In an ever-growing business world where technological advancements are interweaving through every industry, there are many different tools and software available for your company.
One of these advancements, which aims to produce a simpler and more efficient form of payment, is the introduction of virtual credit cards.
However, before incorporating these cards into your company, it is first important to understand what they are and why they might be important for your finances.
Read on to find out more.
What are virtual credit cards?
Virtual credit cards are credit cards that work in the same manner as the physical ones you’re likely used to, except they exist digitally.
Whereas traditional cards are kept in your wallet or another physical compartment, virtual cards are stored in a digital wallet. This is a virtual application you can get on your devices, such as your mobile phone.
Within this digital wallet, you’ll be able to view all your cards, including all the standard information like card numbers and expiry dates, as well as the amount available on each card – with the option to top up where needed.
However, if you really want to optimize your corporate spending, it’s best you incorporate spend management software into your company.
This expert tool will allow you to access all the standard aspects of virtual credit cards, but it will also offer a range of brilliant features to help you monitor, control, and review all card transactions.
Spend management software is the ultimate tool for handling your virtual credit cards and significantly improving how they contribute to your corporate spending.
Why are virtual cards important for your company?
Implementing virtual cards along with spend management software into your company is highly important for a number of reasons:
Ultimate control over spending
Using virtual cards can be a great way to gain full control over your corporate spend, due to the excellent features that come with your spend management software.
The platform will offer many different spending controls that you can apply to each card, to help you keep your spending tailored to your company goals, needs, and budgets.
For example, you can apply to spend limits to your virtual cards, which allow you to establish an exact limit on how much can be spent on each transaction or card entirely.
Once this limit has been set, any payments which exceed this amount will be automatically stopped from completion and you’ll be promptly notified of the transaction.
This will help you keep all your spending under control, without the challenge of any undesired transaction amounts, which can often come with traditional cards.
Beneficial spend insights
Another reason why virtual cards are essential for your business is due to the thorough insights and reports that come with your spend management software.
Due to the cards and software existing virtually, your platform can extensively analyse every transaction to find all the ways you can be more cost-efficient with your payments.
One example is found in the way your software will notify you of any cheaper alternatives to each transaction you make. This could be a payment for a software subscription, accommodation during business travel, or regular company resource shipments, for instance.
When you’re continuously being made aware of different ways to optimize spending, you can constantly evolve your company’s cost-efficiency, and spend better each time.
More efficient spending processes
Virtual cards are also beneficial in the way they drastically improve the speed of spend processes.
With more traditional forms of spend management and credit cards, there are many aspects that can slow payment efficiency and take much more time and effort to address.
However, your spend management software can offer you things like automated approvals for your virtual cards. This means any payments made with the cards that fall into certain criteria – decided by you – will be automatically approved without the need for your intervention.
This is vital for helping your company run as smoothly and efficiently as possible, without any unnecessary disruptions from slow payment processes.
Now that you have a full understanding of virtual credit cards and the expert software that can manage them, you’re in a much better position to decide whether these innovative tools are right for you.
