B2B payments trends: What finance leaders need to know in 2025

This post was originally published in May 2022 and has been updated in September 2025 to reflect the latest B2B payment trends for 2025.

The work of medical suppliers is essential to global health. But the B2B payment challenges that have dogged the industry for years are only getting more complex. If not addressed, these challenges can distract your team from what’s most important: your mission-critical work.

For finance leaders in the medical supply sector, today’s payment trends represent significant opportunities to control costs, accelerate cash flow, and improve customer satisfaction through AR automation. We’ve studied the activity within our payments network and have spotted several key trends directly affecting medical suppliers.

Read the blog → The fintech trends accelerating AP/AR evolution in 2025

Trend 1: The Rise of AP Providers in Healthcare

A major challenge for medical suppliers has been the rapid adoption of accounts payable (AP) provider portals among large healthcare providers and hospital networks. This trend, accelerated by the shift to remote work, has made the AP portal a dominant payment channel.

AP providers aim to enroll suppliers in their unique programs to be able to submit payments. This has resulted in a greater push for card payments, and in some cases incentivizing suppliers with faster payments if cards are accepted.

Many AP providers are also credit card issuers themselves or partner with issuers who make money on interchange fees and incentivize buyers with rebates. As AP providers gain market share with large healthcare providers, suppliers face enormous pressure to accept the use of credit cards for fear of losing their customers. 

And, in a field governed by HIPAA regulations, where data security is taken very seriously, suppliers are still receiving card data over the phone, email, or even fax — all of which expose sensitive card numbers to employees.

The Solution: Automated Virtual Card Processing

To combat this, leading suppliers are using Billtrust’s Digital Lockbox, a key feature of our Billtrust Payments platform. It automates the processing of virtual card payments that arrive via email from any AP provider. This eliminates employee exposure to sensitive data, ensures compliance, and frees up your team from the manual, repetitive task of processing cards.

Trend 2: Managing High-Volume Payments and Hefty Fees

The medical supply industry is unique. Our data shows that medical payments can be 100 times the average ticket size of other B2B verticals, with single payments often averaging $230,000. When these large payments are made via credit card, the interchange fees are substantial.

Many medical suppliers pay average interchange fees of 2.5%–2.6%, which can amount to over $5,200 in fees on a single payment. These costs cut directly into your bottom line.

The Solution: A Configurable Platform to Control Costs

Billtrust Payments helps you dramatically reduce these costs. By processing more detailed Level 2 and 3 data, we can lower interchange fees significantly. Our customers have seen up to a 30% reduction in card processing costs. The platform’s flexible policy engine also allows you to set rules that encourage buyers to use lower-cost payment methods like ACH, giving you granular control over your payment acceptance costs.

Read the blog → Modernize your invoice payment platform with Billtrust’s AR automation

Trend 3: M&A Complexity and Cash Application Headaches

The medical space is well known for constant mergers, acquisitions and consolidations. But to maintain long-term relationships, many acquired institutions still do business under their former identities. These complex parent/child relationships, along with buying groups spread across multiple hospitals, lead to a lot of cash application work for medical suppliers. 

AR teams frequently receive single, large payments meant to cover multiple invoices across different entities, often without clear remittance advice. Manually unwinding these payments is a time-consuming nightmare that delays cash flow and ties up customer credit.

The Solution: AI-Powered Cash Application

This is where technology becomes a true game-changer. Billtrust’s AI-powered Cash Application is built to handle the complex scenarios common in the medical field.

• Unlike rigid, rule-based systems, our solution uses confidence-based matching to learn your unique invoice structures and customer payment patterns.
• It achieves an industry-leading average of 86.3% cash app match rates, even for complex, multi-entity payments.
• This automation can lead to a 50% to 80% productivity increase for your operations team, allowing them to shift from manual data entry to higher-impact activities.

Ready to optimize your payment processes and accelerate your cash flow?  Connect with our AR experts to learn how Billtrust’s unified platform can transform your accounts receivable operations.