That is the takeaway from “SMB Growth Monitor: Small Businesses, Big Credit Needs,” a PYMNTS Intelligence collaboration with i2c. The report drew on a survey of 514 U.S. small- to medium-sized business (SMB) executives.

Its broad finding is that small businesses still rely heavily on credit, but their priorities are shifting. Access matters, of course. Yet many firms now seem more focused on practical features such as installment options, dynamic spending limits, flexible due dates and card controls that reflect how money actually moves through the business.

That shift gives issuers a new opening. In a market where many SMBs already feel they can secure credit, product design may matter more than simple approval.

The report’s fourth key finding stands out. SMBs are not spending much time worrying about whether they can get approved for a new business card. Instead, they are comparing options and looking for products that offer more value.

Nearly two-thirds of SMBs say they believe they would be approved for a new business credit card with their desired spending limit, and another 19% say they might be approved, though not for the full amount. Among high-revenue SMBs, that confidence rises even further, to 96.1%.

That changes the competitive landscape for issuers. Once approval stops being the main concern, features, pricing and flexibility move to the center of the sales pitch.

• Eighty-three percent of SMBs think they would get approved for a new business credit card, underscoring that many firms see access to credit as attainable rather than out of reach.
• Fifty-six percent of SMBs say they are very or extremely interested in a card that lets them choose between rewards and a lower APR each statement period, showing strong demand for more adaptable credit models.
• Fifty-three percent of business credit card use is mostly or completely planned, suggesting that SMB card spending is often deliberate and tied to business operations rather than impulse purchases.

Other findings reinforce the same theme. SMBs are willing to pay for flexibility, with the average firm saying it would spend about $126 a year for card features such as installments or dynamic limits. More than half also express strong interest in flexible due dates, customizable limits and virtual card numbers for specific uses.

The report also shows that larger and more confident firms use credit more often, while smaller firms are more likely to lean on personal cards, especially for unexpected costs. Still, the mood running through the data is constructive. SMBs are using credit with purpose.

They know what they want. For issuers that can meet those needs with clearer value and smarter tools, that looks less like a challenge than an opening.

At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report, produced with Mastercard, is based on a survey of 412 U.S. small- to medium-sized business (SMB) owners, founders, vice presidents and executive directors.

While the headline finding centers on reducing reliance on cash and checks, the broader message is that SMBs are asking for financial products that fit how they actually run their businesses. That includes smoother cash-flow management, better dispute protections, flexible repayment options and a blend of digital service with human support when needed.

Rather than framing SMBs as reluctant to modernize, the data help form a more constructive picture. Many businesses appear ready to adopt new tools when those tools address immediate needs such as paying suppliers quickly, covering expenses before cash comes in and keeping a clearer handle on spending. In that sense, the report is less about payment preference than about operational confidence.

• Sixty-three percent of SMBs said business credit cards are the most suitable way to dispute a payment and get money back. Another 59% said cards are the best way to make a payment without having cash on hand at that moment. That points to a strong appetite for protection and flexibility, especially when cash flow is tight or a transaction goes wrong.
• Meanwhile, 46% said they would be willing to pay for a business credit card that lets them adjust payment windows based on when they have money. Another 43.3% said they would pay for the ability to make purchases in installments, and 42.9% would pay for longer payment windows. The pattern is clear. SMBs are placing a premium on tools that help them manage timing, not just spend.
• Among SMB leaders surveyed, 45.8% said they would pay for access to business experiences, while 33.1% said they would pay for digital tools. That suggests smaller companies do not see financial products as only transactional. They also value connections, support and tools that may help them grow, learn and operate more efficiently.

The report also showed that channel preference matters almost as much as product design. Overall, 23% of SMBs prefer a self-serve digital application for a business card, while 18% prefer live chat and another 18% prefer a human phone representative.

Looking for the Digital Path

Cash-reliant firms are less likely to want a purely digital path, while businesses with no cash reliance are much more comfortable handling things online. That finding gives issuers and banks a practical roadmap. Digital convenience matters, but so does easy access to real people.

There are other encouraging signals. Only 17.6% of SMBs said they saw no barriers to reducing cash usage, and the biggest obstacles were largely practical, such as cost and fees, business type and supplier surcharges. Those are product and service challenges, not dead ends. For providers that can lower friction, improve onboarding and deliver more cash-flow control, the report suggests a sizable opening to build stronger relationships with SMBs that are ready for something better.

At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.

Small business spending continues to underpin broad economic activity, but the systems that support that spending have room for improvement.

Many owners launch with urgency, using whatever tools are immediately available, and only later confront the operational consequences. Those consequences tend to appear not in the moment of purchase, but in the accumulated burden of tracking, reconciling and managing expenses across an expanding set of transactions.

That pattern begins at business formation. As Capital One Senior Director, Product Strategy, Small Business Card Nat Hewett said in an interview with PYMNTS, “for many business owners, the line between having an idea and having a business is blurry at the start. And it’s hard to know the exact moment that you’re going from one side of that line to the other.”

Once that transition occurs, the pace of operations leaves little room for process. Owners deploy personal capital and personal tools simultaneously, often without drawing a clear boundary between the two.

Structural Friction

Capital One research indicates that roughly 1 in 5 small businesses still rely on personal cards for business purchases, a statistic that reflects both convenience and constraint.

That reliance, however, becomes a structural weakness as businesses scale. Hewett pointed to two recurring triggers that push owners toward dedicated solutions: the need for credit and the need for financial clarity.

“For some, the first real bottleneck will be needing access to more credit to run their day to day. And for others, they’re just looking for a clearer line of separation between their personal finances and their business finances,” he told PYMNTS.

The absence of that separation forces owners into manual work that grows with transaction volume.

Hewett described the issue in direct terms. “Having a dedicated business card means that you’re not sorting through a credit card statement trying to separate your Amazon grocery bill from your Amazon Web Services invoice,” he said, adding that the lack of separation “creates a lot of work when you don’t have that separation in place.”

Those gaps are often subtle. Hewett emphasized that the most common surprises are not large invoices but incremental losses that accumulate over time.

“There are a lot of ‘death by a thousand cuts’ type of transactions that are either being paid twice or not getting paid at all,” he said.

Centralization Changes the Equation

The introduction of a dedicated business credit card shifts that dynamic by consolidating transactions into a single system. That consolidation reduces the need for reconstruction and enables more consistent financial management.

“When entrepreneurs go to close their books and realize that all of their business expenses are in one place, that is hugely helpful,” he said. “It takes away a Sunday night every quarter of going through your credit card statements and really makes your life a heck of a lot easier.”

Beyond organization, business cards like those issued by Capital One introduce capabilities that personal cards are not designed to support. These include issuing employee cards, integrating with accounting systems and managing payments across multiple rails.

Delegation Requires Structure and Guardrails

Modern business card platforms address the need for delegation of spending through configurable controls. Owners can set spending limits, define transaction alerts and assign account managers who oversee activity across employees and vendors.

Virtual cards add a further layer of discipline. Hewett explained that assigning dedicated virtual cards to specific merchants or recurring transactions allows businesses to “protect both sides of the equation.”

If one card is compromised, the rest of the system remains unaffected, and recurring payments can continue without disruption.

For many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the initial value of a business credit card is not found in rewards but in operational consistency.

At the same time, visibility into spending patterns provides insight into cash flow.

“It is a great way to be able to see all of your outflows in one place,” Hewett said, reinforcing the role of centralized data in decision making.

Balancing Speed and Control

The evolution of business credit cards reflects a broader objective. Owners require systems that move quickly but remain disciplined.

“If you have speed without control or control without speed, things are not that simple,” Hewett said, emphasizing that the goal is to align both elements within a single platform.

As Hewett put it, the objective is to create tools that are “intuitive, customizable, at your fingertips and ready when you need them,” while removing the friction that accompanies expanding spend.

Titled “Small Business. Big Advantage,” the series will look at how flexible payment options, modern credit tools and data-driven decisioning can help small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) strengthen operations and improve results.

The series will pair a Synchrony executive with a small business leader in each episode. The goal is to show how payment and financing tools are being used in practical ways by merchants who want to convert more shoppers and create smoother buying experiences. At the center of the series is Synchrony’s view that financing is no longer just a back-end function. It is becoming part of how businesses compete at the point of sale and beyond.

The first episode, “Choice at Checkout: Turning Flexible Payments Into Growth,” focuses on the purchase moment itself. The discussion will examine how options such as pay-in-4, pay monthly, promotional financing and card-based offers can help reduce sticker shock, lift close rates and raise average ticket size.

Synchrony’s position is that financing works best when it is built into checkout strategy rather than treated as an afterthought. For small businesses, that can turn payment choice into a measurable revenue tool instead of a last-minute add-on.

The second episode, “Flexible Credit, Stronger Growth: How Small Businesses Can Turn Payment Choice Into Advantage,” widens the lens to the broader pressures facing SMBs, including health and wellness providers.

The conversation will explore how tools such as credit cards, installment lending and platforms such as independent software vendors (ISVs) can help smaller merchants and providers remove barriers and deepen customer ties. The business case is simple: giving customers and patients more ways to pay can make larger expenses feel more manageable while helping merchants stand out in crowded markets. Synchrony’s view is that payment flexibility has become a competitive asset for businesses that want to match the capabilities consumers often expect from larger brands.

The third episode, “Smarter Yeses: How Better Data Can Help Small Businesses Win More Customers,” turns to approval and decisioning. The episode is built around a practical challenge for merchants: how to help more customers say yes without adding complexity to the shopping experience.

It will look at how better data and tools such as Synchrony PRISM, its propriety credit decisioning platform, can help businesses surface financing options earlier in the customer journey, reduce missed sales and support more confident credit decisions. Rather than frame artificial intelligence as a technology story on its own, the episode ties it to business outcomes such as smoother checkout, better approvals and more precise growth.

Taken together, the series makes a broader argument about where small business commerce is headed.

Synchrony is positioning flexible payments, credit access and smarter decisioning as tools that can help SMBs compete more effectively in a market where customer expectations are rising and merchants need every advantage they can get. The series is designed to show that, for many small businesses, the right payment strategy is no longer just about processing transactions. It is about creating more opportunities to help get customers to “yes.”

Small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) know best that growth doesn’t happen in a straight line.

But that message hasn’t always translated into how financial solutions are designed. Too often, small business digitization is framed as a simple migration—cash to card, analog to digital—rather than a redesign of how businesses actually operate day to day.

That narrative is missing the mark—and it has implications for how financial providers design, position and support digital payment solutions for small businesses.

“Small businesses don’t just swap payment methods. They replace an entire cash workflow,” Mark Barnett, global head of small and medium enterprises at Mastercard, told PYMNTS, stressing that what’s really at stake is not a change in payment method, but a deeper transformation of how businesses operate.

“Workflows are sort of a fancy business word,” he added, noting that “workflows” often simply refer to the practical and repeatable ways businesses manage money.

What has long appeared to be a battle over payment methods, then, is in reality, a contest to redesign the operating systems of small businesses—a challenge that requires providers to think beyond products, toward the end-to-end workflows that feel fastest, most reliable and offer the greatest sense of control. Payments here are merely the entry point.

After all, SMEs don’t simply replace cash with cards; they need access to the right tools in the first place, along with clear guidance on how to adapt long-standing processes like paying suppliers, reconciling accounts and managing liquidity.

That shift requires providers to actively support behavior change—not just through products, but through education, onboarding and workflow-level design.

The Myth of a Simple Payments Shift

If the challenge were purely technological, the solution would be straightforward: expand acceptance and distribute hardware. But operational realities are often more durable than technology alone. A business owner who has paid suppliers the same way for decades is unlikely to change overnight—even if a new option is objectively better—unless the transition is clearly supported and operationally seamless.

“Just putting an SME card in the hands of an SME isn’t going to mean they’re going to use it,” Barnett said. He cited Mastercard research showing that 45% of SMEs want to reduce their reliance on cash—a signal that intent is already there, even as adoption remains uneven.

The gap, Barnett suggested, is less about willingness and more about whether providers are removing the right friction points at the right moments.

Cash persists because it delivers immediacy, control and simplicity—the same fundamentals small businesses expect from any financial tool.

For providers, the task is not to convince SMEs to abandon those priorities, but to design digital experiences that meet them head-on—and then support businesses through the shift from familiar processes to more capable ones.

That means providers need to think beyond acceptance and focus on activation, usage and repeat behavior. In practice, that requires bringing acceptance and issuing together, embedding payments into the workflows small businesses already use and supporting the first moments where SMEs replace cash or checks with digital tools, without forcing them to reengineer how they operate.

To help providers do that, Mastercard launched a new resource hub for issuing and acceptance partners to help them drive SME growth through payment acceptance and card solutions.

“When a new SME starts to accept a card, why not make sure they have a card themselves?” Barnett said.

Read the report: Nearly Half of SMBs Want to Ditch Cash and Checks

From Payment Method to Operating System

It appears that the challenge of digitizing SME payments won’t be won by the most sophisticated payment products, but by the providers that embed digital tools most effectively into how SMEs already operate.

In practice, adoption accelerates when providers embed digital payments directly into the workflows SMEs already rely on—from ordering and supplier payments to expense management and reconciliation. When cards are designed as part of that operating layer, they stop feeling like a change and start feeling like an upgrade.

Still, SMEs vary widely in their operational readiness and financial needs. Barnett stressed that the path to adoption depends on factors like company size, industry and local infrastructure. He outlined three archetypes: fully cash-based businesses, check-heavy operators and digital-first firms.

Designing for all three means moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach toward more tailored onboarding, support and product design.

At a certain point, after adoption reaches an operational threshold, digital payments cease to be a tool and become an infrastructure layer for SMEs. They can help underpin inventory management, supplier relationships, accounting and financial planning.

Barnett highlighted a partnership with L’Oréal in Latin America as a case in point. A co-branded card enabled beauty salons to order inventory, access credit and track spending within a single ecosystem. For L’Oréal, it eliminated the need to chase invoices or manage cash-based transactions. For the salons, it simplified purchasing while providing greater visibility and liquidity—without requiring them to overhaul their entire operation.

“What L’Oréal gets is a fully digitized ecosystem,” Barnett said. And for the small business, the card shifts from an occasional tool into a central operating layer, supporting purchasing, visibility and cash flow management in one place.

That shift is also being accelerated by agentic experiences like Mastercard’s Virtual C-Suite, which will enable providers to deliver executive-level insight and decisioning to small businesses. The module can help close long-standing gaps in resources and give SMEs clearer visibility into how they pay, get paid and manage working capital.

For many SMEs, managing cash flow and accessing credit at the right moment matters more than the payment mechanism itself—a reality providers need to design around.

“All our research shows that access to capital and cash flow flexibility are the biggest friction points,” Barnett said, noting that true competition is not between cash and cards, but between constrained and unconstrained liquidity. Nearly half of SMBs say they would pay for tools that let them adjust payment timing based on when they actually have money.

Digital systems that integrate payments with access to credit fundamentally alter that equation, particularly when providers simplify approvals and support SMEs through first use.

In that sense, payments are no longer the end product; they are the starting point. They are the foundation providers can use to deliver access to capital, operational visibility and control—and to help small businesses modernize in ways that actually fit how they work.

That is the clearest message from PYMNTS Intelligence’s “The Next Frontier: Why Embedded B2B Finance Is Breaking Out in 2025,” which shows that embedded finance is no longer just about making transactions smoother. In the B2B market, it is about helping companies move faster, manage working capital more effectively and build stronger relationships with customers and suppliers.

The report argues that embedded B2B finance is shifting from a niche idea to a mainstream driver of digital growth. Unlike consumer use cases, where the focus has often been on ease and speed at checkout, B2B embedded finance is being built into ERP systems, procurement tools and industry software to support larger, more complex transactions.

The data illustrate that this shift is being fueled by demand for liquidity, instant digital issuance and API-powered integrations. It also points to a larger change in mindset. Businesses are no longer looking at finance tools as separate services. They want them woven into the platforms they already use every day.

That shift matters because B2B finance has long been slowed by manual processes, old systems and disconnected workflows. Embedding financial tools directly into software can help remove some of that friction.

It can also open new revenue streams for platforms that offer services such as supplier financing, virtual cards and automated accounts payable and receivable tools. In that sense, the opportunity reaches beyond efficiency. It gives businesses a chance to make financial operations more strategic and more valuable.

Key points from the report:

• 58% of small businesses said inflation was a top financial challenge in 2025, underscoring why working capital and faster access to funds are becoming more important.
• The embedded B2B market is projected to reach $15.6 trillion by 2030, up from $4.1 trillion today, showing how quickly this part of digital commerce is expanding.
• The report identifies three forces accelerating adoption in 2025: macroeconomic pressure, technology shifts tied to APIs and cloud infrastructure, and the rise of digital issuance such as virtual cards.

The report also makes clear that this growth will not come easily. B2B finance carries bigger transaction sizes, stricter compliance demands and more legacy infrastructure than retail payments. That makes implementation harder, especially for firms still operating with dated ERP and invoicing systems.

Still, the tone of the report is notably forward-looking. It suggests that companies willing to modernize and partner with infrastructure providers that are API-first and compliance-ready can do more than catch up.

These firms can use embedded finance to improve cash flow, simplify operations, create recurring revenue and deepen loyalty over time. After years of talking about digital transformation in broad terms, this is one area where the business case is getting much more concrete.

At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.

Regulatory proposals now under consideration by federal banking agencies are designed to recalibrate capital requirements in ways that, in theory, give banks more room to lend.

Capital Relief?

Proposed revisions to the revised Basel III capital framework that would adjust how small business loans are risk weighted. Under the standardized approach, risk weights for certain corporate exposures would decline modestly, while more significant reductions would apply to qualifying small business loans, particularly those meeting investment-grade criteria. The intent is to better align capital treatment with actual risk and free up lending capacity. PYMNTS noted late last week that Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman has said that credit would be more accessible and affordable.

Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould framed the proposed rulemaking in similar terms, saying the changes would “increase lending capacity and give banks more runway to support their communities and customers.”

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency estimates that minimum binding capital requirements could decline by nearly 7% under the standardized approach, with smaller reductions for the largest institutions.

These adjustments come at a time when small businesses remain a central pillar of the U.S. economy. According to the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, nearly 35 million small businesses employ 59 million people, accounting for 46% of the workforce and roughly 44% of GDP.

Yet access to credit has not kept pace with demand. Between 2019 and 2023,by way of example, bank lending to small businesses declined by 18% in real terms, even as applications shifted toward larger institutions.

Regulatory relief may increase supply, but distribution remains uneven.

Strategy Will Determine Who Wins

If capital becomes more available, the next question is which institutions are positioned to deploy it effectively.

For smaller banks, the opportunity is contingent on execution. The proposed rules create conditions in which lenders that can move quickly and deliver a consistent experience are more likely to capture demand.

Credit unions face both challenge and opportunity. Historically anchored in relationship-based models, they now face pressure to match the digital expectations of business customers or risk attrition.

PYMNTS Intelligence data indicates that small businesses are increasingly willing to change providers when those expectations are not met. Roughly 38% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) report that they are at least somewhat likely to switch financial institutions within the next year, while 70% express a preference for digital onboarding and account management.

Digital Expectations Are Rewriting Loyalty

As for the opportunity, PYMNTS data show that half of SMBs rely on day-to-day cash flow to survive, underscoring the need for timely access to credit and liquidity. When traditional financing is unavailable or too slow, businesses turn to alternatives, including personal credit cards, which 27% of financially strained firms report using.

The value proposition extends to speed, transparency and integration into daily operations. SMBs increasingly expect the same level of digital convenience they encounter in their personal financial lives, including real-time decisioning, seamless onboarding, and integrated cash management tools. In a separate report, PYMNTS Intelligence and Velera found that high-performing credit unions, with loyal customer bases, are innovation ready and offer digital services and products that, among other things, speed access to funds.

Banks will have more flexibility on paper. Whether that translates into expanded credit in practice will depend on their ability to originate, underwrite, and service loans in ways that align with how small businesses now operate.

A big change is happening across the small- to medium-sized business (SMB) landscape, and payments are at its center.

Against a backdrop of rapid technological innovation, the payment habits of SMBs are entering a state of flux as what emerges is a broader redefinition of how money moves through a business, how quickly it arrives and how much visibility owners have once it does.

It’s a structural shift that goes beyond swapping cash drawers for card readers. To learn more, PYMNTS sat down with Ginger Siegel, North America small and medium business lead at Mastercard; Dawn Kelly, co-founder and CEO at The Nourish Spot; and Ahmed Siddiqui, chief payments officer at Branch, for the latest of edition of the PYMNTS Roundtable series.

“Modernizing and digitizing their operations is no longer a ‘nice to have,’ but a ‘must have,’” Siegel said.

At the center of this transformation is a tension: SMBs are simultaneously embracing digital payments as a necessity while grappling with the operational, cultural and economic frictions that come with abandoning legacy systems. The result is a payments landscape that is less about transactions and more about control.

The Disappearing SMB Cash Cushion

For decades, cash and checks offered SMBs something intangible but powerful: a sense of immediacy and control. Cash in hand feels final; a check feels personal. But those perceptions are increasingly out of sync with reality.

Cash must be deposited, while checks can bounce. Both introduce delays and hidden costs for SMBs. Time spent depositing funds, reconciling discrepancies or waiting for clearance is time not spent running the business.

For Kelly, founder of The Nourish Spot in Queens, New York, those impacts are more than just theoretical.

“People tap Apple Pay, they swipe, some customers don’t even carry wallets anymore,” she said, noting that today, roughly 85% of her revenue flows through digital payments. The benefits are immediate and measurable.

“I know how much money I have, and I know where it’s at,” Kelly added. “I know who owes us, and I know when it arrives.”

That visibility has changed not just how she operates, but how she plans.

“You can’t do expansion or remodeling if you don’t have a good handle on how much money you have at your fingertips,” Kelly said.

Payments as an SMB Workforce Strategy

The evolving SMB payments landscape is also reshaping the labor dynamics of small businesses.

“When was the last time you paid for pizza in cash?” Branch’s Siddiqui asked. “We don’t do that anymore, but the workers are dependent on cash for their day to day.”

A delivery driver who once walked away with cash tips now waits weeks for compensation. And as customer payments go digital, the traditional two-week payroll cycle becomes increasingly misaligned with worker expectations, especially in a gig economy where instant payouts are the norm.

“They don’t like that,” Siddiqui said. “They can potentially do other types of gig work that can get them their money faster.”

Ultimately, businesses that fail to modernize their payout systems may risk losing workers to platforms that offer immediate access to earnings.

The Hidden Economics of Speed

Still, despite the benefits of innovation across payments, one of the most persistent barriers to modern adoption remains cost perception. Many SMBs still view card-based systems as expensive, focusing on transaction fees while overlooking the broader economic equation.

“I don’t think the full information on the cost of cash and checks comes out,” Siegel said. “For many businesses that don’t live near a bank, they have to actually drive somewhere to bring it, or they have to hire a courier service to pick it up.”

Beyond bank fees for bounced checks or the expense of transporting deposits, there’s a more subtle cost to legacy methods: delayed access to capital. Faster inflows can reduce reliance on external financing, effectively turning payment systems into liquidity tools.

“Cards are not just about rewards, but about control, visibility and predictability around money coming in and coming out,” Siegel said. “If I can get my money in quicker [by accepting a card payment], it might be that I don’t need to borrow as much.”

Kelly sees this trade-off in practical terms. Her evaluation of any new payment method is straightforward: “If it’s going to cost a lot in terms of time, effort, efficiency, then it’s not worth it.”

For her and her business, digital payments pass that test because they enhance all three.

Yet even as SMBs embrace digital tools, they remain wary of fully automated ecosystems. The demand for human interaction persists.

Kelly was unequivocal on this point. “It’s horrible when companies don’t have a person that you can tap into,” she said. “If you can hit a button and a human being comes on … That’s the best thing that could ever happen to us.”

Moving From Transactions to Payment Systems

As payments become faster and more data-rich, the systems enabling them are beginning to take on a new role: the backbone of business operations. For SMBs, which typically lack dedicated finance, marketing and operations teams, this shift is particularly significant.

What is emerging instead is a demand for flexibility. Business owners want tools that adjust to their needs in real time, credit that expands when a large order comes in, repayment options that align with cash flow cycles and financing mechanisms that are embedded directly into transactions.

These next generation small business cards can’t be just static credit products, Siegel said.

Increasingly, that means embedding financial services into a larger ecosystem that includes analytics, automation and advisory capabilities. It also requires collaboration across FinTechs, networks and traditional institutions.

At the end of the day, as all three panelists agreed, cash may be fading but its disappearance is revealing deeper needs for speed, visibility, flexibility and trust.

The shift, then, is not simply from cash to cards, or from analog to digital. It is from uncertainty to clarity and from waiting to knowing.

Or, as Kelly put it, from “sitting around holding my head” to making “smart, intelligent moves” with confidence. 

As Bloomberg News reported Saturday (April 4), the loans of up to $57,600 are for small businesses most exposed to higher fuel prices in agriculture, fishing and transportation.

The 36-month loans are limited to companies in those industries that spend at least 5% of their revenue on fuel. 

According to the report, the government had already introduced very limited fuel subsidies for sectors like trucking and fishing, while expanding energy support for low-income households. However, France has until now avoided broader, costly measures after steep spending led to a budget deficit the country is still trying to close, the report added.

Bloomberg also noted that French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu had last week asked ministers to prepare ways to help people who rely on cars after fuel prices surged due to the Iran-U.S. conflict.

Higher fuel prices aren’t the only source of friction for small businesses these days. As covered here last month, outdated payment methods are causing some small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to wait on getting paid.

“If settling an invoice requires extra steps such as downloading attachments, manually entering bank details, mailing checks or navigating outdated portals, buyers may simply move on to the next bill in their queue,” PYMNTS wrote. 

“This may be no big deal for hyper-liquid multinationals, but for SMBs operating on tighter margins and thinner liquidity buffers, even small shifts in payment timing can have outsized consequences.”

A few days’ delay in receivables can lead to postponed payroll decisions, pauses in hiring plans or delayed payments to suppliers.

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence and Mastercard, from the report “Ready for Change: Why Nearly Half of SMBs Want to Ditch Cash and Checks,” found that 52% of the payments made by Gen Z-owned SMBs are in cash, despite the prevalence of digital tools.

“Individually, these legacy frictions may seem trivial. Collectively, they create a hierarchy of convenience,” PYMNTS wrote.

Accounts payable teams, like consumers paying their own bills, tend to prioritize the transactions that are easiest to complete. A vendor that offers a one-click payment link or a prepopulated payment form can often gain an edge over those requiring manual processing, making convenience a competitive advantage in the payment queue.

“In other words, the invoice itself is no longer the finish line. The ease of completing the payment has become part of the product,” PYMNTS added.

 

In remarks delivered at a Consumer Bankers Association event in San Diego, Bowman highlighted these changes proposed by the Fed and the other federal banking regulators.

“Today, loans to small businesses are generally risk-weighted at 100 percent, meaning that small business loans have the same capital requirements as many higher-risk bank assets,” Bowman said. “Our Basel III and standardized approach capital proposals are designed to encourage banks of all sizes to support these lending relationships.”

The standardized approach proposal would reduce the risk weight for corporates from 100% to 95%, Bowman said.

The Basel III proposal would reduce the risk weight for small business loans exceeding $1 million, for small businesses considered by the lending bank to be investment grade, from 100% to 65%; reduce the risk weight for small business loans less than $1 million from 100% to 75%; and for small business credit cards, provide regulatory capital treatment that is more aligned with the actual risk than the current rules, Bowman said.

These proposals would free up capital that banks could use to extend additional credit to small businesses and make larger loans more accessible and affordable, Bowman said.

Bowman invited stakeholders to comment on these proposals during the public comment period.

“Supporting credit for small businesses is critical to our economy,” Bowman said. “As we evaluate the Basel proposals, we must ask whether these regulations support or restrict lending to the small businesses that drive U.S. growth and create jobs. Our regulatory framework must provide access to capital for these businesses to ensure our rules support the economy.”

The Fed, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said March 19 that they are seeking comment on three proposals that would streamline capital requirements for banks of all sizes, better align regulatory capital with risk, and maintain the safety and soundness of the banking system.

The regulators said that these proposals would “modestly” reduce the capital requirements for both large banks and smaller banks but would keep the capital levels in the banking system “substantially higher” than they were before the global financial crisis.