Why and how America's midsize cities are leading the way in business payments

Finextra

6 days ago

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'Go West (or maybe, Go South instead), young business!' is an appropriate hallmark slogan for post-pandemic small business payment and general population trends. Even if the US and its communities large and small have changed substantially - and the economic and political environment is dramatically different than in the days of this original quote from the 1800s, attributed most often to either expansionist Horace Greeley or an aging, fortune-focused Daniel Webster.
A recent report from an industry payments leader showed some surprising new trends about both population shifts and B2B payments volumes: mid-sized cities within the US are now growing fastest in both categories. This is not 'old' or outdated information that we've seen in many such surveys – it's updated even to the present 'pre/post/waiting for the next word' tariffs watch among American businesses, to less than two months ago, in May 2025.
Accounts payable spending analysed in small-to-medium B2B firms across cities from 100-500k
The data in question was shared by BILL (formerly Bill.com), which describes itself as an 'intelligent financial operations platform that powers nearly 500,000 SMBs and operates a network of more than 7 million members.' It was compiled by analysing accounts payable spending/B2B payments 'by firms with 2-200 employees from the largest 342 US cities,' which the company's chief economist, Fergus McCormick explained meant having a population of 100,000 or more, and midsize defined as from that minimum number up to half a million residents.
The report, BILL Economics Report: Charting growth of America's large and midsize cities, illuminates a couple of clear and present and pronounced moves toward 'the middle' than we've seen in the past: people are relocating to midsized cities, and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) – and their payments to providers and customers in their supply chains - are following them. What does this mean for future employment and commerce trends? That's still unclear, but the migration to the middle has clearly begun in the USA.
From Clearwater, FL to Concord, CA, population and payments are on the move nationally
BILL's main focus is on the SMB sector of the marketplace, and their report summary notes that the company processes about '1% of US GDP' through their 'integrated platform products,' including accounts payable/receivable, expense, procurement, forecasting and other B2B applications. Leveraging that broad expertise and the company's insights into updated payments activity, their new study looked at not just how much was being processed in terms of payments volumes, but also where these remittances originated.
Middle America, even if we're not speaking geographically, but more to population size and certain locales than to traditional borders, is getting more of that B2B payments volume now than the larger, traditional financial hubs in cities around the country – with one major exception. The San Jose (Silicon Valley) area continues to churn out transaction volumes above all other major cities as a centre of payment activity; it was the only large city in the top 25 highest payments growth communities listed in the report.
Robust business growth since pandemic – but results decidedly uneven across the country
Heightened payments activity since the pandemic and into mid-2025 is not just about one or two geographic regions, though the South, primarily Texas and Florida, as well as California and more broadly the West really stand out in the statistics BILL compiled. The study highlights several midsized communities where smaller businesses have decided to locate - some within large states - or to expand their operations, and these include cities in some of the faster growing regions within the US marketplace.
Telling trends:
75% more new businesses have been created over the past three years (according to the Internal Revenue Service/IRS), than in the ten years prior to the 2020-23 pandemic. Entrepreneurs have often selected midsize cities to set up those new enterprises for reasons including lower cost of living, better quality of life, more hospitable climate, and more friendly (and lower-cost) business environment.
Business payments growth in mid-sized cities like Pembroke Pines, Florida (near Miami) and Rancho Cucamonga, California (45 minutes from Los Angeles) has exceeded similar expansion in larger cities almost three-fold (32% vs. 11%) since tariffs were introduced by the Trump administration in February 2025.
A deeper look into that South and West domination shows California, Florida, and Texas with 14 communities on BILL's list of 25 fastest growing payments cities, though alongside Mesquite, Texas and El Monte, California, Quincy, Massachusetts also came in at the top of the growth category for month-to-month comparisons in May 2025 vs. the prior month and year. In general, the Northeast and Midwest regions – whether large or midsize cities are measured - have fallen in population and payments rankings since the pandemic, and that trend has continued into this year with no signs of abating any time soon.
While midsize cities in the South and West have led the way in B2B payments growth, more of that has occurred in the South's Atlantic and the West's South-Central sub-regions, as measured by US census, postal data, and other demographic sources. In fact, more than 2 million people moved to the South from other regions since the pandemic, almost 1 million relocated to California, and the Midwest lost more than 100k in population during that time.
As immigration has become the centre of discussion under new administration policies, similar trends have emerged among people moving to the US (with many immigrant entrepreneurs then setting up businesses in their new locations). BILL notes in its report that 'Of the 2.1 million people who moved to the US from other countries in 2022, 904,000 settled in the South, while 534,000 moved to the West.'
League City, Texas may be just close enough - yet sufficiently far away - from Houston (about 45 minutes' drive) to make it a hot target for retirees, but Brownsville is one of the four cities in Texas among the 25 in the US that have grown the fastest since May, 2024. The latter saw 29% growth in B2B payments volumes since January 2025, right before the Trump tariffs were announced.
El Monte is booming in both population and payments volumes, making all the top 25 in-migration lists: population growth since the onset of COVID-19 (March 2020), since last May, and since just before the tariff announcements changed the global economic landscape. It's also one of the fastest-growing cities for business-to-business payments. It's proximate, but depending on traffic, just enough miles away from bustling Los Angeles to make it a better place to live and do business for many, according to recent population and SMB payments trends.
Some sectors are hotter than others, including a few surprises: Agriculture or fishing, anyone?
What are the 'hottest' specific business sectors right now? Among the top midsize cities for payments volume increases during the first part of 2025, it looks like companies in the Information and Construction fields rule the roost. For the most recent month studied in the BILL report (May 2025) vs. the same period a year ago, total B2B payment volumes (TPV) have increased almost 85% in the Administrative and Support + Waste Management and Remediation Services sector, and more than 73% in Manufacturing, in the ten fastest growing midsize cities.
Over the longer term, i.e., since March 2020's pandemic onset, the ten top growth cities for TPV (3-month moving average) in May 2025 saw Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services jump 600%, with Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, & Hunting next with a 536% increase in volume over that time. Manufacturing and Wholesale trade sectors also came in at more than 300% above pandemic-era volumes in May of this year.
Implications of the midsize population and payments migrations
The BILL Economics Report highlighted the fascinating facts and related stories that mark a new American revolution. US residents, especially owners of small and medium-sized businesses, have increasingly uprooted themselves from their previous higher-cost, weather-challenged home cities, especially in the Northeast and Midwest, to head to midsize communities in the West, South, or wherever in the country they can find the most hospitable, least expensive, and most business friendly communities.
Once they've set up shop in these fast-growing locales near the big cities – but not too close for comfort – they can then have access to the superior, even cosmopolitan amenities which places like Miami, Tampa, Houston, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco or San Jose have to offer. It's important to note that several of these locations are certainly not cheap in terms of housing or other costs of living, yet their other advantages in climate or perceived opportunity to thrive are clearly winning the hearts and minds, if still denting the wallets, of these opportunistic migrants.
The trend for SMB owners is clear, even in this age of mounting tariff concerns and every-day macroeconomic upheaval. Weighing many factors, they are choosing new homes in smaller, yet still sizable communities where they can confidently hire good employees and conduct and expand their profitable business operations. All while living what they perceive is – for now at least – better lives for them, their employees, and their families.