Small Business Payment Method 2026: 26% Still Pay by Check [Data]

More than a fifth of US and Canadian business-to-business payments still travel by paper check. 26% of B2B payments were made by check in 2025, according to the Association for Financial Professionals’ Digital Payments Survey, down from 81% in 2004 but barely moved from 33% just three years earlier. The rest of the mix is a patchwork of ACH transfers, cards, and a fast-growing slice of peer-to-peer apps, and which one a small business actually gets paid through has real consequences for how long it waits for its money, in the same way that switching an invoice from paper to a digital format changes how fast it gets paid in the first place.

Figure 1: Check’s share of US and Canadian B2B payments has fallen by two-thirds since 2004, but the drop has slowed sharply since 2022. Source: Association for Financial Professionals, 2025 Digital Payments Survey.

What payment methods do small businesses actually accept?

Small businesses accept a wider mix of payment methods than most invoicing conversations assume, and the mix splits sharply between in-person and invoiced transactions. For payments taken face to face, cash has not gone away: 48% of small business owners name cash their primary in-person payment method, with 42% naming tap-to-pay cards or phones as their main method, per U.S. Bank’s 2025 Small Business Survey of business owners nationwide. That survey also found a fast shift happening underneath the surface: the share of owners who call digital banking and payment tools very important or essential jumped 15 percentage points in a single year, from 72% in 2024 to 87% in 2025, even while cash held its ground at the register.

For payments collected through an invoice rather than at a register, the picture flips further toward electronic transfer. The Federal Reserve’s 2024 Report on Payments, drawn from its Small Business Credit Survey of 4,920 employer firms surveyed between September and November 2023, found that 38% of small firms collect payment at the time of service or purchase, the single most common arrangement, with credit card processing fees ranking as the top payments-related challenge those firms report. Firms that get paid through a third-party platform rather than directly were the most likely to flag a second problem: slow, time-consuming payment processes and delays before the money is actually available to spend, a friction point that direct ACH or card-linked invoicing is built to remove.

Figure 2: Cash and tap-to-pay are close to even as small business owners’ preferred in-person payment method. Source: U.S. Bank, 2025 Small Business Survey.

How much of B2B payment volume now moves through ACH?

ACH has become the default rail for moving money between businesses, and business-to-business volume on the network is still growing at a double-digit clip. The ACH Network carried 35.2 billion payments worth $93 trillion across all payment types in 2025, according to Nacha, and business-to-business payments specifically grew 9.9% year over year, from 7.4 billion payments in 2024 to 8.1 billion in 2025. That growth kept setting new marks throughout the year: the network logged an average daily volume record of 151 million payments a day in November 2025, then beat its own monthly record the following month with 3.22 billion ACH payments processed in December 2025 alone.

Same Day ACH, the network’s near-instant option, is growing even faster than standard ACH and is the piece most relevant to a small business trying to close the gap between sending an invoice and having usable cash. Same Day ACH carried 1.4 billion payments worth $3.9 trillion in 2025, up 16.7% in volume and 21.4% in value from 2024, per Nacha’s year-end figures. For a small business collecting on invoices, this matters directly: a standard ACH transfer typically settles in one to three business days and a Same Day ACH transfer can post the same afternoon, both at a fraction of what a mailed check or a card swipe costs to process, which is part of why the rail keeps taking share from paper.

Figure 3: Business-to-business ACH volume grew nearly 10% in a single year. Source: Nacha, ACH Network Volume and Value Statistics, 2025.

Do small businesses actually want to stop using cash and checks?

Mostly, yes, but habit is a stronger force than preference. A PYMNTS Intelligence report produced with Mastercard, based on a survey of 412 US SMB owners, founders, and executives fielded in December 2025, found that 45% of small businesses are very or extremely interested in reducing how much they rely on cash. The generational split is sharp: 68% of Gen Z business owners want to cut their cash dependence, yet Gen Z-run firms currently make 52% of their own business payments in cash, more than any other age group. The report’s own framing is that cash and checks persist less because owners prefer them and more because they feel immediate, familiar, and easy to reconcile against a shoebox of receipts, not because digital alternatives are unwanted.

The same report points to specific features, not just abstract preference, driving small businesses toward cards over cash and checks. 46% of small businesses said they would pay for a business credit card feature that let them shift a payment window to match when cash is actually available, and 63% named a business card their best tool for disputing a bad payment and recovering the funds, a protection neither cash nor a check offers once the money has left the building. Those two findings help explain why card volume keeps climbing even in a survey whose headline finding is dissatisfaction with cash.

Figure 4: Nearly half of small businesses want out of cash, even where habit keeps them in it. Source: PYMNTS Intelligence and Mastercard, “Ready for Change,” February 2026.

What is pushing small businesses toward card and digital-wallet payments?

Card and wallet adoption is accelerating because businesses are actively moving off paper, not simply bolting a new option onto an unchanged process. In the same AFP survey behind the check-usage figures above, 72% of businesses said they are actively transitioning their B2B payments from paper to digital, citing lower cost, faster settlement, and reduced fraud exposure as the main drivers. Peer-to-peer and card-based tools are picking up meaningful volume from businesses that never used to touch them as a direct result. Small businesses sent or received $283 billion across more than 500 million transactions on Zelle in 2024, a 32% increase on both a dollar and transaction basis over the prior year, according to Early Warning Services, the network’s operator. Almost one in four Zelle users, roughly 23 million people, sent a payment to a small business in the fourth quarter of 2024 alone. The appeal is speed rather than novelty: money that would take days to clear by check or invoice-and-wait settles close to instantly, which is the same reason ACH and card-based payment links have grown inside invoicing tools rather than staying separate from them.

Figure 5: Zelle’s small business volume grew nearly a third in a single year. Source: Early Warning Services, Zelle Small Business Report, 2024.

Why are more small businesses adding credit card surcharges, and does it cost them sales?

Processing fees are pushing more owners to pass the cost of card acceptance directly to the customer, but the tactic carries real risk at checkout. 35% of small businesses now add a surcharge when a customer pays by credit card, according to J.D. Power’s 2026 survey of roughly 4,400 US small businesses, fielded between August and October 2025 and released that January. The catch is that surcharges are not free to apply either: of the businesses that use them, 32% say customers cancel a purchase because of the surcharge at least some of the time.

That trade-off, a lower processing bill against a share of walked-away sales, is part of why payment method choice is not purely a back-office decision for a small business; it shapes which customers actually complete a transaction. It also helps explain why ACH, tap-to-pay, and Zelle keep gaining ground alongside cards rather than replacing them outright: each rail carries a different cost-to-friction trade-off, and a business collecting through several of them at once, rather than forcing every customer onto one, is the one best placed to avoid losing the sale entirely.

Figure 6: A third of small businesses now pass card fees to the customer directly. Source: J.D. Power, 2026 small business survey.

Payment methods compared

Method	Typical settlement	2025 usage signal	Source
Paper check	Days to weeks (mail + deposit + clearing)	26% of B2B payments (down from 81% in 2004)	AFP Digital Payments Survey
ACH transfer	1-3 business days	8.1B B2B payments, +9.9% year over year	Nacha
Credit/debit card	Same day, fees apply	42% of owners’ primary in-person method (tap-to-pay)	U.S. Bank 2025 Small Business Survey
Zelle / P2P apps	Near-instant	$283B in small business volume, +32% year over year	Early Warning Services

The Bottom Line

Small business payments are not converging on one winning method; they are splitting further, with checks fading slowly, ACH carrying the bulk of routine B2B volume, and cards and P2P apps picking up the transactions that need to move fastest. The 26% of B2B payments still made by check in 2025 is the clearest sign that paper has not disappeared, but the direction of travel is not in doubt: it was 81% two decades ago and 33% just three years ago. For a small business, the practical takeaway is less about which single method to standardize on and more about removing friction from whichever ones customers already prefer to use, since a payment link attached directly to the invoice collects faster than a mailed request regardless of which rail the money eventually travels on. The businesses collecting fastest are usually the ones that made paying them the path of least resistance, not the ones that picked a single “correct” payment method and asked everyone to fall in line, a pattern that shows up again in how businesses collect on overdue invoices more broadly.

Frequently Asked Questions

What payment methods do small businesses use most?

Cash and card payments still dominate in-person transactions: 48% of small business owners name cash their primary in-person method, and 42% name tap-to-pay, per U.S. Bank’s 2025 Small Business Survey. For business-to-business invoices, the mix looks different: checks accounted for 26% of B2B payments in the US and Canada in 2025, per the Association for Financial Professionals, while ACH carried 8.1 billion B2B payments over the same year, according to Nacha.

Are businesses still paying by check in 2026?

Yes, but far less than a generation ago. Checks made up 81% of B2B payments in 2004 and had fallen to 26% by 2025, per the AFP’s Digital Payments Survey. The decline has been gradual rather than sudden: checks were still 33% of B2B payments as recently as 2022.

How many small businesses want to stop using cash and checks?

45% of small businesses say they are very or extremely interested in reducing how much they rely on cash, according to a PYMNTS Intelligence and Mastercard survey of 412 US SMB owners and executives. Interest is highest among younger owners: 68% of Gen Z business owners want to cut their cash dependence, even though Gen Z-run firms currently make 52% of their business payments in cash.

Do credit card surcharges scare off small business customers?

Often, yes. 35% of small businesses now add a surcharge for credit card payments, per J.D. Power’s 2026 survey of roughly 4,400 US small businesses, but of those that do, 32% say customers cancel a purchase because of the surcharge at least some of the time.

Sources and References

1. Association for Financial Professionals via J.P. Morgan - 2025 AFP Digital Payments Survey (2025)
2. Nacha - Same Day ACH and Business-to-Business Payments Propel ACH Network Volume Growth in 2025 (2026)
3. U.S. Bank - 2025 Small Business Survey Results (2025)
4. Federal Reserve - 2024 Report on Payments: Findings from the 2023 Small Business Credit Survey (2024)
5. PYMNTS Intelligence and Mastercard - Ready for Change: Why Nearly Half of SMBs Want to Ditch Cash and Checks (2026)
6. Early Warning Services - Zelle Shatters Records with $1 Trillion Sent in a Single Year (2025)
7. J.D. Power - Surcharges Come With Acute Abandonment Risk (2026)

Note: All figures verified as of September 2026.