The Validation Sprint

Not sure a commercial card program
is worth it? Find out before
you commit.

Before you sign a contract, allocate budget, or involve a single person on your AP team — we run a controlled supplier outreach campaign on your actual spend file. Real conversations. Real commitments. Real data. In six weeks.

6 weeks end-to-end
<15 hours of your team's time
Often free via network contra-incentive funds
6 wks
From spend file
to validated business case
20–40
Strategic suppliers
contacted on your behalf
<15 hrs
Total internal time
across your team
40%
Fortune 50 enrollment
by spend, in 6 weeks

Why the Sprint Exists

Nobody has ever proved
it would work — until now.

You've heard the pitch. Maybe you've lived it — signed up for a card program, watched the enablement campaigns fall flat, and spent the next three years saying "never again" every time someone from treasury brings up rebates.

Or maybe you've never signed up at all. You've watched other companies try. You've seen the promises. You're not willing to bet your team's time and credibility on somebody else's projections.

Either way, the problem is the same: nobody has ever proved it would work — with your suppliers, on your spend — before asking you to commit.

The Validation Sprint changes that.

Before you sign a contract, before you allocate budget, before you involve a single person on your AP team — we run a controlled supplier outreach campaign on your actual spend file. Real conversations with real suppliers. Not a model. Not a projection. Actual commitments.

What You'll Know

At the end of six weeks,
you know exactly four things.

Outcome 01
Which suppliers will accept card payments — and which won't

Not a propensity score. Not an industry average. Direct, validated commitments from named suppliers on your actual AP list.

Outcome 02
Where your actual cardable spend concentrates

Hint: 80% of it sits in 20% of your suppliers, and it compounds from there. We surface the Power Curve on your file, not on a benchmark.

Outcome 03
Whether the business case justifies the investment

An executive-ready model built on real adoption commitments — not vendor projections. Treasury believes it. CFO believes it. Procurement believes it.

Outcome 04
What a phased rollout would look like — if you move forward

Sequenced supplier waves, expected timing, and a clear handoff plan to whichever issuer you ultimately select.

If the answer is yes, you launch with confidence and data. If the answer is no, you just saved your organization from another failed initiative — and you can show exactly why you passed.

Engagement Options

Three ways to engage.
One outcome: proof, not promises.

Spend Diagnostic
$15K2 weeks
AP spend analysis + opportunity sizing
We analyze your AP spend file, run the 80/20 segmentation, and identify your top supplier targets by cardable volume. You get an opportunity sizing report and a go/no-go assessment. No supplier outreach. Just the data.
Best For
Early feasibility. You want to know if there's enough opportunity to justify a deeper look.
Embedded Advisory
$10Kper month
Post-validation support through launch
Ongoing strategic advisory, supplier communication, change management, and executive reporting as you move from validation into execution.
Best For
You validated. The answer was yes. Now you need help getting it live.

Internal Time Required

Your team's total involvement:
less than 15 hours.

Across a full Validation Sprint. We handle everything supplier-facing.

2 hrs
Treasury / Procurement Sponsor
Kickoff call + final presentation. That's the whole ask.
4–6 hrs
Data / Analytics Contact
Spend file access + answering a handful of clarifying questions.
0 hrs
Supplier-Facing Staff
Zero. We handle every supplier conversation directly.
Often Costs You Nothing

This engagement is frequently funded by your existing network contracts.

Mastercard and Visa allocate contra incentive dollars under existing global contracts — earmarked for commercial card growth initiatives, frequently unspent, and expiring annually. Your Validation Sprint qualifies. At $15K–$50K, it also typically falls below competitive bid thresholds at most institutions. Most prospects can run a Sprint at zero out-of-pocket cost.

Proof Point

Citibank vs. a Fortune 50
manufacturer that had heard it all.

40%
Enrollment commitment by spend — delivered in six weeks

A Fortune 50 manufacturer was evaluating a Citibank commercial card program. They'd heard the promises before. Before any contract was signed, we ran a Validation Sprint — 20 strategic suppliers, targeted by cardable volume. Result: 40% enrollment commitment measured by spend, in six weeks. The manufacturer approved the program. Citibank won the account.

Why a Third Party

Why an independent third party
gets answers nobody else can.

When a bank calls a supplier about card acceptance, the supplier hears a sales pitch. When procurement calls about payment terms, the supplier hears a negotiation. Guards go up. Answers get filtered. Everyone protects their position. When we call, the supplier hears a conversation. We don't represent the bank. We don't represent the buyer. We don't sell card programs. We don't have a quota.

Honest adoption data

Suppliers tell us whether they'll actually accept card — and the real reasons why they won't. Not the polite deflection they give the bank. Not the stalling answer they give procurement. The truth.

Better intelligence for the buyer

We surface what suppliers actually think about the buyer's payment practices, negotiation approach, and vendor relationship. Insight the buyer would never get directly.

A business case everyone trusts

When the data comes from an independent source with no position to sell, treasury believes it. Procurement believes it. The CFO believes it. The deal moves.

Your data stays inside your firewall. We work on your systems, under your security protocols. No data extraction. No file transfers. No compliance exposure.

If you're a card issuer reading this →

For Commercial Card Issuers

Stop selling the program.
Start proving it works.

Your commercial card sales team has the same problem at every large prospect: the buyer doesn't believe supplier enablement will deliver.

They've been pitched before — by you, by your competitors, by enablement vendors promising millions in rebates. Some signed up and watched it fail. The rest watched from the sidelines and decided it wasn't worth the risk. Either way, you're selling into a belief gap that no slide deck, ROI model, or reference call is going to close.

The Validation Sprint is your closing tool.

Instead of asking the prospect to commit to a program based on projections, you offer them proof. Before any contract is signed, you run a lightweight supplier validation campaign on their actual spend. Real outreach to real suppliers. Real adoption data. A business case built on commitments, not estimates.

The prospect's internal conversation shifts from "should we take this risk?" to "we already know this works — here's the data."

How It Works for Your Sales Team

A four-step closing motion you can deploy this quarter.

Step 01
Identify the stalled deal

A prospect who's been burned before, or one who's never committed because they don't trust the enablement story. Your commercial card sales lead knows exactly who this is.

Step 02
Offer the Sprint, not the program

You're not asking them to sign up for anything. You're offering to prove it works with their own data, their own suppliers, at minimal internal effort. The ask drops from "commit to a multi-year card program" to "give us a spend file and six weeks."

Step 03
We run the validation

B2B Activate handles all supplier outreach as a neutral third party. We're not the bank. We're not a vendor. Suppliers talk to us differently — they give honest answers because we have no position to sell.

Step 04
You deliver the business case

Six weeks later, your sales team walks into the prospect's treasury office with validated supplier adoption data on their own spend. Not a projection. Not a model. Proof. The deal closes because the risk is already mitigated.

Why This Beats Your Current Approach

From 18-month follow-up cycles to weeks-to-close.

Your current motion
Pitch a program. Slide deck, ROI model, reference calls. The prospect's heard it all before.
"We'll think about it." Treasury can't justify the internal risk without proof.
18 months of follow-up. Maybe they show up in next year's budget cycle. Maybe they don't.
Belief gap stays open. No slide deck closes it. No reference call closes it. Only proof closes it.
With the Validation Sprint
Prove it works on their spend. Independent supplier outreach. Six weeks. No commitment.
Validated supplier commitments by spend. The CFO sees real numbers from named accounts.
The deal moves in weeks. Risk is already mitigated. Treasury approves on data, not faith.
Fund it with your network dollars. Position to your prospect: "This won't cost you a dollar. The network funds it under our existing contract."

Common Questions

What buyers and issuers ask first

Can Mastercard/Visa contra-incentive funds really cover the engagement?
In most cases, yes. Mastercard and Visa allocate contra-incentive dollars under existing global card contracts — earmarked for commercial card growth initiatives, frequently underspent, and expiring annually. At $15K–$50K, a Validation Sprint typically falls well below competitive bid thresholds and qualifies as an eligible spend category. We help your bank's program manager surface and apply these funds. Most banks have these dollars. Most bank salespeople don't know they exist. We make them usable.
What does our team actually have to do during the six weeks?
Less than 15 hours total across your entire organization. A 2-hour kickoff with your treasury/procurement sponsor. 4–6 hours from a data contact to provide the AP spend file and answer clarifying questions. A 2-hour final presentation. Your supplier-facing staff do zero work — we handle every supplier conversation directly. No supplier ever knows you ran a Sprint unless you choose to tell them.
How is our data secured? Does it leave our firewall?
Your data stays inside your firewall. We work on your systems, under your security protocols. No data extraction. No file transfers off your network. No compliance exposure. If your environment requires us to operate inside a specific tenant or VDI, we work within it. Outreach can also be positioned as coming from inside the buyer's firewall — using an email domain you control — if your security posture requires that framing.
What happens if the validation says "don't do it"?
That's a successful outcome. You just saved your organization from another failed initiative — and you have the documented supplier data to show exactly why you passed. No internal political risk. No "we tried and it didn't work" overhang on the team that championed it. The Sprint is designed to give you a defensible answer either way.
What's the difference between the Validation Sprint and the B2B Activate Campaign Engine?
The Validation Sprint is a fixed-fee, time-boxed engagement that answers the question "should we run this program at all?" — designed for pre-launch decision-making. The Campaign Engine is our ongoing subscription product that executes activation campaigns at scale once you've decided to move forward. Many customers run a Sprint first, then move into the Campaign Engine if the validation comes back positive. See all products →
For issuers — can we white-label the Sprint as a value-add to our prospects?
Yes — and that's the most common issuer engagement model. We work with your relationship managers and product team to position the Sprint as an offer your prospect gets through your institution, funded through network contra-incentive dollars. You retain the customer relationship. We're the neutral third party doing the supplier outreach. The prospect sees a bank that proves the program before asking them to commit — which is a closing tool no competitor can replicate.

Your spend file has a story to tell.
Let us read it before you sign anything.

Six weeks. Less than 15 hours of your team's time. Often funded by your existing network contracts. A real answer either way.

Most engagements covered by Mastercard/Visa contra-incentive funds. No commitment required to scope a Sprint.