Benefits of prepaid cards for businesses in India
On a regular basis, businesses have a lot to take care of when it comes to expense management. Payments are a part of everyday business operations and, therefore, must always be closely checked.
Prepaid cards for business expenses are modern payment tools that have been developed to do exactly this - streamline the spending behavior of a company. Using preloaded, prepaid cards for business expenses can go a long way in helping a business make its operations more efficient.
What is prepaid card?
A prepaid card is essentially used as a payment tool that can be preloaded with a certain amount of money. It works as a smarter alternative to cash and other cards. This is because it only allows you to spend the amount of money that is stored on the card.
If you want to spend more you’re going to have to recharge or reload it up with funds. This can be done online or at an ATM, a participating store, or another physical location. Prepaid cards for businesses are a great way to manage the money spent by employees for business purposes. They work at POS terminals, online marketplaces, and ATMs, just like a normal card would.
Benefits of using prepaid cards for businesses
Go cashless
Unsteady cash flow is one of the biggest problems businesses deal with on a regular basis. It hinders payments that are cash-dependent and causes an avalanche effect that leads to expense management becoming inefficient. The best solution to combatting this issue with cash flow is to simply go cashless. Prepaid or preloaded cards are an excellent choice for going cashless. With a prepaid card at your disposal, you can make business payments around the clock and from anywhere in the world. You can even use these cards to withdraw cash from ATMs if the emergency need for hard cash does come up.
Secured way to pay
Using prepaid cards to pay for business expenses is one of the most secure ways of managing business expenditures. Digital ways of payment are always more secure than cash. These cards are PIN protected and bank-assured, just like other debit or credit cards. Additionally, the best part about using reloadable prepaid cards in India is that you only keep the amount you need to spend on the card. This way even if the card does fall into the wrong hands the only amount liable is the amount that you have loaded on the card, not your entire bank account.
Budgeting
Strategic budgeting is another advantage of using prepaid cards for businesses. You can issue individual prepaid cards to each of your teams with preloaded, budgeted amounts to spend. Doing this can help your business ensure that spending done by departments is always kept within the budget that has been allocated to them. This way you can regulate departmental expenditure and curb overspending.
No accumulated debt
For small businesses, in particular, dealing with credit card debt can seem to be quite daunting. They might not want to risk getting a credit card because of the associated debt, even though they might actually need a card. For such businesses, prepaid reloadable cards are the answer. With these cards, there is no need to worry about any debt or interest payments. You only spent what you load into the card and that’s it.
Compliance
The feature of prepaid cards that allows you to pre-set expense limits is also one that can help you boost company-wide financial compliance. Due to the limited availability of funds on the cards, non-compliant or unauthorized expenses will never go through from these cards, thus making such expenses redundant. By limiting expenses before they occur you can increase the degree of compliance of your business. You can set spending rules and limits so that only authorized vendors and amounts are chargeable from the card.
Track card expenses in real-time
Prepaid cards for business expenses are highly advanced payment tools and thus come equipped with modern expense tracking software. This software essentially works as an expense management system that you can use to gain complete control over your prepaid cards. They enable you to track each and every penny spent using each and every prepaid card your business has issued to employees. This tracking can be done completely in real-time as your system will be updated as soon as an expense is made, almost instantaneously.
Why get Volopay’s prepaid cards for a business?
Getting a prepaid card is smart, but getting a Volopay prepaid card for your business is even smarter. Why? Because Volopay cards have all that your business needs to make expense management super efficient. With Volopay you get cards in both physical as well as virtual forms.
You can use the reloadable prepaid cards in India offered by Volopay to cover any and every expense your business makes. What makes these cards even more astonishing is that you can issue an unlimited number of virtual cards, completely free of charge. This means you can issue dedicated cards for vendors and departments, send out gift cards or even use these cards to cover T&E expenses.
Additionally, Volopay cards are always connected to a highly advanced expense management system that lets you track and monitor spending behavior in real-time. You can even use this software to set up highly customizable controls and limits on your Volopay cards!
Suggested read- Guide to corporate credit cards in India
FAQs on prepaid cards
The associated fees that come with prepaid cards can be a troublesome downside to the product. While interest is not required on a prepaid card as it would be with a credit card, there are a number of fees that are levied during its use. This includes reloading fees and cash withdrawal fees, especially for out-of-network ATM withdrawals, charges for card use overseas, etc.
The method for getting a prepaid card for business differs from provider to provider. However, generally speaking, you can get prepaid cards for business by either filling out an application form online or contacting the provider of your choice directly.
Prepaid cards can be used just like any other credit or debit card. Some of the places where such cards can be used include:
- POS terminals
- Online merchants
- ATMs
- Any payments to vendors or suppliers
The documentation criterion for getting a prepaid card differs based on the type of prepaid card you choose. In most cases, you will be required to produce the KYC documents (e.g. passport, voter's identity card, driving license, Aadhaar letter/card) of both employees who will use the card as well as the employer. Some banks may even require you to produce a passport photo and residence proof.