Getting paid is essential. Receiving prompt payments from your customers should also be considered table stakes when there’s so much value for accounts receivable (AR) available in the market today.
Vendors who once were happy to sit back and wait for checks to roll in now find that’s simply not good enough. Traditional payment methods take too long, come with too many security concerns, and offer few, if any, benefits. For a long time, the conversation has centered on value for payers in the form of automation, security, and rebates; however, payers have increasingly embraced these benefits in recent years.
The new focus is rightly on AR teams and the ways they can add value for the larger organization. Much of that value comes in the form of efficiency, cost savings, fraud prevention, and better customer relationships, all of which are attainable with the right payment methods and providers.
Demanding more from the B2B payments you receive is reasonable. In fact, I’d make the case that it’s critical to success as we hurtle toward 2026 and beyond.
Defining Value for Vendors
Accounts receivable functions want to receive payments quickly, ensure they arrive safely, and then easily reconcile those payments with their corresponding invoices. Everything that happens around those three focus areas can boost AR productivity and efficiency. Still, it means little if payments aren’t arriving promptly and with the necessary data those teams need.
Value comes in those three areas, then, for reasons I’ll explore below.
Faster Payments
Checks can take 5-7 business days to arrive and 1-5 days to clear. Considering checks also take time for customers to process before they’re sent, you could be twiddling your thumbs anywhere from a week to three weeks waiting for the money owed to hit your account. Extrapolate that out over dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of payments, and it’s easy to see the time and money wasted, to say nothing of how unpredictable your cash flow can become.
Faster is better. ACH and card payments alike offer lightning-fast transfers of funds once they are approved, trimming days or even weeks of waiting time. Because of that efficiency, you can often receive payments within 1-2 business days of approval. That leads to more consistent and predictable cash flow, not to mention having cash on hand when you need it. The value of that speed is self-evident.
Improved Security
Checks are simply not secure. In 2024, check fraud accounted for 30% of all fraud incidents and was becoming increasingly common, with losses totaling well over a billion dollars. The value of avoiding fraud can’t be overstated, given that it can wreak havoc on your operations and your reputation.
In contrast, digital payment methods like virtual cardscards and Premium ACH offer enhanced security features, such as tokenization, encryption, and multi-factor authentication, all of which protect both payment data and the payment itself. These essential protections aren’t built into older payment systems and outdated payment methods, even though they should be.
For vendors, recognizing the full value of security means accepting safer digital payments through a B2B payments network, like Paymode, where both parties to every transaction are protected. ACH is inherently safer than checks, and virtual cards offer even greater protection, but fraudsters are both relentless and clever. That’s why relying on outdated systems is no longer viable. A secure, purpose-built payment network isn’t just a nice-to-have; it really is a necessity.
Better Data and Reconciliation
Even when payments arrive quickly and securely, they still must be processed and matched to an invoice to actually get that money into your business. The time to cash cycle, as PYMNTS Intelligence calls it, can take an eon when you’re manually matching checks to invoices. That’s where payments with rich remittance data come in.
A robust 97% of high-performing firms in a recent PYMNTs study are confident in their cash flows, compared to 77% of those with less automation and slower time-to-cash. Standardized, secure data offering real-time visibility, like the information offered by Paymode, makes it much easier for those companies to forecast their cash comfortably and confidently.
Without that detail, AR teams spend valuable time chasing invoice numbers, matching payments by hand and eye, and diverting their focus from work that actually drives the business forward.
This is where vendors can unlock the greatest value. You can receive ACH and card payments, after all, and still not get the level of remittance detail you need to have true straight-through processing of incoming payments. Embracing payments through your customers’ partners can offer a way to get those convenient payments with structured remittance data, automating reconciliation, and cutting out the possibility of error. That accelerates cash application, improves reporting accuracy, and frees up your staff.
Why Value Matters Now
As we approach 2026, the expectations for AR teams are evolving. AR has always played a critical role in getting cash into the business, keeping collections on track and cash flow steady. But now, much like accounts payable, AR is stepping into a more strategic role within the finance team and the broader organization.
Meeting those expectations means being adaptable and focused on efficiency. Getting value out of your payments—seeing them arrive faster, having better remittance data to reconcile them faster, and having the peace of mind that comes with better security—is the best way to free up staff time for bigger asks and to make core AR processes hum along the way they should. As I said earlier in this article, vendors must demand more from their payers and payment solutions to achieve this.
The real value in B2B payments lies not in simply getting paid but in getting paid in a way that supports your business goals. With economic upheaval, rising fraud threats, and growing pressure on internal teams, it’s critical to ensure every payment delivers efficiency, speed, and security. Anything less is no longer good enough.