Payment Optimization Starts With Your Payment Mix
Modernize your vendor payments and turn virtual card activation into measurable value to your bottom line.
Checks, ACH, and virtual cards each play a role, but most teams lack visibility into when, why, and at what cost they’re used. As a result, payment mix decisions aren’t optimized, and inefficiencies, risks, and manual work go unnoticed. Without that clarity, AP operates as a cost center instead of a driver of savings, control, and performance.
MineralTree’s Payment Optimization Services help you:
- See how your payment mix actually performs – by method, vendor, cost and risk.
- Pinpoint where workflows break down and remove the manual steps slowing AP down.
- Identify where your current payment mix exposes you to fraud and shift to more secure, traceable payment methods.
- Quantify where payments are costing you and opportunities to generate measurable value.
How the service works
Analyze
We review your real payment data by vendor, method, spend, workflow, and exposure to pinpoint where unnecessary time, cost and risk are created.
Recommend
We identify where changes will improve payment timing, reduce fraud exposure, and create measurable financial value often through Virtual Card adoption.
Execute
We don’t hand you a plan and walk away. Our dedicated teams manage vendor outreach and activation including Virtual Card enrollment.
Sustain
Payment Optimization continues as your payment mix, vendors, and volume evolve. This continues as vendors, spend, and priorities change.
Payment Optimization Projection (POP) Report
Turning your payment data into insights that drive a clear, prioritized action plan.
The POP Report provides a comprehensive view of:
- A side-by-side comparison of your current payment costs vs. optimized cost-to-pay
- View of fraud exposure by payment method
- Projected cash-back rebates on annual spend
With these insights, finance leaders gain a data‑backed, defensible plan to optimize their payment mix with confidence.
Optimization isn’t about shifting everything to one payment method
It’s about knowing which method delivers the most value and protection. In many cases, that means introducing secure digital payments like Virtual Card and where they can improve efficiency, reduce exposure, and create financial upside. The difference is you’re not guessing when you’re leaning on the POP Report insights.
Real people do the work
Payment Optimization Services are delivered and supported by dedicated teams, not automation alone.
Payment Optimization Managers (POMs) guide the engagement, interpret findings, and help prioritize actions. Your main point of contact.
Vendor Enablement Specialists handle end-to-end supplier outreach, education, and onboarding of Virtual Card.
Our team does the heavy lifting while you stay informed and in control.
FAQs about payment optimization
What is payment optimization?
Payment Optimization is a data‑driven advisory service designed to evaluate your current payment mix and identify where it can be improved, including:
- Payment mix across checks, ACH, and virtual card
- Supplier payment behavior and preferences
- Manual workflows, approval steps, and reconciliation effort
- Points of operational inefficiency and security risk
The goal of Payment Optimization:
Optimize how and when you pay vendors by using the right payment methods at the right time, reducing manual work, strengthening control, and improving overall performance.
This is not a one-size-fits-all recommendation or a push toward a single payment type. It’s an evidence-based understanding of your payment operation, grounded in your actual data.
What is a Payment Optimization Projection (POP) Report?
A Payment Optimization Projection (POP) Report is a supplier-level, data-backed analysis of your current payment operation and payment mix, translated into a clear, actionable plan.
It’s not just a projection. It shows you:
- How payments are actually being executed today
Across checks, ACH, and virtual card, including where manual workflows, reconciliation effort, and risk are concentrated
- How your suppliers receive and accept payments
Using real supplier behavior and acceptance data to validate where different payment methods are a practical fit
- Where value is being lost
Including manual processing costs, inefficiencies in your payment mix, and underutilized digital payment opportunities
- What changes will improve outcomes — and why
A modeled view of how shifting your payment mix and consolidating workflows can reduce effort, improve control, and unlock financial value
- A roadmap grounded in your data, not assumptions
Recommendations are based on your actual payment history and supplier landscape, not benchmarks or a predetermined payment method
The POP Report is the output of a broader Payment Optimization Analysis and reflects a full view of your payment mix, not just one payment type.
It gives finance leaders the clarity to make confident decisions about how to modernize payments, where to apply virtual card, and how to optimize the overall payment mix over time.
How do I request a POP Report?
To generate a POP Report, we will need 12 months of payment history.
From there, our team performs a full Payment Optimization Analysis and delivers a POP Report that walks through your current-state performance, supplier behavior, and targeted opportunities to improve your payment mix.
How do virtual cards fit into Payment Optimization?
Virtual cards are one of the payment methods evaluated as part of Payment Optimization analysis.
Rather than being applied broadly, they are used selectively, based on your guidance and approval as well as supplier acceptance.
When used in the right scenarios, virtual cards can:
- Replace manual payment methods like checks
- Improve payment speed and reduce reconciliation effort
- Provide stronger security through single-use payment credentials
- Generate rebate value on eligible spend
- Work seamlessly with most payment processes and workflows