ACH, Venmo, or Paper Check? How Vendors Actually Want to Get Paid in 2026
We surveyed 417 small and mid-sized vendors about how they want to get paid, and the ranking has a real surprise in it. ACH and direct deposit lead the field at 27.1%, which isn't shocking on its own. What is: digital wallets, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, and similar apps, are close behind at 25.2%, and they've now passed paper check, at 19.2%, for the first time in this survey.
How vendors actually rank it
ACH holds the top spot, but the real story is the order beneath it. Digital wallets sit within 2 points of first place, and paper check, long the default for smaller jobs and slower-moving clients, has fallen to third. Credit card (14.1%), wire transfer (10.8%), and virtual card (2.4%) round out the list, each a smaller slice of a market that's clearly consolidating around faster, bank-to-bank and app-based rails.
The pattern hiding inside the average
The overall ranking makes ACH and digital wallets look like they're in a near-tie, but that average blends two very different groups. Preference splits sharply by company size.
Solo vendors, businesses of just one person, prefer digital wallets by a wide margin: 50.0% choose PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, or a similar app, more than double any other option. Paper check is a distant second at 26.9%, and ACH barely registers at 11.5%. For a one-person operation, a wallet app is often faster to set up than a business bank account built for ACH.
That changes almost as soon as a business adds staff. Vendors with 2 to 10 employees are the one group where paper check actually leads, at 32.5%, just ahead of digital wallets at 28.1%. Past that size, the shift to ACH becomes decisive. ACH leads every bracket from 11 employees up, climbing from 29.9% among 11-to-25-employee vendors to 39.3% among the largest, 51-to-100-employee vendors in the survey. Digital wallet preference moves the opposite direction over that same range, dropping to roughly 13% to 17% once a vendor passes 25 employees. Credit card takes its own path: it rises from 15.5% at 11 to 25 employees to a high of 26.7% at 26 to 50 employees, then eases back to 18.0% for the largest vendors, still well ahead of where it started.
The takeaway: digital wallets are a solo-operator preference, not a market-wide one. Once a vendor has staff and process to manage, ACH becomes the default, most likely because it plugs directly into the accounting software already running the back office.
Why paper check is losing ground
Nothing in this survey suggests vendors are sentimental about paper check. It's slow, it requires a trip to the bank, and it puts the payment timeline entirely in the client's hands, the same complaint vendors raise about late payment generally. Digital wallets solve a real, practical problem for the smallest vendors: they move money fast, and most solo operators already have the app installed for personal use. ACH solves a different problem for larger ones: it's the rail their accounting software is already built around, so it fits directly into existing invoicing and reconciliation workflows.
Cost is likely part of the story too. Processing fees are the second-biggest friction point vendors report overall, named by 22.1%, and credit card and virtual card payments typically carry the highest transaction costs of any option on this list. That may explain why both sit near the bottom of the overall ranking despite being widely available, and why it's mostly larger vendors, the ones with more room to absorb a percentage-based fee, who reach for a card at all.
The tradeoff: more apps, more friction
Digital wallets winning ground doesn't mean the shift is friction-free. Some vendors are already juggling more payment apps than they'd like.
"I would like to consolidate payments into just a handful of options. People want us to accept some obscure app payment I've never heard of, and there's no way to keep up with all of them."
-Property Improvement vendor, 2 to 10 employees
That's the flip side of a market with more digital options. More choice for clients can mean more apps for vendors to track, reconcile, and support. The win isn't just digital over paper. It's a small, consistent set of fast payment rails, not a different app for every client.
What this means
There isn't one preferred payment method for vendors in this market. There are at least two. Solo operators want a wallet app they already have on their phone. Everyone with staff and a payroll to run wants ACH, because it fits the accounting process they've already built. A payment tool built for this audience needs to support both well, rather than optimizing for whichever rail looks biggest in the aggregate numbers.
Vendors have already moved on from paper check. ACH and digital wallets combined account for more than half of all preference, 52.3%, and that share will likely keep growing. The opportunity isn't convincing vendors to go digital. They already have. It's giving them a way to accept fast, digital payments, matched to how their business actually operates, without collecting a new app for every client relationship.
Payment method preference is just one of six themes we found in the 2026 Vendor Payment & Portal Report. Want to learn more? Check out the full report, or read the recap of all six findings here.