Corporate cards

5 Best virtual cards for small businesses

Apr 05, 2024

With virtual cards rising in popularity, it’s no surprise that many card providers are starting to issue not only personal virtual cards but also virtual cards for small business owners.


However, even though there are plenty of options for you out there, it’s important that you choose the right virtual card provider for your business. With the right one, using virtual cards will help make business expense management faster, easier, and a lot more convenient.

Benefits of using virtual cards for business needs



1. Streamlines accounts payable process


The accounts payable process notoriously takes up a lot of time and attention, especially when manual administrative work is involved. Luckily, by using virtual cards for business, it’s possible to cut down the time spent and streamline accounts payable process.


Card payments for your invoices are faster. More importantly, you could automatically get payments recorded without having to worry about data entry, too.



2. Improves accountability


Implementing your policy on business and employee expenses is easier to do with the right tools. Virtual cards for small business expenses help ensure that your employees are spending responsibly and not misusing the funds entrusted to them.


You’ll simultaneously empower your employees and also be able to have a firmer approach to your policies.


3. Enhanced security


Compared to their physical counterparts, virtual cards have the added benefit of not needing you to carry them around. This way, you don’t run into the risk of losing or misplacing them.


Not only that, but it’s also easier to limit who has access to your card information when they only exist in a digital space.


4. Better control


Instead of being at the mercy of your bank statements at the end of the month, you can make sure that you control your spending at all times by using virtual cards for business expenses.


Not only can you get full visibility of all your card expenses, but you can also set spending limits for each individual virtual card.


5. Faster payments


Using virtual cards for small business payments is easy and fast. Your finance team won’t have to go through tedious processes for cash advances or reimbursement claims.


Even bank transfers can take a few days to reflect in your vendors’ accounts. Virtual cards, however, allow you to pay from anywhere anytime within minutes.



6. Eases tracking and reconciliation burden


You no longer have to worry about business payments being difficult to track with virtual cards. For small business owners, this could be a lifesaver.


You could use the time you would otherwise spend being bogged down by manual tracking and reconciliation to attend to more meaningful tasks and increase productivity.

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5 Best virtual card providers for small businesses in India


Volopay


Volopay’s corporate virtual cards allow you to easily make and track business expenses. With Volopay, you can generate an unlimited number of single and multi-use virtual cards for small business usage according to your needs.


Track your subscriptions better by creating vendor-specific cards for each subscription and ensure that you’ll never miss a payment.


You have access to real-time spend tracking that gives you full visibility into your card expenses at all times.


With spend control features like setting individual limits for all cards, freezing and blocking cards through a dashboard, and toggling on and off merchant categories, Volopay virtual cards provide a secure way to make payments.


Also, discover the use cases of Volopay virtual cards for your business! Dive into our comprehensive article now to uncover how Volopay virtual cards help facilitate recurring payments in India.


SBI corporate virtual card


SBI offers corporate virtual cards for business without needing any physical cards attached to them. They have an added layer of security as each card has its own unique number that doesn’t expose the cardholder’s primary account number.


With end-of-month card e-statements, SBI corporate virtual cards are convenient expense management tools.


While there are no joining or annual fees, other fees such as charge card fees, cash advance fees, and late payment fees are applicable.


HSBC virtual card


Advertised as a card-free solution for payments, you can use HSBC virtual cards to do card transactions without needing a physical plastic card.


You’ll get access to HSBC’s online platform where you can generate each new unique virtual card number to use for payments.


HSBC also offers up to 52 days of interest-free credit, which can be used to make faster supplier payments and negotiate better terms.


Open Money


You can create as many virtual cards as you need to manage your subscriptions and set monthly budgets on them. Open also offers automated bookkeeping for virtual card transactions, as well as real-time updates with notification alerts.


Business owners and freelancers alike can utilize Open’s virtual cards to manage business expenses. You can also get additional rewards like discounts or cashback for spending with Open cards.


Happay


With Happay’s corporate prepaid cards, you can load them up with funds and use them to make company expenses. Each card is linked to a web dashboard, enabling you to track your transactions in real-time.


You get access to spend analytics to help you budget better. Additional features like card blocking and daily, weekly, or monthly limit setting are also available to help with controlling your spending.

Key factors to consider when choosing a virtual card provider



Security features offered


It’s important that you look for a provider that takes the security of virtual cards for business usage seriously. Make sure that they have industry-standard certifications and can be trusted to keep your data safe.


You also want to have security features like immediate card freeze and block available to you.


Fees and charges


While virtual cards will help you in managing your business expenses tremendously, they’re not without a price. Oftentimes you’ll get better features by paying higher annual card fees.


Do your research on the pricing of different providers and decide which prices for what benefits are the best for your business.


Integration with accounting software


Take your virtual cards for small business expenses one step further. Aside from enjoying efficient and convenient payments, you can also improve your accounting processes by integrating your card management system with the accounting software you use.


For this reason, you want to pick a card provider that offers plenty of integration options that suit your business.


Transaction limits


Be sure that you are mindful of whether the virtual card providers that you’re looking at have their own pre-existing limits or not.


For example, you don’t want to go with a provider that only allows 100,000 INR worth of transactions per day if you have 200,000 INR payments.


Acceptance


Not all virtual cards are created the same. Most importantly, their acceptance rate can depend from provider to provider. You want to make sure that you pick a reputable virtual card provider with a high card acceptance rate.


Some good signs include working with a big card network and having locally issued cards.


Mobile access


Because virtual cards, for small business or personal usage alike, don’t have a physical form, you want to be sure that you can access your cards from anywhere through a mobile app.


It’s inconvenient to have to boot up your desktop every single time you want to make a purchase, especially if you’re on the go.




By using Volopay’s corporate cards for small business expenses, you can say goodbye to tedious manual processes. Get access to a card management system where you can easily create cards, track your transactions, and automatically log your expenses onto your accounting software.


You have easy, fast, and convenient payments, expense reporting, and accounting at your fingertips. Enjoy features like unlimited virtual card creation, vendor management, automated approval workflows, spend controls, and integration options with Volopay.

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