Thirty-eight percent of all US and Canadian businesses use virtual cards to make or receive payments from their business partners. Businesses that have adopted virtual card payments like these say the technology has improved their broader payment operations in an average of 10 different ways, with payment speed, transparency and security being among the most important. 
So what’s stopping so many companies from adopting their own virtual card solutions and reaping the benefits?
In “Acceleration of the revenue realization period: edition of the virtual card,” a collaboration with MasterCardPYMNTS surveys 400 business leaders from the United States and Canada on their interest in virtual cards and how the technology has helped companies that have adopted it to optimize their business-to-business (B2B) operations and increase their bottom line .
The main conclusions of our research are as follows:
• Virtual card payments are the most used in healthcare, with 36% of all US and Canadian healthcare companies using them to make B2B payments and 40% using them to receive payments. Large companies in the healthcare and transportation, logistics and shipping industries are much more likely than their smaller competitors to use virtual cards.
• Businesses that have adopted virtual cards to make and receive payments cite increased speed, transparency and security as key benefits. Canadian companies that use virtual cards cite more benefits to using them than their US counterparts. They are 137% more likely to say they have benefited from increased access to credit and 409% more likely to say they have benefited from additional discounts, for example.
• Business infrastructure and staffing limitations are the most common barriers to wider virtual card adoption. Forty-eight percent of U.S. and Canadian businesses that don’t use virtual cards say their current systems can’t accommodate the technology, for example, and 36% say it’s difficult to integrate virtual cards into their systems.
These are just some of the key findings that PYMNTS uncovered during our research into B2B virtual card payments from US and Canadian companies. “Accelerating The Time To Realized Revenue: Virtual Card Edition” explains why so many of these businesses have embraced virtual cards and why it’s time for their peers to follow suit.
To learn more about how virtual cards are helping US and Canadian businesses optimize their B2B operations, To download the playbook.
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