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Two documents describe the same adjudication. The ERA (the 835 file) is machine-readable. The EOB is the human-readable paper or PDF version. Which one you get, per payer, depends on what you enrolled for.

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Same decision, different cost

An ERA posts itself: PM systems ingest 835s and auto-post, and staff touch only exceptions. An EOB posts one keystroke at a time. CAQH’s annual index prices manual posting at dollars per transaction versus cents for electronic (CAQH Index). EOBs also carry less information: often no trace number for reassociation, payer-proprietary codes instead of standard CARCs, and no PLB detail explaining shortfalls.

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The payment method is a separate axis

ERA/EOB describes the explanation. The money arrives separately, three ways: You are not obligated to accept virtual cards. Request EFT and the payer must comply (CMS guidance). The opt-out is payer by payer, often buried in the payment vendor’s portal (Zelis, ECHO, Optum). The payer directory notes where.

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What good looks like

The recipe is Enroll in EFT and ERA; the paper tail is Lockboxes.
Lemma aside: Lemma parses paper EOBs into structured data, matches them to deposits, and can emit them as 835s to your EHR. Virtual cards arriving at a Lemma lockbox are charged automatically with the fee split out, so deposits tie to remittance amounts (docs).