Intuit’s mission is to power prosperity around the world. What does that look like in practice for the millions of small businesses you serve, and how has that mission evolved in recent years?
Intuit is focused on solving the biggest problems our customers face. For consumers, that can look like finding the right credit card or loan to match their needs, or getting their maximum tax refund early. For businesses, we are focused on how Intuit can help make paying bills, getting paid, and accessing capital as seamless and cost-effective as possible—and that requires a modern payment system that’s built for the digital age. America’s small businesses are digital first, but the regulatory framework governing payment systems is locked in an analog era.
Right now, business owners have to choose between fast payments that come with high fees, or payments by check or ACH that can take several days to settle. Research shows that more than 80 percent of all business failures are linked to cash flow problems—meaning that delay over the weekend or between receiving a check and getting it to the deposit box can cause real problems for businesses operating on thin margins.1 These problems are avoidable. Other countries are ahead of the curve with payments innovation, facilitating pay by bank and instant payments for small businesses and consumers.
Intuit QuickBooks’ Small Business Index tracks real-time data across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. What are you seeing in the latest trends, particularly around cash flow and the importance of small businesses getting paid promptly?
It’s a challenging time for small businesses. The Intuit QuickBooks 2025 Small Business Index Annual Report found that, on average, revenue for small businesses (with 1-9 employees) fell by nearly $12,000, or 1.90%, per business in 2024. Economic pressures, including inflation and persistently high interest rates, are exacerbating cash flow problems. Survey data shows us that late payments remain a persistent challenge for small businesses: small businesses are owed an average of $17.5K in unpaid invoices and more than 2 in 5 report they have unpaid invoices overdue by 30 days or more.
Intuit recently partnered with the US Chamber of Commerce on an initiative to encourage big businesses to pay their small vendors and suppliers faster: it’s called the Prompt Pay Pledge. Intuit set a goal to pay all suppliers within 5 days, and we changed our internal processes to make sure we could meet this goal.
We also offer our QuickBooks users a number of features and guides to help get paid faster, because we want to do everything we can to help solve this problem for our customers.
FTA has called for a more modern, inclusive financial infrastructure. How would payments modernization support innovation, prompt pay, and financial access for small businesses?
Fintechs have brought remarkable new innovations to consumers and the market in recent years, offering new tools and apps that have changed the way most people think about and interact with money. But we’re still evolving, still developing exciting new tech. We need to encourage this continued innovation, and ensuring competition in the marketplace is the best way.
Right now, access to federal payment networks like FedNow is limited to a small number of legacy financial institutions. Allowing more trusted payment processing companies, like Intuit and other leading non-bank payment companies to apply and begin offering services would mean both consumers and businesses have more options. When choice is plentiful, banks and fintechs have to innovate with their offerings to compete in the marketplace, to win and keep their customers.
Lower costs is an example of a tangible benefit businesses and consumers will see. When you’re a small business with tight margins, losing even a few percentage points of your revenue to fees can mean a lot. One of our customers who owns a commercial construction company was faced with a tough choice when working with an international customer: he could either wait until their national holiday period was over for them to cut and mail a check, or the company could wire money with the associated fees. We have the technology needed to avoid this situation—now we need the right policy framework to allow small businesses to experience the broader benefits the technology offers.
Serving small businesses requires a clear understanding of their unique challenges. What continues to inspire you personally to champion this community through your work at Intuit?
It’s important to remember that for small businesses, a person is the business, and a business is the person: a therapist running an independent practice, the owner of a construction company, or an interior designer —like the members of Intuit’s Small Business Council —are living their brand. And a business is not just a brand: it is the sum of the people who build it, run it, and engage with it.
Every transaction ultimately serves a human need. That’s why fintech is so exciting and important. At Intuit, we’re focused on pioneering the creation of groundbreaking new financial technologies in service of addressing people’s needs and powering their prosperity. With a people-centered approach, we can develop technology that serves everyone with real-world improvements.
Looking ahead, how is Intuit preparing to support small businesses through the next wave of digital transformation, including AI, faster payments, and regulatory changes?
Owning and operating a small business has always been hard, but entrepreneurs are facing a unique set of challenges today, and too often, technology isn’t making things as fast and easy as they should be.
We believe AI will be as transformative as electricity, and we want small business owners to have access to the same powerful tools as large enterprises, designed for them with their needs in mind. We’re focused on doing the work for you, so entrepreneurs can focus their time and energy doing what they love most and on what will have the biggest impact for their businesses. The best solutions simplify complex processes, making life easier for individuals, whether they are small business owners or end consumers.
We’re also working to make sure our customers have a voice as policymakers consider timely and important issues, like how and whether we should update our payments infrastructure and regulate AI to protect against potential harms. For National Small Business Week, Intuit’s Small Business Council will be at the United States Capitol to talk to policymakers about the urgent need and opportunity for modernizing America’s payments system.
In 2025, in the era of smart phones and digital wallets, small businesses shouldn’t be locked in to using payment methods left over from an analog era. We’re optimistic that Congress will tackle this issue during this session, and moreover, we believe that by helping policymakers understand the trade-offs and hard choices business owners have to make day in and day out, they’ll be even more motivated to take action.
- U.S. Bancorp. “2017 Annual Report: Building Your Trust Every Day.” 2017. ↩︎