Want to pay vendors with a credit card? Three ways to get to “Yes”

Savvy businesses looking to reduce costs, boost efficiency, and improve cash flow know that an important strategy is to pay vendors with your credit card instead of paper checks. For digital-first innovation economy companies, this might seem like a no-brainer, but you may have suppliers that expect checks or other payment types— so you need to build buy-in to motivate them to accept your business credit card.

While your relationship manager or commercial card advisor can help facilitate credit card to vendor payment through a supplier enablement process, you can take an active role as well to get vendors on board. It starts with understanding how accepting card payments can help those suppliers, so you can engage them directly to drive home the payoffs and strengthen your supply chain relationships.

As you talk with your suppliers, highlight the following big wins from accepting card payments:

They can get paid much faster

For starters, you want to offset concerns about processing fees by offering shorter payment terms when you can pay invoices with credit card. Their payment processor might charge up to 5% for accepting cards, but it may be worth it to get paid sooner, particularly for large invoices.

For example, instead of paying for equipment or bulk supplies in 60 days by check, offer to pay in 14 days by card. Typically, once they accept your card payment, they’ll receive the funds within 24 to 48 hours. Getting a boost to their working capital — significantly faster— enables vendors to better support their operations and pursue their own opportunities.

They can simplify accounts receivable

Accepting commercial cards is much more cost-efficient than manually processing paper payments. Vendors would no longer need to scan checks and key in details that make reconciliation more time-consuming, error-prone and costly. Consider that it costs businesses on average up to $2 to receive check payments, according to a survey by the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP®).

With a business card and our integrated spend management platform, you can make it even easier for your supply chain partners when you pay invoices with credit card. You can import vendor invoices into the system and make virtual card payments with detailed remittance information. That makes it easier for suppliers to save time when they reconcile invoices. Plus, having card transaction data pulled into their own financial systems can improve their sales reporting and analytics.

They gain more secure, reliable payments

Check fraud continues to rise, particularly in postal mail theft, which jumped 10% in 2024 over the previous year, per the 2024 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey Report. Being able to pay vendors with credit card can dramatically reduce their risk and losses.

And using virtual cards, you benefit from a more secure payment method as well. Though seamlessly connected to your actual commercial card account, you can issue unlimited customized virtual cards, each with a unique, randomly generated number. It enables greater control, security and speed for one-time or recurring payments.

If you're wondering how to pay vendors with credit card options, we can partner with you to engage your list of vendors about the benefits of accepting business cards. Or you can make those connections yourself as part of reinforcing strong relationships where both you and your suppliers come out ahead.

To learn more about the advantages of a commercial card program, talk with your SVB Relationship Manager or Commercial Card Advisor.