Summary: Modern expense management platforms are powered by integrated financial infrastructure: card issuing, BIN sponsorship, program management, and issuer-processor technology that enables real-time spending controls, automated accounting, and flexible credit products. Businesses without this infrastructure often miss cash flow benefits, rewards capture, and credit-building opportunities that often come with embedded expense management tools.
Not every business runs on credit. For a lot of smaller, earlier-stage companies, that is a deliberate choice. Credit feels like a complication. Another account to manage, another payment to track, another relationship to maintain. Running on debit and paying as you go feels clean, controlled, and low-risk.
Marqeta's 2026 State of Credit research, which surveyed 5,000 consumers and SMBs across the US and UK, found that the businesses least likely to be using advanced credit products tend to be smaller and earlier-stage. Among US SMBs who do not use expense management tools, 56% have fewer than 50 employees and 34% have annual revenue under $1 million. 32% describe their current financial situation as strong, a higher share than their more financially complex counterparts.
On the surface, it looks like the simplicity is working.
What simplicity is costing
The research surfaces something less visible: the businesses that stay out of credit are not just avoiding complexity. They are also leaving value on the table, often without realizing it.
52% of non-expense management SMBs pay their credit card balance in full each month. That looks like responsible financial behavior. But it also means they are not using credit as a tool; they are using it as a slightly more convenient form of debit. The rewards, the cash flow flexibility, the ability to time large purchases around cash cycles. None of that is being captured.
The gap shows up in product ownership too:
- Business debit card ownership: 54% among non-expense management SMBs vs. 77% among expense management users
- Business credit card usage (last 30 days): 78% vs. 88% among more financially active counterparts
- Personal BNPL for business: 19% vs. 30% among expense management users
This is not a judgment on the businesses. It is a description of where they are in their credit journey. The foundational products are either absent or underused, which means the benefits those products generate (credit history, rewards, working capital flexibility) are also absent or underused.
The gap is awareness
The research makes it clear: non-expense management SMBs are not opposed to more advanced credit products. They are in fact neutral.
What is a flexible credential? A flexible credential is a single payment card that can switch between funding sources, such as debit, credit, or rewards, at the point of transaction and powered by modern issuer-processor infrastructure.
Take flexible credentials as an example. 56% of this group are interested, but the gap versus more active credit users is not driven by opposition. It is absorbed almost entirely by a 23 point rise in the "neutral" category. They have not said no. They have not said yes either. They have not been given a concrete enough reason to decide.
The same pattern holds across the board:
- 65% want a single platform combining cards, expense management, and accounting integration
- 66% say they would be more likely to use a card from a vendor or platform they already use if it offered personalized rewards
- 70% say flexible repayment terms matter to them—a majority even among businesses that are not yet using credit as a strategic tool
These are not the preferences of a resistant audience. They are the preferences of one that has not yet been given a product they deem worth committing to.
The case that hasn't yet been made
Only 28% of non-expense management SMBs have ever moved from one credit product to a more advanced one. 32% say they have never thought about a graduation path at all.
That isn't resistance, but rather a conversation that hasn't happened yet.
The businesses in this segment that are using personal cards for business. 13% of them are doing so for no particular reason, the highest passive usage of any group are not getting better rewards, better cash flow management, or a better experience. They are defaulting to what is familiar because nothing has made the alternative obvious.
A credit product built for earlier-stage SMBs does not have to mean more complexity. It means more flexibility with the same clarity: the ability to time spending, build a credit history, and recapture value from the spend you are going to make anyway.
The cost of skipping it tends to creep in slowly, in the form of financial options you didn't have when you needed them.
Get in touch if you'd like to learn more about how Marqeta supports innovation in modern spend management.
