The latest available data from the Federal Reserve found that there were roughly $1.6 quadrillion in payments in the United States alone. However, because this data includes financial economy transactions like company acquisitions and stock sales, as well as consumer payments, quantifying the total addressable market for B2B payments—much less share shift that is happening between different payment instruments—can be difficult.
This is exactly what Hugh Thomas, Lead Commercial & Enterprise Payments Analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, set out to do in the Commercial Payments Factbook. His report examines the commercial payments market, identifies growth rates on a product-by-product basis, and details how financial institutions can make an impact with business customers.
Defining the Addressable Market
Out of the total volume of payments reported by the Fed (the most recent data was from 2021), there was roughly $1.4 quadrillion in wire transfers. Although wire transfers may be a base competency for financial institutions, they typically aren’t a growth driver for payments.
“Wires tend to be something that you use to execute at the end of events that are not necessarily in any way payments-focused,” Thomas said. “They are more just, ‘Here’s this stock getting traded, and we move the funds using a wire transfer.’ It doesn’t tend to drive treasury businesses.”
“You use it for high-value, very low-volume transactions, and so we don’t look at that as addressable when you talk about total addressable market in the wholesale payments business,” he said.
Leaving out wire transfers, there was more than $200 trillion in payments value. Once customer payments are removed from the equation, roughly $175 trillion was identified as the total addressable market for commercial payments.
The lion’s share of these payments was ACH credit transfers, where the initiator pushes funds to a payee. The next most prevalent payment type was ACH debit, whereby the payer has an arrangement with the payee where they can pull funds from an account, such as in bill pay or loan payments.
“Still hanging in there with a decent-sized share of B2B payments is check,” Thomas said. “Check payments are hanging in there primarily because they’ve become more of an exception solution. Basically, checks almost doubled in terms of average transaction size and almost halved in terms of volume of transactions between 2015 and 2024.
“They’re effectively becoming a solution where either your payee is not set up to receive ACH credit transfers or direct debit, is unwilling to receive, or it’s just not worth it—it’s a one-time payout where doing a wire would be unnecessary or too expensive, It’s no longer as much of a high-volume, low-value payment system as it has been. That’s how checks are hanging in there is they’re becoming an exception management solution.”
Water Finding Its Level
As paper checks fade, there has been speculation that real-time payments through FedNow or the RTP network could be pushed into the limelight. This hasn’t yet been the case because the established financial infrastructure in the United States has been sufficient enough for commercial use cases.
However, there has been some growth in Same Day ACH, especially since the transaction limit was raised a few years ago. Still, the payment mechanism accounts for only roughly a 3% share of total ACH.
Although card-based transactions are ubiquitous among U.S. consumers, this is not the case in B2B, where card payments represent less than 2% of total value. Because B2B spending typically dwarfs consumer payments by a roughly 10-to-1 ratio, commercial payments represent a significant opportunity for card companies. Visa and Mastercard have acknowledged this in recent announcements1.
Cards are gaining more traction, with substantial growth seen in many types of commercial cards, from fleet to prepaid to small-business credit.
There was also demonstrable growth in small-business debit, as more smaller enterprises have recognized that the payment mechanism is an effective and inexpensive way to pay suppliers.
Beyond these areas, one of the most promising payment types for B2B transactions is virtual cards.
“We think there are a ton of possible use cases for virtual cards, and our forecast is that virtual card spend will overtake purchasing card spend in the next two years, though it may have already done so,” Thomas said. “We think this is the growth engine, something that can help with automation, make payments more secure and reliable, offer the sort of fungibility that’s useful in a number of circumstances, and potentially provide working-capital acceleration.
“Water has far from found its level at this point with that product, so every possibility that growth comes even faster, particularly as you see the networks moving into things like making hashed card number and virtual card number solutions for agentic AI spend,” he said. “There could be some serious force multipliers there, depending on how quickly people come to embrace those sorts of emerging technologies.”
The 5 Sectors
In addition to evaluating the most prevalent products, the study also broke down B2B spending by sector and segment. It showed that there are five segments dominating real-economy spending: wholesaling, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and social assistance instruction.
Delving deeper, the study examined which sectors were dominated by large-market, mid-market, and small- to medium-sized enterprises, and how much each of these sectors purchase. Although roughly a third of all spending comes from manufacturing, healthcare comprises a substantial amount of business payments because of its multiplier effect.
“You pay your insurance company, and if you go to see your doctor, you pay a copay, your insurer pays an HMO,” Thomas said. “The HMO maybe pays somebody who manages the wages of doctors. That entity pays the doctor’s company, then the doctor’s company pays the doctor. There’s just a giant multiplier effect as a consequence of the structure of that industry.”
A Resource at Your Fingertips
Understanding the total addressable market, the predominant payment types, and the breakdown of each sector is crucial for financial institutions as they build strategies to reach business customers.
For example, identifying slower-paying industries could help organizations improve cash management.
“We looked at the businesses with the highest days payable outstanding who may want things like supply chain finance or other ways to get their suppliers paid faster if they want to hold on to their cash longer,” Thomas said. “Which industries have the higher day sales outstanding? Who waits the longest to get paid? Businesses in these industries may need bridging solutions, so the document helps providers as they decide which industries to focus on and what solutions and messages to emphasize
With so much supply chain disruption and uncertainty in recent months, many organizations are revisiting their supply chain strategies, a great opportunity for providers to have a conversation about solutions that is informed by the exigencies of specific industries.
“It’s a good perspective in terms of where to weigh in with your financial solutions,” Thomas said. “It’s a good primer for anyone who wants to be able to say in 2025, ‘My boss is going to ask me X, Y, or Z question about where the market is, or the size of X, Y, or Z, the sector percentage,’ or whatever the case might be. It’s just a good resource to have at your fingertips.”
1 Visa 2024 Annual Report, Mastercard 4th Quarter Earnings Call, January 30, 2025
