7 benefits of virtual cards for businesses

Virtual payment cards is an effective replacement for orthodox and inconvenient paper and labor-intensive tasks.

With virtual cards, the members of the accounts payable team have to direct their energies towards financial planning and other responsibilities.

This saves time and decreases the vulnerability towards human error, and streamlines the whole accounts payable process. Virtual payment cards help the AP department in overcoming the challenges of the payment process.

You no longer need to worry about mystery payments or chase down the accounts department to get receipts of the payments processed. Because every expense to be made and made is categorized, labeled, and neatly organized. With the clear visibility that virtual cards for businesses offer, there is increased transparency and accountability.

As there are several virtual cards for each payment category, you have visual data of how your money is spent. Since everything is neatly recorded, your accounting will have no trouble tallying and reconciling this to the overall financial statement.

Perhaps this is the feature that shows how virtual payment cards are better than physical cards. Since they don’t exist like physical cards, it’s nearly impossible to steal them or use their information without consent and you can issue one-time cards too. So there is no way they can use the same card in the future for any fraudulent activities.

Here you can freeze, cancel or delete a card instantly when you realize a security breach or compromise. Like any other digital payment solution, virtual cards can get subjected to illicit actions. But overall, they are safer than different payment modes given the above scenarios, because every created card functions independently.

Only the finance team knows the pain associated with running behind teams in an attempt to find receipts and payment intentions. It can be challenging for them to find and track why the accounting team has made a specific payment and where the receipt or invoice is. The good news for them is that virtual cards come with clear labels. And there is also an expense code for them to track.

With labels and codes, It’s easier to see who the payment is made for and who initiated it. You can also submit receipts while paying a bill through a virtual corporate card. Through software integrations, every payment made using virtual corporate cards can be synced with the general ledger. Both automated and manual syncing are available for the admin to choose and enable. Virtual cards indeed make their lives easier.

Over the years, one thing that every organization has strived to follow is cost-cutting and expense management. They know that making budget charts or cutting down subscriptions will never work in the long run. With a bank-issued physical card, you will never know how much is spent or how often it has been swiped. And the same goes with any other traditional mode of payment.

But with virtual corporate cards, you can set up cards for each expense and designate budgets. It doesn’t allow you to spend beyond the assigned budget and notifies you about how much is remaining. If more money is needed, that goes for primary and secondary levels of approvals. Now you can see how much control you have over what is spent and prevent unnecessary expenses swiftly.

A business handles a variety of accounts payable. Some payments, where they just have to pay once, and others have to be frequent. In the case of physical cards, issuing a single usage is not possible. And blocking a card after use can take weeks after raising a request.

But virtual cards for business give you the privilege of marking a card for single use or multiple uses. This feature will lend you a hand in fostering employee benefits to your employees. Make the virtual credit card or debit card work for you the way you want to clear off your transactions.

You can create virtual payment cards in your card management platform based on the number of vendors you have. This way, you see the total number of vendors your company has across all departments and how much money is spent on them. This visibility over accounts payable is also advantageous when you are working on expense analytics and insights.

Virtual cards for business are more favorable than physical cards, weighing all the above factors. Timely payments are another guaranteed feature, and your vendors will love you for this. In short, virtual cards are cut out for vendor payments, notwithstanding the number of vendors your company has.