The Hidden Cost of Using BILL: Are Your Funds Working for You?

On November 7th 2025, BILL reported earnings for their most recent quarter. By all measures it was a terrific quarter, and in the days since, BILL stock has been steadily trading up. But in the press release announcing their results, the following two points stuck out for me –

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• Total revenue was $358.5 million, an increase of 18% year-over-year.

• Float revenue, which consists of interest on funds held for customers, was $43.5 million.

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In other words, in the most recent quarter about 14% of their “float revenue” was from “interest on funds held for customers.” Historically, “float” has been as much as 20% of BILL’s revenue.

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Funds Held For Customers: a curious turn of phrase, that. Unlike what the phrase suggests, this is not a charitable act that BILL graciously and selflessly carries out for its customers. Instead, “interest on funds held for customers” is revenue that BILL earns by sitting on customer-made AP payments for a few extra days.

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So what? Does this really matter to you and to your business? Let’s do the math.

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Let’s say you send a payment using that oh-so-primitive form of payment – a paper check. And compare what happens if you make the payment using BILL, doing it yourself, or using a solution that does not profit from your cash.

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The average US commercial B2B payment is about $4,000. Say you make 300 payments per month – about $14.4M annually. As of December 2024, at current interest rates (3.25% on your money market account or with the Centime Checking Plus account), if that cash stayed in your bank account for 7-10 days, you would earn more than $10,000 in interest income! Instead, your hard earned cash is contributing $10,000 toward 14% percent of BILL’s “float” revenue.

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ACH payments initiated through BILL are a little better, but can still take an abominable 4-5 days to be sent to your supplier. That’s 3-4 days in float revenue for BILL earned from sitting on YOUR cash.

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“Float revenue.” That’s cash and working capital that should be on the books of hard working businesses, not on the balance sheet of fintech service providers.

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Where Float Began: A Look at Payroll Providers

Float—the act of holding client funds temporarily to earn interest—has been a mainstay of payroll service providers for decades. To understand BILL’s revenue strategy, let’s look at the history of Float. 

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Legacy payroll companies like ADP pioneered this approach by requiring employers to fund payroll several days before payday. Here’s how it works: ADP tells companies, “If you want to pay your employees on the 15th, we need those funds by the 10th.” For the next five days, ADP holds employer funds before disbursing employee paychecks, and judiciously deploys that cash to earn investment income³. 

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In 2024, ADP held a whopping $35B of its clients’ payroll funds, earning over $1B in high-margin investment income. This is a model that has worked for years that we now take for granted.

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Unfortunately, that model, while great for payroll companies, deprives their business customers of valuable cash and working capital. And, at a time when businesses need every dollar to work harder, the idea of holding client funds to pad revenue seems outdated and disingenuous. 

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We seem to take long-standing payroll provider models for granted, but we don’t have to do the same in the world of AP Automation. Unfortunately, BILL has replicated this model as a AP automation solution provider – pocketing revenue and depriving their very own small business clients of working capital while loudly professing to serve their best interests.

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A Better Way Forward: Putting Customer Cash Flow First

At Centime, we’re challenging this outdated practice. I believe that any funds moving through our platform should be working for our customers, not for us. That’s why we designed our AP solution differently:

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• High-Yield Checking Accounts for Your Funds: When you use Centime, you can park AP funds in a high-yield account. So instead of holding your cash for our benefit, we give you a chance to earn interest on it.
• Faster Payments: for no extra charge we can speed payments to your suppliers from your account to theirs. In many cases these payments reach suppliers on the same business day⁴.
• Stretch Payables and Maximize Rewards: Centime’s credit card solution allows you to extend payables by 20-50 days, maximizing rewards while honoring supplier preferences. Secure and fully integrated with our AP platform, it’s a payment method that lets you capture the benefits.

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My Take: It’s Time for Transparent, Customer-First Practices

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For too long, AP solution providers like BILL have treated float as an easy and growing source of high margin revenue. I’m calling for a change. If we’re in this business to serve customers, we should be transparent about where our revenue comes from, and all the cost burden that we’re putting on our clients—and it shouldn’t be from quietly earning interest on “funds held for customers.” Cash matters, and modern solutions are designed to optimize YOUR cash and working capital, not impact it and pad our own.

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At Centime, we’re pushing to put customers first, enabling them to earn more from even the dormant cash parked in their bank account,  rather than surreptitiously slurping that value away in float. 

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Businesses should demand more from their AP providers. Is your cash flow being optimized for your business needs, or is it just adding to someone else’s bottom line? In an industry built on trust, it’s time we start putting customer interests ahead of legacy revenue models.
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¹ Effective October 2021 USPS service standards estimate 1-5 days to deliver first-class mail

² BILL’s SLA for check delivery is ten business days, blaming the tardiness on USPS

³ How ADP Turns Payroll into Cash

⁴ Underwriting is required for Same Day ACH. Same Day ACH payments initiated later in the day will settle on the next business day.

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