By Pat Bermingham, CEO, Adflex
- Variable Recurring Payments
The first implementations of commercial Variable Recurring Payments (cVRPs) in the UK are expected by mid-2025, starting with regulated industries such as payments to utility companies, governments or charities.
Until now, VRPs have mostly been used to move money between customers’ own accounts, but this year we will see VRPs rolled out to third parties ahead of a wider rollout to eCommerce in 2026.
Enabling automated, flexible payments between bank accounts offers significant convenience and efficiency for buyers and suppliers alike: both will be able to initiate the transaction. For this reason, we could soon see VRPs replace Direct Debit – and even card-on-file – payments in the B2B world, providing faster settlement and lowering the risk of fraud, while making repeat purchases easier than ever.
- Virtual cards
Virtual card transactions are forecast to exceed 121 billion globally by 2027, up 340% from 2022. Businesses choose them for their convenience, controls and security: they can be allocated to a specific employee or department, generated for a specific purpose, or assigned a limited budget or time period for use.
Outside of functionality, there is significant untapped value in the embedded data that virtual cards offer. Most importantly, virtual cards allow instant ownership of transaction data without needing to pass it to the settlement side. This empowers businesses to enhance cash flow monitoring, streamline spend management, and improve reconciliation processes.
Virtual cards also enable more granular insights. They can capture metadata such as merchant details and purpose of spend, and directly link it to specific projects or budgets. This precision can reduce administrative overhead and drive better financial decision-making. Organisations can also leverage the data capabilities to automate reporting, optimise supplier relationships, and identify trends that they might miss using traditional payment methods.
Virtual cards are a central tool for businesses looking to unlock new efficiencies and maintain a competitive edge in 2025, particularly as AI technologies increasingly perform the heavy lifting of data analysis.
- Slower payments
The industry has long been racing toward faster, automated payments. But it’s not always right for every business or buyer-seller relationship.
Fast payment systems are attractive because they enable quicker access to funds, but this applies to criminal entities too. An unintended consequence of faster payments can be faster fraud.
Faster payment systems offering shorter payment processing times can limit the ability to perform robust fraud checks to help guard against money laundering or terrorist financing. Vulnerable attributes like 24/7 availability and high transaction limits are being exploited by fraudsters to initiate unauthorised transactions. Such attacks are increasingly perpetrated through social engineering techniques, which pressure manipulate victims into transferring funds quickly.
Businesses should ask themselves if they need the fastest payments possible, or if they want stronger security measures. Often, it is more important to businesses that payments are verified and authenticated rather than being ‘instant’.
- Network tokenisation
Network tokenisation revenue in 2025 will reportedly be worth $4.1bn, with further growth of 117% forecast by 2029.
Why such huge growth? Because tokenised transactions offer significant added value. First, they enhance security and reduce friction, replacing sensitive payment details with ‘tokens’ that cannot easily be reverse engineered into revealing useful data. Second, they are reuseable for transactions with the same merchant. This means you don’t need to repeatedly enter payment details, even if your card expires or your complete purchases from different devices.
This convenience is critical to repeat business with preferred suppliers. This year, expect to see more businesses using network tokens, facilitated by payment solutions like Click to Pay, which make purchases easy and simple.
- Embedded finance
There are growing expectations that B2B payment experiences match the convenience and efficiency of the consumer world.
This will be partially enabled by more advanced embedded finance options in 2025, streamlining workflows and integrating financial services directly into business platforms with APIs, supported by AI technologies capable of enhancing automations and personalisation.
Integral to this will be enabling buyers to offer a payment to a supplier, who can then choose when they want to receive it. If a supplier wants payment immediately, they can pay a premium; if there is less urgency, they can get a discounted rate. More personalised, flexible rates encourage stronger buyer-supplier relationships that enable businesses to thrive.
