Last week we explored the Payment Economics Practitioner: the skills, the orientation, the work. This week: why talented practitioners fail, and what organizational design has to do with it.
The Question Everyone Asks
When organizations get serious about Payment Economics, the first question is always the same: Where should it live?
Treasury? They own cash and capital decisions. Procurement? They own supplier relationships. Finance? They own measurement and reporting. AP? They execute the payments.
This is the wrong question. Or rather, it obscures the one that actually matters.
The right question: What authority will the function have?
Why This Is a Coordination Problem
Payment Economics touches AP, Treasury, Procurement, and Finance. Each optimizes locally. AP optimizes for processing efficiency. Treasury optimizes for cash position. Procurement optimizes for supplier terms. Finance optimizes for reporting accuracy.
Nobody optimizes for Payment Yield across all of them.
This is textbook coordination failure. Research from McKinsey confirms what practitioners observe: in many companies, ownership of processes and information is fragmented and zealously guarded, roles are designed around parochial requirements, and the resulting internal complexity hinders cross-business collaboration.
Cross-functional problems require cross-functional governance. Payment Economics functions fail when designed as measurement initiatives. They succeed when designed with optimization authority.
The natural instinct is "measure first, earn authority later." This leads to the Observatory trap, where you can see everything and change nothing. Dashboards no one uses. Analysis that becomes action.
Three Conditions for Success
The honest answer about where Payment Economics should report: it matters less than you think, as long as three conditions are met.
Condition 1: Executive Sponsorship
Payment Economics crosses organizational boundaries. A mandate from below creates turf battles. A mandate from the CFO creates permission.
McKinsey's research on CFO-led transformations found that CFOs who report transformation success largely see convening cross-functional colleagues as a top priority. Building a strong transformation team with a range of skills is the most effective step a CFO can take at any stage.
This means the CFO has explicitly blessed the function's authority to work across silos. "This person has my support to optimize our payment economics" is the sentence that matters.
Condition 2: Defined Decision Rights
Can you change which payment method gets used? Can you contact suppliers about acceptance? Can you modify payment processes?
A function that can only measure but act will produce dashboards, not outcomes.
Gartner's research on Revenue Operations, a parallel discipline that faced similar coordination challenges, found that by 2026, 60% of B2B organizations will fail to create a functioning end-to-end revenue process and revert to functional silos because they consolidated commercial execution through organizational design alone. The implication: structural change without decision authority produces regression.
Condition 3: Outcome Accountability
Payment Yield becomes someone's number. A report they produce. A result they own.
The Pattern from Other Disciplines
Customer Success began as "someone should call unhappy customers." Early practitioners worked in awkward org chart positions. The discipline emerged in the early 2000s alongside the growth of software as a service and subscription-based business models, where ongoing customer satisfaction directly impacts recurring revenue.
The discipline institutionalized when companies tied Customer Success to retention metrics with real authority to intervene. According to Gainsight's Evolution of Customer Success Report, nearly half of companies now have either a Chief Customer Officer or SVP of Customer Success, emphasizing the critical role of CS at the executive level.
Today, Customer Success is a C-level function with dedicated teams, tools, and career paths.
Revenue Operations began as "Sales Ops and Marketing Ops should coordinate." Early practitioners sat in awkward positions, reporting to Sales but needing Marketing cooperation, or vice versa.
Gartner predicts that by 2026, 75% of the highest-growth companies will adopt a RevOps model, up from less than 30% today. Forrester research shows that organizations with mature RevOps see up to 36% more revenue growth and 28% higher profitability.
The ones who succeeded started with optimization mandates: improve lead handoff, reduce pipeline leakage, accelerate deal velocity. They built measurement to prove impact. Today, RevOps is a recognized discipline with its own technology category.
The pattern:
- Discipline emerges from observable problem
- Early practitioners work with borrowed authority
- Success comes from action + proof
- Institutional legitimacy follows demonstrated value
- Formal structure codifies what worked
Payment Economics is in stage 2. The practitioners working today are borrowing authority, convincing AP to try a different method, persuading Procurement to have supplier conversations, asking Finance for data access.
The ones who succeed will be those who deliver measurable Payment Yield improvement. The structure will follow the results.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Kristi Gorton, Director of Client Payments at Sakon, describes the shift:
"We went from struggling to get our suppliers to accept virtual cards to 52% adoption in 4 months. AP Copilot solved what we couldn't solve for years."
The key phrase is "what we couldn't solve for years." The opportunity always existed. But increasing Supplier Acceptance manually requires sustained outreach, supplier education, and relationship management that most organizations aren't resourced to prioritize. Industry-wide acceptance rates reflect this: the work is possible, but heavy enough that it rarely gets done.
Platforms that automate supplier engagement change the equation. They turn a multi-year initiative into a four-month result.
52% Supplier Acceptance in four months is the kind of outcome that earns expanded authority. It's proof that the discipline works when the conditions are right.
What This Means for Practitioners
Begin by securing coordination authority for a specific, bounded objective. "Improve Supplier Acceptance among our top 30 suppliers" is a bounded objective. "Optimize payment economics" is not.
To obtain executive sponsorship, you need a credible estimate of the value at stake. This requires enough measurement to size the opportunity. A rough estimate based on sample data is sufficient to start the conversation.
Once you have coordination authority for a bounded objective, execute against it. Build the measurement infrastructure you need to track progress. Build the cross-functional relationships you need to produce results. Document the outcomes.
Then expand. Use demonstrated results to justify broader coordination authority. Use broader authority to produce larger results. This is how organizational capability compounds.
McKinsey's research on team-focused transformations found that this approach can lead to 30 percent efficiency gains in organizations that implement these strategies effectively, especially when teams with cross-functional skills come together to achieve difficult outcomes.
Let results create structure. A practitioner who improves Payment Yield by $200,000 has earned the conversation about dedicated resources. A practitioner with a beautiful measurement framework and no impact has not.
Building Forward
Issue 10 examines the measurement infrastructure that enables the work. The starter pack for calculating your own Payment Yield, with the data you already have.