Author: Charitarth Sindhu, Fractional Business & AI Workflow Consultant
B2B payment infrastructure is heading toward a multi-trillion dollar reckoning, and most SME distributors are nowhere near ready. Mordor Intelligence projects the global B2B payments market will reach $3.4 trillion by 2031, growing at a 15.48% CAGR from its current $1.42 trillion valuation. So we asked three industry leaders one straightforward question: how should SME distributors prepare their B2B payment infrastructure for what comes next?
Their answers revealed sharp disagreements on strategy, priority, and even philosophy. Yet all three agreed on one fundamental point. The current approach to B2B payment infrastructure at most distribution businesses is unsustainable.
Why B2B Payment Infrastructure at Most SMEs Is Already Outdated
The data tells a damning story. Roughly 86% of SMEs still depend on manual invoicing data entry, which costs between $12 and $30 per invoice compared to just $1 to $5 with automation. At the same time, the regulatory environment is accelerating around them. ISO 20022 went live on the Federal Reserve’s Fedwire system in July 2025, now settling $4.7 trillion daily with enriched remittance data. FedNow has also expanded to over 1,500 participating institutions, and mandatory e-invoicing regulations are spreading across more than a dozen countries.
Together, these shifts mean B2B payment infrastructure modernization is no longer optional. The distributors who ignore the transition will find the transition does not ignore them.
Sudhanshu Dubey, Delivery Manager and Enterprise Solutions Architect at Errna, stressed this urgency directly.
Many small to medium-sized business (SME) distributors are still operating on payment systems that were developed for a time when digital solutions were not widely used. The immense size of the B2B payments and transaction market will create a need for API-driven payment systems capable of providing real-time reconciliation of transactions after 2031. The challenge associated with this will be the tendency for businesses to try to ‘rip-and-replace’ legacy accounting software as a means of transitioning to an API-driven digital system. A better alternative would be to take a modular approach to the payment stack so that businesses can build up their ledger systems with automated reconciliation processes without disrupting their current operations.
If you are not currently automating your invoice-to-cash processing workflows today, you are effectively putting a limitation on your company’s growth potential. Future-proofing your infrastructure means creating a system that makes it possible for your payment data to flow directly into your ERP without the need for manual intervention, which can result in increased visibility and insight into the activity of your company. This visibility provides a significant competitive advantage to those companies that can grow at a faster rate than others and who may be struggling just to remain in business.
- Sudhanshu Dubey, Delivery Manager and Enterprise Solutions Architect, Errna
Building Better B2B Payment Infrastructure Without Tearing Everything Down
Dubey’s push for modularity over wholesale replacement reflects a growing industry consensus. PwC, FIS, and AWS have all endorsed modular payment stacks as the most effective path for B2B payment infrastructure upgrades. In addition, businesses that automate their invoice processing save between $50,000 and $125,000 annually on a base of 5,000 invoices. On-time payment rates also climb from 70% to 95% after automation, which directly reduces late payment crises that plague so many SME distributors.
Dubey summarized the forward-looking mindset that B2B payment infrastructure planning demands.
Preparing for 2031 is not primarily going to be about making specific future predictions; instead, it is going to be about creating a flexible infrastructure that allows you to change your payment processing system when regulations and technology changes occur. Get the plumbing right today so that you do not have to replace your entire building when the value of the B2B payment and transaction markets reaches a multi-trillion dollar level.
- Sudhanshu Dubey, Delivery Manager and Enterprise Solutions Architect, Errna
George Wills, Co-founder and Director of Growth and Strategy at Opt-ic, took the B2B payment infrastructure conversation in an unexpected direction. Rather than treating payments as overhead, he argued they should generate revenue.
Businesses should stop looking at payments as a cost item. The winners in 2031 will have built a bi-directional payments stack, where they minimise interchange on pay-in, but maximise interchange on pay-out. On Pay-in, we are seeing open-banking really start to take a foothold and we’re expecting this to accelerate throughout 2026 and the next 5 years; and on Pay-out there are significant sums to be recouped through paying partners with Virtual Cards. This will help turn payments from a cost centre, to a profit-centre.
- George Wills, Co-founder and Director of Growth and Strategy, Opt-ic
His claim about virtual cards and embedded finance carries real weight. Virtual card transaction value has grown 370% over five years, and interchange rebates return roughly 1% of card-eligible spend. For a distributor processing $2 million annually, that translates to $20,000 in direct revenue recovery through a well-structured B2B payment infrastructure.
Open banking data further supports his timeline. The UK recorded 351 million open banking payments in 2025, representing a 57% year-over-year increase. Meanwhile, the EU’s PSD3 regulatory framework reached provisional agreement in November 2025. These developments confirm that open banking is quietly reshaping B2B payments in ways many SME distributors have yet to recognize.
A Contrarian View on B2B Payment Infrastructure Readiness
Not everyone agrees that market projections should drive B2B payment infrastructure planning. Riccardo Spagni, entrepreneur and former lead maintainer of privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero, challenged the entire premise.
Ah yes, the magical 2031 projection. I love a good arbitrarily massive number.
SMEs shouldn’t be preparing for a market size. They should be preparing for adversarial environments. Stop relying on a single payment processor that can de-platform you because an algorithm flagged your business model. Stop using transparent blockchains where your competitors can see every supplier you pay and every margin you make. That is a fundamental failure of business opsec.
You prepare by building redundancy. Accept Bitcoin. Use privacy-enhancing tools like Monero. Understand self-custody. The men with tanks and nuclear weapons aren’t going to fix the banking system for you, so you better make sure your infrastructure isn’t entirely dependent on their permission.
Spagni raises one valid concern about single-processor dependency. Terminated merchants can land on Mastercard’s MATCH list for up to five years, which effectively locks them out of card networks. For distributors in high-risk categories, diversifying payment processors is genuinely sound B2B payment infrastructure advice.
However, his cryptocurrency recommendations face significant practical barriers for most SMEs. Bitcoin’s confirmation times range from 10 to 60 minutes, and every transaction creates a taxable event under current regulations. Privacy coins like Monero face active delisting from major exchanges including Binance and OKX. Notably, the cryptocurrency segment gaining real B2B traction is stablecoins, projected to reach $390 billion in B2B payments during 2025.
For most SME distributors, the clearest path to B2B payment infrastructure readiness still runs through modular API integrations, ERP-connected payment flows, virtual card optimization, and open banking rails. The $3.4 trillion market is coming whether individual businesses prepare or not. The distributors who modernize their B2B payment infrastructure now will capture the margin advantages, while those who delay will face rising costs and compressing returns.