Cards Power Hidden Payments Infrastructure
Bo Jiang, CEO of Lithic, on the power of the cards as a digital payment rail
The strategic shift is that payments infrastructure is moving down the stack, while workflow software becomes the product customers actually buy. In tools like Order, the buyer is not choosing a rail, they are choosing one place to request approval, place orders, reconcile transactions, and get one bill. Cards matter because they are easy to program and reconcile inside software, but their value is increasingly hidden behind the workflow.
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Order turns fragmented purchasing into one operating flow. A store manager can buy from Amazon, Staples, or a local supplier, while finance gets pre purchase controls, vendor level cards, and one consolidated invoice. That is why rail choice fades into the background.
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Cards still have a practical edge inside software. Lithic highlights instant authorization, programmable spend limits, cleaner dispute handling, and better transaction data. Order uses hundreds of thousands of virtual cards because vendor specific cards with amount limits make embedded purchasing and fraud control much easier than raw ACH.
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This same pattern shows up at Ramp. Companies start with cards, then expand into ACH, bill pay, and other flows because finance teams want one system that closes the books faster. The winning product is not the rail itself, it is the automation layer sitting on top of every rail.
Going forward, more B2B payments products will look like operating systems for spend, not point solutions for card issuing or ACH. Infrastructure providers that can combine programmable cards with ACH, reconciliation data, and modular APIs will become the hidden engine, while software brands that own approval, purchasing, and bookkeeping will capture the customer relationship.