How Visa’s $100M Bid for Apple’s Card Plays Into the $20 Trillion B2B Payments Market

April 2, 2025

When reports surfaced that Visa bid $100 million to replace Mastercard as Apple's new credit card partner, the immediate reaction was one of high-stakes competition. But step back, and it becomes something else: a signal of how two global brand leaders are leading with the same core strategy.

Apple, the world's most valuable brand, has long focused on ecosystem control—integrating hardware, software, and services to create seamless value for end-users. Visa, the #1 payments brand globally and #7 overall in brand value¹, is evolving in the same direction.

And while the Apple conversation centers on consumer payments, that is clearly just one motion in Visa's overarching market strategy.

The $20 Trillion B2B Moment

Visa’s 2025 Investor Day presentation in February 2025 delivered big on B2B payment scope and strategy: Visa calculations show over $20 trillion in addressable payments volume, with massive whitespace in AP, supplier payments, and cross-border treasury flows².

The sheer scale of this number masks both the risk and opportunity behind the fact that nearly half of commercial transactions are done through checks³.

Visa’s B2B Strategy: Building the Infrastructure Layer

The presentation outlined several key pillars of Visa’s commercial payments roadmap that validate Finexio's AP Payments as a Service model:

Visa Commercial Pay: Digitizing AP with virtual cards, rich remittance data, and ERP integration
Visa B2B Connect: Purpose-built to digitize high-value, non-card business payments at scale—supporting enterprises across 100+ countries and markets.
Supplier Enablement Services: Reducing friction to drive acceptance of digital payment methods
Embedded APIs & Platform Services: Powering financial workflows directly inside partner ecosystems
Value-Added Risk & Data Tools: Enhancing trust, transparency, and monetization across every payment flow²

But with this strategy comes execution complexity—especially in mid-market enterprise environments and niche verticals where integrations, supplier relationships, and back-office workflows vary widely.

A Strategic Opportunity: Embedding the Last Mile of B2B Payments

Finexio’s infrastructure was purpose-built to capitalize on this market shift.
We work with procure-to-pay platforms, ERPs, and enterprise customers to digitize and deliver all outbound AP payments—across check, ACH, and virtual card—without disrupting existing workflows.

The focus areas Visa outlines in their strategy align closely with Finexio’s execution focus:

Supplier Enablement: Finexio manages onboarding and communication across supplier types, driving high electronic adoption
Embedded Delivery: Payment capabilities are integrated directly into existing platforms—removing the need for AP teams to manage fragmented systems
Operational Efficiency & Controls: Our fully managed solution offloads the complexity of reconciliation, compliance, and fraud prevention
Virtual Card Monetization: Finexio’s platform drives usage of high-value virtual card payments with dynamic supplier matching logic

These are not conceptual priorities—they’re in market now, offered as integral elements of Finexio AP Payments as a Service. As Visa and others look to scale their B2B strategy through platform partnerships, models that de-risk adoption while accelerating payment digitization become strategic multipliers.

Final Thought

As consumer payments evolve around embedded models and ecosystem control, B2B is catching up—fast. Visa’s recent moves and leadership underscore the size of the prize. Apple may represent one of the most valuable consumer payment interfaces. But for Visa and others, the opportunity to enable seamless, embedded payments across $20 trillion in business flows is far more transformative.

With the infrastructure, integrations, and supplier network already in place, Finexio is positioned to help extend that vision—where it matters most: inside the workflows of embedded finance.