AvidXchange has spent 25 years building something most AP automation platforms underestimate: a two-sided payment network. The AvidPay Network connects 8,000 mid-market buyers to more than 825,000 suppliers, normalized across 220 accounting system integrations. And in a recent interview, AvidXchange's co-founder and CEO Michael Praeger named embedded credit solutions — specifically, supplier invoice financing — as one of two emerging revenue streams he expects to become "valuable opportunities" for the company.

That's not an offhand comment. It's a signal about where mid-market AP automation is heading.

AvidXchange isn't alone in seeing this. The structural ingredients that make embedded credit viable — verified invoice data, buyer-supplier relationship history, real-time approval workflows — exist inside every serious AP automation platform. Most of them just haven't wired those ingredients to a liquidity layer yet.

What AvidXchange Actually Built — and Why It Matters

The AvidPay Network is often described as a payment rail. That's accurate but undersells what it is architecturally.

When a buyer on AvidXchange approves an invoice, that approval event is logged, timestamped, matched against a purchase order, and routed through a configurable workflow before any payment instruction is issued. The platform knows the buyer, the supplier, the invoice amount, the category, and the history of every prior transaction between those two parties. It also knows whether the supplier accepted virtual card, ACH, or check on past transactions.

That's a complete picture of a trade relationship. Traditional lenders never have access to transaction-level data. Banks underwrite businesses using tax returns and bank statements. There's no visibility into the specific counterparty being financed. AP platforms observe the relationship in real time, at the invoice level, across hundreds of transactions per year.

AvidXchange's own Invoice Accelerator product — which lets suppliers advance eligible invoices for next-day payment — is an early proof of concept that this data is sufficient to power a financing product.

The Embedded Finance Opportunity Inside Every AP Approval

Every invoice approval on an AP platform is, in practice, a verified credit event. The buyer has confirmed that goods or services were delivered. They've committed to pay a specific amount on a specific date. The supplier has a documented receivable.

What's missing is the infrastructure to act on that event. Most platforms don't have what is needed to advance the supplier's cash, extend the buyer's terms, and handle the settlement mechanics in between.

The structural tension driving this is permanent. Buyers want to extend Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) to preserve operating cash. Suppliers want to compress Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) to fund their next production cycle. That conflict doesn't resolve through faster invoice processing or better OCR. It only resolves when a third party steps in to collapse the cash flow conversion cycle, providing coordination and liquidity to the buyers and suppliers involved.

The numbers reflect how unresolved this tension remains. Average B2B payment terms have stretched to 31 days, up from 24 pre-pandemic, according to AFP data. Atradius reports that 43% of B2B invoices in the U.S. are currently past due. The average invoice takes 14.1 days to process even on automated platforms.¹ AP platforms are sitting in the middle of this every day. The ones that add a embedded finance layer convert that position from a workflow function into a financial infrastructure role. This is a defensible moat.

How AP Platforms Can Scale Their B2B Payments Offering

The most common objection to adding embedded credit on top of the AP platform's payments capabilities is the operational complexity: lending licenses, warehouse facilities, credit and capital markets teams, and collections infrastructure.

Here are the two angles that make the most sense for AP platforms at AvidXchange's scale, and what each one actually requires.

Accounts Payable. Rather than processing each invoice as a standalone payment, the platform aggregates all of a buyer's approved invoices into a single billing cycle — Net-7, Net-14, or Net-30. The buyer pays one bill on one date, covering all in-network payables. The infrastructure partner funds the float and earns a fee on the extended terms.

From the buyer's perspective, nothing changes about how they approve invoices. They just get better terms and simpler cash management. As an additional hook, buyers receive rewards on on-time payments. That's a retention driver disguised as a payment feature.

Accounts Receivable. Once a buyer approves an invoice, the approval is the underwriting signal. The supplier can elect to receive payment immediately or on any date ahead of the invoice due date at a discount. The infrastructure partner funds the advance and collects from the buyer on the original due date. The AP platform earns revenue share on the discount fee.

Early Pay is particularly high-value for the long tail of suppliers on a platform like AvidXchange who can't access traditional invoice factoring at reasonable rates. The AP platform's data makes pricing these transactions possible. Off-platform factoring companies and banks apply generic risk models because they don't observe the buyer-supplier relationship. AP platforms do.

The platform can also guarantee that suppliers will receive payment on the invoice due date regardless of buyer behavior. The infrastructure partner absorbs the risk. Suppliers stop chasing payments and stop worrying about late fees. The platform becomes sticky in a way that workflow automation never achieves: once a supplier is receiving guaranteed payment through a platform, they have a concrete financial reason to keep all their invoices flowing through it.

None of these products require the AP platform to build out a complex internal credit function. The underwriting, capital markets infrastructure, servicing, and collections sit with the infrastructure partner. The platform owns the customer relationship and the UX.

Why the Two-Sided Network Architecture Is the Right Foundation

AvidXchange built a two-sided network because AP automation has a supplier problem: the product only delivers its full value when suppliers are enrolled, receiving payments electronically, and reconciling automatically. That's why AvidXchange invested in supplier-facing tools and built a dedicated supplier services function.

That same two-sided architecture is what makes embedded credit structurally superior to point-solution lending on an AP platform.

A two-sided credit network coordinates buyer and supplier reconciliation and liquidity simultaneously. The buyer approval triggers the supplier guarantee. The origination economics ensure the AP platform can effectively monetize the supplier payouts while giving an attractive reward to buyers for on-time pay. The settlement event auto-reconciles on both the AP and AR side. The platform becomes the source of truth for the entire transaction lifecycle.

This is the architecture AvidXchange is moving toward. It's the same architecture that made Order.co's working capital play defensible: by embedding credit infrastructure directly into its AP workflows, Order.co turned a procurement and payments tool into a financial operating system for mid-market buyers.

What Integration Actually Looks Like at Mid-Market Scale

The operational model for adding embedded finance to an AP platform is more straightforward than most product teams expect.

The integration connects the AP platform's invoice approval and payments workflow to underwriting, funding, and repayment APIs. When a buyer approves an invoice, the approval event triggers an eligibility check, a credit limit verification, and a confirmation that the invoice will be settled through a billing cycle or net terms. On the supplier side, an enrolled supplier sees an Early Pay offer alongside their invoice status. If they elect early payment, the infrastructure partner funds the advance; the platform surfaces the reconciliation data.

The platform keeps full UX ownership. Buyers and suppliers experience the product as native to the AP platform. There's no third-party branding, no redirect to an external portal, no separate onboarding flow.

Implementation timeline with an API-first infrastructure partner typically runs 60 to 90 days from kick-off to a live program. That's significantly faster than building even a minimal credit function in-house — which requires state lending license applications, warehouse facility negotiations, underwriting model development, and collections infrastructure, typically an 18 to 24 month process with meaningful capital outlay before a single transaction is funded.

The partnership model also solves the capital markets problem that stops most AP platforms before they start. Platforms don't need to raise a debt facility or convince investors to fund a balance sheet expansion. The infrastructure partner brings the liquidity. The platform brings the distribution.

The Revenue Case for an AvidXchange-Scale Platform

This network play provides superior revenue generation than the typical interchange economics of virtual card programs, which the platform's existing monetization likely relies on when facilitating working capital. Credit card payment rails typically achieve 5% to 15% supplier adoption in B2B AP settings, because enterprise suppliers and manufacturers routinely decline card acceptance to avoid 2–3% processing fees. That means 85% to 95% of AP volume is outside the interchange monetization model entirely.

Embedded credit applies to ACH-settled volume — the vast majority of B2B transactions. It monetizes spend that virtual card programs structurally can't reach. And because the fee is earned on the credit extended rather than the payment rail used, it scales with invoice value rather than transaction count.

Platforms that layer working capital tools on top of existing payment volume aren't replacing their current monetization model. They're accessing a second, larger revenue stream on transaction volume that was previously generating zero financial services revenue.

What Platforms That Move First Will Win

AvidXchange's CEO called supplier financing an emerging revenue stream in 2022. The mid-market AP platforms that build this infrastructure in 2025 and 2026 will be the ones whose customers have 18 to 24 months of relationship history by the time the category consolidates.

OatFi is the infrastructure behind this model. AP and marketplace platforms integrate via API in 60 to 90 days, connect their invoice approval workflow to OatFi's underwriting and settlement layer, and go live with buyer consolidated billing or net terms and supplier Early Pay.

The ingredients for a buyer-supplier network live inside every serious AP automation platform: verified invoice data, real-time approval events, buyer-supplier relationship history, and a payments offering connecting buyers and suppliers at scale. The platforms that act on that signal now will build the moat that workflow automation alone never could.

Plug into OatFi's modern credit network for B2B payments. Talk to OatFi →

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1. AFP, "2019 Electronic Payments Survey"; Atradius, "Payment Practices Barometer United States 2024"; IOFM, "AP Automation Benchmark Report."
2. FT Partners, "B2B Payments Market Research," interview with Michael Praeger, CEO AvidXchange.
3. Bain & Company, "Riding the New Wave of Integrated Payments," 2026.