Payments Compete On Workflow
Bo Jiang, CEO of Lithic, on the power of the cards as a digital payment rail
The important shift is that payments software is moving competition away from the rail and toward the workflow wrapped around it. In practice, the buyer wants one place to approve spend, the vendor wants clean remittance data and fast payment, and the finance team wants reconciliation that closes the books without manual work. If software delivers that, whether money moves by card or ACH becomes a backend routing choice, not the product itself.
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Order is a clear example. It lets customers buy from many vendors, pays those vendors by virtual card or ACH, then rolls everything into one consolidated bill. The product customers buy is control, visibility, and easier bookkeeping, not a specific payment method.
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Cards still matter underneath because they solve real operational problems. Lithic highlights instant authorization, granular spend controls, cleaner dispute handling, and richer transaction data. Order uses vendor specific virtual cards and custom limits to reduce fraud and automate reconciliation at scale.
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This is the same direction as broader AP software. Tipalti routes invoices through approval workflows and then pays suppliers through their preferred method across many payment types. The winning product is the system that decides, tracks, and reconciles payment, not the raw rail itself.
The market is heading toward multi rail payment platforms where cards, ACH, and newer methods sit behind one software layer. That favors infrastructure providers like Lithic that start with strong card controls and add ACH and reconciliation, because the next battleground is becoming the default payments engine inside vertical software.