Virtual Cards // 7 Great Real-time Benefits to Organisations
As the world quickly becomes digitized and everything quickly moves online, alternative payment methods continue to grow in popularity across the business-to-business (B2B) landscape, as digital channels offer important advantages over traditional, paper-based schemes.
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As the world quickly becomes digitized and everything quickly moves online, alternative payment methods continue to grow in popularity across the business-to-business (B2B) landscape, as digital channels offer important advantages over traditional, paper-based schemes.
Virtual cards are one notable payment option, and their growth momentum in the business-to-business (B2B) space cannot be ignored.
In fact, the compelling efficiencies afforded by virtual cards are responsible for the exponential growth this payment method is predicted to enjoy over the next five years.
According to a study by Visa, the global value of virtual card transactions is expected to increase from $1.9 trillion in 2021 to an astronomical $6.8 trillion by 2026¹.
A recent RFI Group study titled Capitalizing on the potential in virtual cards and conducted on behalf of Visa, also found that virtual cards are becoming an important option for businesses across the globe
Companies can incorporate virtual cards into their B2B payment processes to improve cash flow, enhance security and enable accounts payable (AP) automation more seamlessly than when they rely on traditional methods such as paper checks.
Enabling virtual card acceptance through accounts receivable (AR) automation also can increase efficiency and help businesses capture large spending opportunities.
Other real-time benefits of virtual cards for businesses include:
Ease in tracking and reconciliation burden
Most virtual cards if not all, come with built-in controls and approvals based on a company policy that help make reconciliation occur instantly.
Automatic categorization and receipt matching enable an automated reconciliation scheme from online purchases to mobile checkouts at the counter. This data stream eliminates the need for timely expense reports and offers finance and accounting teams peace of mind.
Additionally, labels and codes, ensure that the admins and approvers see who the payment is made for and who initiated it.
Through software integrations, every payment made using virtual corporate cards can be synced with the general ledger.
For most platforms, both automated and manual syncing is available for the admin to choose and enable.
Simplifies Vendor Management
Virtual Cards like Boya Visa Prepaid Cards are widely accepted and don’t require time-consuming processes.
Boya virtual cards are unique in that they work with Visa, M-Pesa, and banks. i.e One card you can use for online payments, and you can use the same funds in the card to pay to M-Pesa (i.e send money, till, pay bills) and pay to a bank. This is how Boya virtual cards are unique.
This enables businesses to put controls on one card and control spending regardless of where the spending will be happing, while other virtual cards only put controls on online spending.
This means that vendors may be paid immediately with virtual cards, therefore, obscuring traditional payment methods that can lead to delays when users must submit an invoice via procurement systems or paper checks need to be mailed and received.
Platforms like Boya also allow you can create virtual payment cards 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, we can say that virtual cards are cut out for vendor payments, notwithstanding the number of vendors your company has.
Generate single or multi-use cards
Most businesses handle a variety of accounts payable.
Some payments are just made 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.
Monitor Online Advertising Spending
Virtual cards are, by nature, more flexible than physical cards.
They don’t even have to be assigned to a specific person. Instead, they can be created to serve very specific purposes, like keeping an eye on advertising expenses.
Also Read: The Ultimate Guide to Boya Prepaid Cards
Want to keep your Google AdWords or Facebook advertisements from going over budget?
Create a virtual card for each and set a strict spending limit. You can sign-up for the Boya Virtual Cards and you will be able to perform any transaction with a click.
Go ahead and put as many Facebook ad campaigns on one card as you want—the virtual card will allow you to keep an eye on the total spend in real-time.
Encourage Teamwork
Shared cards that float around the office are bad news for everyone
Not only is it difficult for you to monitor expenses this way, but it’s also darn near impossible for your team to regulate their spending independently.
Creating one virtual card that can be used by several team members allows them to keep tabs on their shared expenses and work together to budget accordingly.
This may simply mean that your operations team will work together to keep the office supply budget down when making office supply orders while the marketing team sets a decent amount for their quarterly campaign.
Better spend control
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 for 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.
Extra Secure from Online Fraud
Data security is quite a big deal. With the number of breaches going up daily, every business owner’s major concern would be how secure is the virtual card platform they are using.
This is the main reason virtual cards got their start in the first place. Some corporate cards are linked to a business owner’s personal credit. If a data breach happens or an employee loses a physical card, your personal credit might be at risk.
By their nature, virtual cards eliminate the risks associated with issuing plastic, hence reducing the potential for loss, theft, or compromised data; not to mention making compliance and auditing simpler.
Additionally, because virtual card numbers can be issued for both single use or multiple related purchases and can be limited to specific suppliers, the risk of fraud is significantly reduced too.
In the case of Boya, data protection is paramount hence your information is protected with an additional layer of security to keep your access safe with touch ID, face recognition, or password.
The card data is encrypted and tokenized with PCI Level 1 compliant partner and all data is cloud-based with strong firewalls and user management protocols
Conclusion
Virtual cards have uses that extend far beyond the added security they bring to online purchases. Their flexibility means that business owners can get creative with how they budget and how their teams manage expenses.
The growth and adoption of virtual cards are set to face an upward trajectory and your business cannot be left out.
Sign up today and get our Boya Prepaid Virtual Card that allows you to top up via M-Pesa, bank, and credit or debit cards and works almost everywhere.