Business

Why virtual cards are the future of corporate finance

With new advancements being made in the world of corporate finance, one of the most important improvements to note is how corporate cards have been reinvented.

The result: virtual corporate cards.

In this article, we’ll take a look at what virtual cards are and why they’re becoming the future of corporate finance – and how they can be for your company too. What are virtual cards? Virtual cards are technologically advanced cards, that can be used to make a variety of payments within your company.

These corporate cards operate in a similar manner to the standard, physical cards you’re used to – the main difference being that they exist virtually as opposed to physically.

Virtual cards can be found within a digital wallet. These are virtual applications that can be installed on your devices – laptops, mobiles, etc. – where you can access your virtual cards.

In this wallet, you can perform a wide number of actions such as – viewing your active cards, canceling your cards, topping up your cards, reviewing transaction history, and much more.

When it comes to making payments, these cards are just as flexible as your standard cards, allowing you to make a range of online, phone, in-store, and mobile payments.

However, if you want to fully optimize your virtual cards, you can incorporate spend management software into your company. This allows you to access your cards in a digital wallet, as well as apply a range of additional features to improve your corporate spending.

Why are virtual cards the future of corporate finance?

There are many reasons why virtual cards are the future of corporate finance since they offer such a wide range of benefits. Among them are:

  • Total visibility over your corporate spend

With virtual cards accompanied by spend management software, you can gain full visibility over every aspect of your corporate spending.

Each time a payment takes place in your company, you’ll be able to receive real-time data on the transaction – including the card used, the team authorizing it, and the product being purchased.

All of this important data is automatically uploaded to your centralized platform, so you can easily and swiftly, access your corporate spend data at any time.

This visibility gives you a consistent level of accuracy when it comes to your spending, which is key for any important financial decisions in your business.

  • Spend control features for your cards

You can also implement spend control features for your virtual cards, which give you a more effective way of controlling your corporate spending.

With spend management software, you can apply features such as spending limits on your cards. This means any transactions which exceed a certain amount will be prevented automatically.

You can also customize these limits to apply to all cards or have certain limits for certain cards, or specific teams in the company.

This helps you tailor your spending to fit the specific budgets in your business, without needing to constantly approve or review your transactions.

  • Meaningful insights for optimization

Virtual cards, along with spend management software, can also offer you meaningful insights to optimize your spending.

You can receive actionable insights in real-time that help you be as cost-efficient as possible with your spending – such as having the ability to see cheaper alternatives to payments.

This means if you make a transaction on something like accommodation or transport for the business, for example, you can see any alternatives which over the same service at a cheaper cost. With insights like this, virtual cards can take the efficiency of your corporate spending to the next level, thus proving themselves to be the future of corporate finance.