{"id":92877,"title":"Mercoa CardPay: AI Agents for B2B Virtual Cards","tagline":"Mercoa converts check \u0026 ACH payments to virtual card payments.","body":"# TL;DR\n\nMercoa converts check \u0026 ACH payments into virtual card payments. Our CardPay agent knows which vendors accept cards, what fees they charge, and pays them through portals, links, phone, or email.\n\nhttps://youtu.be/Qg5im2qhwlQ\n\n# The Problem\n\nIf you process millions of dollars in B2B payouts to vendors, you know virtual cards make money.  Our data across 11 BillPay platforms shows that **15-30% of all ACH transactions processed could be paid by card**. \\\n\\\nWhen a vendor accepts your virtual card, you make a percent back through interchange. Unfortunately, a majority of AP platforms, procurement software, supply chain systems, and enterprises with card issuing programs pay vendors through ACH \u0026 check. This volume is missed interchange revenue.\\\n\\\nToday, platforms try capture this revenue by:\n\n**1) Asking users to deliver the card themselves**\n\nCustomers use your BillPay for control over approvals and payment timing. Forcing them to generate virtual cards and key them into vendor portals undermines that control.\n\nFor example, Brex BillPay asks users to assign a member of their team to pay a vendor bill using a virtual card.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92877\u0026key=user_uploads/6155/14c18a23-33ea-4d8a-9ce6-8c031e890909)\n\nWhen you ask your customers to deliver the card themselves, you’re also asking them to figure out if a vendor will accept cards. This is a side quest your users do not want to complete. Your customers end up choosing the path of least resistance (ACH \u0026 Check) instead of paying by card.\n\n**2) Hiring a vendor enablement team.**\n\nThe other solution is to hire a vendor enablement team. These teams identify vendors who accept cards, check their fees, and process payments by:\n\n* Logging into portals \u0026 manually entering card details\n* Calling vendors \u0026 reading card details over the phone\n* Emailing card details directly to the vendor\n\nThis approach is slow, expensive, and impossible to scale without adding more people. \n\nSome platforms hire these teams internally. We spoke with one AP platform that staffs 40 vendor ops employees solely to call vendors or type card numbers into portals by hand. \\\n\\\nOthers outsource the work to issuer services like FIS, or Corpay. These providers deliver a poor experience, send cards by email without context, and pressure vendors to join a network.\n\n# The Mercoa CardPay Agent\n\nMercoa automates the entire vendor payment workflow; from identifying which vendor will take a card to delivering that card through the right channel.\\\n\\\nWe do this by: \n\n1. **Plugging directly into your AP or Bill Pay product**. When your customer schedules an invoice, we analyze it in real time and flags if it is cardable and whether fees apply.\n2. **Automating card delivery.** On the scheduled date, our agent takes a card (**issued by you**)  logs into the vendor portal, uses the invoice link, or follows the vendor’s required process to submit a virtual card payment. No human involvement is required.\n3. **Providing full confirmation:** We return a payment confirmation along with a receipt back to your system so the bill is marked as paid, keeping your workflow intact.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=92877\u0026key=user_uploads/6155/2c2bc28d-86d1-4d3a-86d6-0d5f8c24d7f5)\n\nDrop in our agent with **2 API calls** and start capturing the margin you are missing today. \n\nOur Agent requires zero changes to your customer experience and works with your card issuing program. \n\nA company using Mercoa can make up to **$26k for every $1 Million processed** through cards. \n\n# How did we get here?\n\nWe were building an embedded Bill Pay platform for SaaS companies to offer AP/BillPay to their customers. We launched Bill Pay for 11 platforms in under a year. \n\nWhile processing their invoices, we kept seeing the same thing:\n\n**15–30% of payments could be paid by card with no fee, but weren’t.**\n\nThe roadblocks were always the same:\n\n1. No one knew which vendors would take a card\n2. What the fee would be,\n3. How to deliver it without breaking the workflow.\n\nThen bigger AP platforms started calling us. They didn’t want our whole Bill Pay product. They just wanted the part that solved vendor acceptance and delivery.\n\nThat’s when we realized the bigger play wasn’t building another AP platform. It was giving every platform and enterprise the ability to turn vendor payments into profits. We’re starting with virtual card payments and see a large opportunity to handle the full vendor enablement journey.\n\n## Our Ask:\n\nAre you a platform or enterprise that wants to make more vendor payments through cards? Do you have a vendor ops team that’s drowning in manual work?\n\nWe’d love to show you how you can capture more card margin without more ops. \\\n\\\nEmail [sai@mercoa.com](mailto:sai@mercoa.com) or book a [demo](https://calendly.com/sai-mercoa/30-minute-chat) today!","slug":"OA1-mercoa-cardpay-ai-agents-for-b2b-virtual-cards","created_at":"2025-08-11T15:12:35.662Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T02:03:17.233Z","total_vote_count":8,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/OA1-mercoa-cardpay-ai-agents-for-b2b-virtual-cards","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=92877\u0026key=user_uploads/6155/2c2bc28d-86d1-4d3a-86d6-0d5f8c24d7f5","company":{"id":27740,"name":"Mercoa","slug":"mercoa","url":"http://mercoa.com","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/b67b90e4f6e84745cd503648bae4a2ed818421e4.png","batch":"Winter 2023","industry":"Fintech","tags":["Fintech","API"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/27740"}}