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TL;DR: B2B payments demand specialized infrastructure. Through context-aware clearing mechanisms and network effects, Paygrid enables improved chain abstracted payment UX, and efficient payment clearing that allow for capturing MEV value traditionally lost in fragmented systems.
Current infrastructure used for blockchain payments tends to operate in similar ways, and usually treats all payments and transactions as the same thing. However payments are more than just transactions, and they come as part of business workflows, in various shapes and forms that differentiate them in how they should be handled, executed and cleared. In this post we’ll dive into why B2B Payments are not just generic blockchain transactions.
The hidden cost of treating all payments equally
Consider a standard workflow that impacts every business owner or finance team. Imagine you're handling your company's monthly supplier payments, and you've got 20 invoices to process. Here's the painful reality of what happens with current blockchain infrastructure:
Multiple Gas Fees: Each invoice becomes its own separate transaction - that's 20 different gas fees eating into your margins. Some platforms go ahead and allow for batch payments where relevant to ease this pain.
Operational Overhead: Need to pay with a different token than what your supplier accepts? Now you're juggling bridges, swaps, and treasury management across multiple networks.
Hidden Value Loss: Every cross-chain movement or token swap creates MEV opportunities - value that gets extracted by others, causing your payments to cost more than they should and losing out on the value they generate. Value that should benefit the originators and application, not bots.
This might seem manageable when working on a small scale, but as volumes grow, these inefficiencies compound dramatically. Like most of the broken UX in blockchain ecosystem, the core issue is driven by the underlying infrastructure. We're essentially using tools designed for high-frequency trading to handle all kinds of payments including business payments which have fundamentally different needs and patterns.
Why B2B payments are different
Here's what makes B2B payments unique:
They often happen in predictable windows
They have known counterparties
They follow regular patterns
They prioritize efficiency over speed
When you're paying suppliers, you're not racing for microsecond execution like a DeFi trade. You're looking for reliable, efficient processing that optimizes costs and simplifies operations.
This is why traditional banks developed sophisticated clearing mechanisms decades ago. They faced the same problems and understood that batching compatible payments together and clearing them in windows creates massive efficiencies. But in the current landscape of blockchain infrastructure, we're still processing everything like it's a high-frequency trading operation, which is simply the outcome of the predominant use-case for crypto since its inception with AMMs like Uniswap and rise of Casino culture. However we believe its time to upgrade the infrastructure to handle the next generation of use-cases that go beyond this starting point.
How traditional schemes solved this problem
It’s perhaps useful to look at how the current financial infrastructure runs today, by looking at how SEPA, one of Europe's most sophisticated payment schemes, approaches this problem. Instead of treating all payments the same, they created specialized clearing mechanisms for different payment needs:
EURO1: For high-value, time-critical bank-to-bank transfers
STEP2-T: For predictable flows like salaries and scheduled payments
RT1: For instant retail needs like POS payments
R2P: For request-to-pay workflows between parties
Each system is optimized for its specific use case - from operating hours to processing types. STEP2-T handles bulk files because salary payments often come in batches, while RT1 runs 24/7 for real-time retail needs.
Source: EBA
This doesn't mean we need to copy SEPA's model exactly for blockchain payments. But the core insight is powerful: different payment types need different optimization strategies, this has been the core fact of how payments operate. Yet today's blockchain infrastructure treats all payments identically, while missing critical flows such as Direct Debits (where a payee can request authorization from a payer). Everything goes through the same generic execution paths regardless of their unique needs and optimization opportunities.
Reimagining payment clearing
What if we thought about B2B payments differently? Instead of treating each transaction in isolation, what if we created infrastructure that understands each payment context and its needs?
Let's look at this anonymized PSP volume that handles B2B payments. After analyzing over 30,000 payments, clear patterns emerge:
Nearly half (47%) of transactions fall in the $1,000-$10,000 range
85% of transactions occur on the same chain
Stablecoins dominate with USDC and USDT accounting for over 90% of volume
Predictable transaction patterns around business hours and end-of-month periods
Regular payment relationships between the same counterparties
From this single PSP's volume, without any clearing and using the tools available today:
Every payment would be handled individually, incurring their own costs each time. Some platforms can provide batching, but limited in scope overall.
Without any chain abstraction:
Payees need to select multiple assets and networks, knowing that this is what payers will have as an option.
Payees must handle complex treasury operations across multiple assets.
Payers are forced to match the payees choices.
Value leakage overall between both parties as they try to bridge, swap and meet each others requirements or manage the treasury leading to overall MEV value lost, and simply worse UX.
Higher execution costs for payers and payees due to all the inefficiencies carried out due to excessive operations.
The same payment workflows in traditional payment infrastructure would literally be more efficient, better UX, and easier to manage in a single domestic zone leveraging schemes like RTP / SEPA as the clearing infrastructure. This is why stablecoins are still not better at domestic payments, and their biggest use-case today is cross-border, where a cross-border clearing scheme does not exist yet. There is no other payment system in the world that is as complicated as this, and for good reason as this approach lacks operational scalability.
💡 Key Concepts
Clearing: The process of validating, organizing, and optimizing the flow of payment obligations among participants before final settlement.
Chain Abstraction: A combined effort to redefine blockchain interactions by hiding network complexities, creating a simplified experience for both users and developers.
Maximal Extractable Value (MEV): Value generated and captured from transaction ordering.
With Paygrid taking the role as a clearing layer, the experience is vastly different:
Majority of payments can be cleared more efficiently through context-aware batching while still adhering to each payment's execution preferences.
Fully chain abstracted payments UX, improving both payee and payer experience.
Significant gas cost reduction through batch processing and full gas token abstraction. Payers can pay without holding native gas tokens.
Additional value capture through Coincidence of Wants (CoW) matching where applicable, particularly for major stablecoin pairs like USDC/USDT.
Enhanced efficiency for all participants through reduced operational complexity
And this is just analyzing a single PSP's volume in isolation. The real power of clearing infrastructure comes from network effects - when multiple PSPs and applications contribute their order flows to the clearing network. Every new participant exponentially increases the opportunities for:
More efficient batching across a larger pool of transactions
Enhanced CoW matching possibilities across different applications
Greater MEV value capture potential from larger order flow
Improved liquidity efficiency through network-wide optimization
Reduced costs for all participants through shared infrastructure
This compounds the benefits for all participants even more. After all, this is what all successful clearing schemes do in a nutshell - they create value through network effects that benefit all participants more than any individual participant could achieve alone, “To go far, go together.”
What if there was a borderless, global and open clearing network for payments? How much better can things be? These are questions we aim to answer with Paygrid overtime.
Building infrastructure that understands your application domain
The next evolution in blockchain infrastructure lies in being app-specific. Paygrid's core approach is around clearing intents across various applications that are compatible with each other, leading to overall improved efficiencies for all parties than any individual transaction, or application can achieve on their own. In future posts, we will review how this approach can also be applied to other domains such as PayFi (Payment Financing), High-frequency trading (HFT), commerce, cross-border B2B, Agentic workflows, and more.
Instead of creating another generic infrastructure layer, we focus on surfacing the app-specific sequencing requirements into a modular programmable order flow, carefully taking care of context of each domain while allowing them to cross-pollinate for improved efficiency.
For B2B workflows this means:
High value optimization clearing
Batch compatible payments
Optimize execution costs across all payments, leading to a Unified Clearing Price.
Cost and execution quality optimization order flow
Programmable pre and post execution hooks for custom logic support
Native Chain Abstraction
Meet payees and payers at their liquidity preferences
Simplify treasury operations
Enable more payment options, without adding more treasury complexity
Reduce overall operational complexity for both parties
Abstract fragmented gas costs and fees
More value for participants
Pay less by protecting against negative MEV exploits
Enhance and capture positive MEV value, adding additional revenue stream for applications and/or offsetting costs for users.
Create network effects to improve all participants overall value.
Read more about these benefits and how to leverage them today.
Recap for the key benefits of Paygrid Clearing: Cost reduction, better efficiency and improved UX
We're at the beginning of a fundamental shift in how business payments work. The infrastructure of tomorrow won't look like today's fragmented landscape. It will be open, efficient, and built specifically for how businesses actually operate.
Benefits for Payment Service Providers & Applications:
Reduce infrastructure complexity and maintenance costs but leveraging existing stacks
Enable advanced payment workflows (recurring, direct debits, etc)
Improve user satisfaction and value through better UX, and less operational overhead
Scale operations without rebuilding infrastructure
Meet users at their point of liquidity
Unlock new revenue streams and/or value through MEV redistribution.
Benefits for End Users:
Lower transaction costs through efficient clearing
Simplified treasury management across chains
Better payment execution and reliability
Enhanced payment options without complexity
Protection from negative MEV exploitation
Because at its core, this isn't just about making payments cheaper or faster. It's about fundamentally transforming how value moves in open networks. As liquidity becomes more accessible and abundant, we're seeing a convergence of closed permissioned networks and open systems into what we call "CLOPEN" networks - combining the best of both worlds for businesses and institutions.
Ready to transform your payment infrastructure? Learn more about Paygrid or reach out directly (Telegram or Email) to explore how we can enhance your payment workflows and create new value for your users.
In our next post, we'll explore how these same principles apply to other workflows. Subscribe to our email updates below to learn more.
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