Half of mid-sized Korean firms settle less than 10% of B2B payments with corporate cards

One in two small and mid-sized companies in South Korea settles less than 10% of their business-to-business payments using corporate cards, even as nearly all recognize the working-capital advantages such cards offer. Visa Korea says entrenched wire-transfer habits and friction with corporate IT systems are holding back adoption, and the company plans to address the problem by linking corporate card payments directly into domestic enterprise resource planning, or ERP, platforms.

According to a "2026 Working Capital Survey of Growing Mid-Sized Domestic Companies" that Visa Korea conducted with Remember, 78% of 150 finance decision-makers at South Korean small and mid-sized firms with annual sales of 50 billion won ($36.8 million) or more said cash-flow management and the ability to time payments were important.

Yet 51% of the firms surveyed said corporate cards account for less than 10% of their domestic B2B payments.

The single biggest barrier to wider use was the grip of existing payment habits. Among companies that rarely use corporate cards, 21% cited wire transfers and cash remittances as an entrenched practice too established to displace.

Another 16% said they were unaware that corporate cards could handle large-value transactions, while 13% cited transaction fees as a deterrent.

At the media study session held Wednesday, Executive Vice President Lee Sang-yun of Visa Korea said companies understand that corporate cards help manage working capital but face significant structural barriers that prevent them from actually using the cards.

The disconnect between ERP systems and payment processes also emerged as a major obstacle. Half of respondents identified manual re-entry of payment data into ERP systems as the biggest source of inefficiency, and 93% said they felt burdened by the reconciliation and administrative work that follows corporate card use. Integration with ERP and accounting systems was the top consideration when choosing a corporate card — cited by 30% for domestic transactions and 25% for overseas transactions.

Visa plans to reduce these system-level inefficiencies by embedding payment functionality directly within ERP platforms, allowing companies to complete transactions inside the same finance and procurement workflows they already use. Lee said embedded payment is the direction B2B payments are heading.

The survey confirmed strong demand for such integration. Assuming transactional and system barriers were removed, 91% said they would be willing to adopt embedded payments, and 78% said they would expand corporate card use if payment functions were built into their business systems. However, only 22% said they would adopt embedded payments proactively; most indicated they would consider it if conditions were right.

Visa also aims to reframe the role of corporate cards — shifting the perception from a tool for employee expense management to a broader instrument for corporate liquidity. The survey report redefined the corporate card as a "zero-interest short-term liquidity tool," noting that the float between when a payment is charged and when funds actually leave the account gives companies usable working capital.

When asked assuming current transactional and system constraints were lifted, 88% said they would adopt or expand corporate card use for domestic B2B payments. Of those, 33% said they would do so proactively, while 55% said they would consider it if conditions were right.