation: platforms already sitting at the center of commerce weren't capturing the value flowing through them.
Consumer-facing companies saw it first. Platforms in hospitality, food and beverage, and retail became payment facilitators, consolidating reservations, ordering and point-of-sale into a single workflow — and earning a cut of every dollar processed. Payments weren’t a convenience feature; it was a revenue stream hiding in plain sight.
The B2B world followed the same logic, though the entry point differed. Enterprise platforms initially focused on the buyer side — streamlining payments through ERPs and procurement systems. But the acceptance side, enabling businesses to receive payments efficiently at scale, remained a largely underpenetrated opportunity.
For most B2B platforms, the journey began with workflow automation. A platform managing invoicing or AP processing was already structuring financial data and tracking obligations. Executing the payment directly, rather than handing off to a bank or a separate provider, was the logical next step. Going "out of band" introduced friction and left real value on the table.
This is the inflection point that separates platforms that participate in commerce from those that power it. It isn't a feature launch, it's a business evolution that can reshape margins, deepen retention and redefine what a platform fundamentally is.
Two paths to potential revenue growth
Many B2B platforms take their first payments step through ACH — it’s familiar, accessible and relatively easy to implement. But ACH can have some limitations: the experience could be smoother, settlement can take time and the revenue potential is relatively modest compared to card-based payments. For platforms serious about payments as a profit center, cards offer a clearer, more dynamic path, through interchange economics or direct issuer agreements.
The right model depends on the buyers a platform serves.
Platform-as-Issuer may be the right fit when serving smaller buyers without existing commercial card programs. The platform provides virtual cards, processes payments through a partner program manager or its own infrastructure and typically operates under a revenue share agreement on interchange with a BIN-sponsor issuer. The platform captures value on every transaction while delivering a payments experience customers may not be able to easily access on their own.
Bring Your Own Card may suit mid-to-large enterprises with established commercial card programs. Here, the platform integrates directly with Visa or the enterprise's issuing bank. Customers often demand this feature and it can help drive retention. The deeper the integration, the greater the value delivered and the higher the switching costs. This also creates the opportunity for revenue share partnerships with banks.
While many platforms have entered embedded payments through the accounts payable side, the receivables opportunity is also significant. Every business needs to get paid, yet many B2B companies have yet to fully embrace card acceptance. Platforms that integrate acceptance capabilities or become Payment Facilitators can change that, potentially driving meaningful new revenue in the process. By enabling best-practice B2B acceptance — including straight-through processing and flexible interchange programs — receivables can become not just a customer benefit, but a durable revenue stream.
Choosing the right model is more than a technical decision. It's a strategic one that determines revenue trajectory and long-term customer stickiness.
Non-Financial Service platforms are poised for payments to become a catalyst for growth
The complexities of Embedded Payments
The business case for embedded payments is compelling, but the path to execution is rarely as straightforward as it looks. Platforms that underestimate the depth of payments integration often find themselves absorbing costs and delays that erode the very margins they set out to build.
Three challenges surface consistently:
Scaling integrations across issuing partners is the first hurdle. Building point-to-point connections with individual issuers is resource-intensive and is often difficult to scale. Each integration carries its own technical specifications, data requirements and maintenance burden. What starts as a manageable build may quickly become a fragile web of bespoke connections rather than a coherent payments infrastructure.
Compliance and regulatory requirements present a second, often underestimated challenge. Financial services operates under a dense framework of standards — card network rules, AML, KYC and beyond. Platforms entering this space for the first time frequently lack the institutional knowledge to navigate these requirements with confidence, which may create both legal exposure and operational drag.
Supplier enablement adds a third layer of complexity. Identifying which suppliers will accept virtual card payments, and validating their readiness to do so, is painstaking work. At scale, it can become a significant bottleneck that limits the reach and effectiveness of the entire program.
These aren't insurmountable challenges. Especially with an infrastructure partner who has navigated them before.
The AI imperative: Adapt or risk getting left behind
The rise of agentic AI is an accelerating shift that will reshape how B2B payments flow and which platforms remain relevant in orchestrating them.
The opportunity is significant. Platforms that embed payments in a differentiated way — driving net-new supplier acceptance, facilitating payment terms negotiation and offering a full suite of agent-accessible payment tools across domestic and cross-border flows — may maintain a stronger competitive position. And they could be better able to unlock monetization opportunities by opening payment flows that previously didn't exist or couldn't be captured.
But the threat is legitimate. In the near future, AI agents could bypass the platform layer entirely by working directly with ERPs to initiate and execute payments. Platforms that fail to embed agentic capabilities risk being skipped over.
The platforms that could lead the next decade are those building today for a world where the end user isn't always a person.
Infrastructure that scales with you on a network you know and trust
The challenges outlined here — integration complexity, supplier enablement and AI readiness — are precisely the problems that the Visa infrastructure is built to help solve. For platforms at the embedded payments inflection point, Visa offers the scale, relationships and breadth to support growth without complexity.
At the foundation, embedded payments APIs can help eliminate the need to build and maintain fragile point-to-point integrations. A single connection to Visa can unlock access to multiple issuing partners, compressing months of integration work into a scalable architecture that can be built to meet the regulatory expectations of the broader financial services industry.
For platforms serving buyers and suppliers with diverse needs, Visa Commercial Solutions Hub and Virtual Card Engine and Visa Direct deliver flexible card and non-card capabilities across domestic and cross-border flows, including stablecoin payout capabilities, helping to extend reach and enabling platforms to move money in the ways their customers increasingly expect.*
On the acceptance side, the Visa Acceptance Platform helps platforms become payment facilitators and monetize receivables with confidence. Visa Account Receivable Manager (VARM) automates the receiving and processing of virtual card payments, while Supplier Enablement and Supplier Match solve the operationally intensive challenge of identifying and activating accepting suppliers at scale.
And for the AI-driven future, Visa Intelligent Commerce delivers the APIs, platform capabilities and partnerships that prepare platforms for agentic payment flows.
Unlock embedded payments and the growth they can deliver for you and your clients
The revenue opportunity in embedded payments is real and it's growing. For platforms ready to move beyond fragmented integrations and missed monetization, Visa is here to help capture it — at scale, with confidence and without the complexity that typically comes with it.
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¹EY Parthenon. June 2024. How embedded payments can transform a utility into a growth driver. White paper. Based on research completed by an EY market survey with respondents from twenty-one technology providers globally across Americas, EMEIA, and APAC. Retrieved from how embedding payments can transform payments from a utility to growth driver.