Top Issuers Embrace FinTech Collaboration For Biz Card Innovation

Much of what commercial card innovators seek to address is a massive pain point for adoption: supplier acceptance. Such was the strategy of JPMorgan in its latest corporate card initiative.

However, in this week’s Commercial Card Innovation roundup, it wasn’t the point of friction that technology firms were addressing. Visa and American Express (Amex) turned their attention to promoting virtual card adoption as a technology that enables greater visibility and security in B2B transactions.

Collaboration is key to many of these efforts, with big banks working with Boost Payment Solutions, Coupa, Mesh and OPEN. Also demonstrating the potential for FinTech newcomers to disrupt the commercial card market is Cardlay, which recently saw new funding for its commercial card technology, designed to help banks and issuers enhance their existing corporate card offerings. Check out the latest in corporate card innovation below.

JPMorgan Taps Boost For Corporate Card Acceptance

With a focus on tackling card acceptance friction, JPMorgan recently announced that it is working with Boost Payment Solutions to ease friction for B2B suppliers accepting its commercial card products by promoting automated payment processing and remittance posting.

“Boost’s technology, paired with [its] supplier enrollment and reporting capabilities, enables our clients to overcome acceptance concerns, and grow their card platforms,” said the bank’s Head of Commercial Card John Skinner in a statement.

Visa Takes Virtual Cards Across Borders

As physical cards continue to proliferate in the B2B setting, virtual cards are slowly gaining traction for a range of B2B use cases.

Visa recently took measures to address the friction of virtual card adoption through a partnership with B2B payments company Mesh. Together, the companies are integrating Visa’s virtual prepaid commercial cards into the Mesh platform to facilitate cross-border B2B supplier payments, with a focus on enabling smaller suppliers in emerging markets with the ability to expand their global customer bases through virtual card acceptance.

“This is a transformational time in the cross-border B2B payments industry,” said Visa Head of B2B Partnerships Taira Hall in a statement. “Mesh delivers a unique solution that simplifies the cross-border payments experience for businesses needing to pay their global suppliers.”

Visa’s collaboration with Mesh coincided with another partnership with OPEN, which announced a joint small business credit card rollout in India. Dubbed the Founder’s Card, the Visa-OPEN small business card product is designed to support recurring payment needs for small businesses, with value-added features like expense management and a rewards program.

Amex Collaborates On Virtual Card Adoption

American Express, too, is promoting virtual card adoption through a collaboration with business spend management company Coupa. The two businesses announced the integration of Amex virtual commercial cards within Coupa Pay, enabling business users on the B2B payments platform to seamlessly use Amex virtual cards.

The solution will first roll out in the U.K. and Australia later this year, with plans to expand the integration to U.S. customers mid-2020.

According to their announcement, Amex’s virtual card technology promotes elevated payment security and reduced fraud risk, and enhances spend visibility that supports automatic integration of transaction data directly into the Coupa platform. Suppliers, meanwhile, benefit from faster, more transparent payments, with access to transaction data as well.

Investors Back Cardlay’s Biz Card Tech

Denmark B2B FinTech Cardlay announced nearly $10 million in new funding from SEB and Seed Capital, according to reports in EU-Startups, a show of support for commercial card innovation.

Cardlay works with banks and card issuers to augment its existing commercial card offerings with value-added functionality. The company recently announced a partnership with Scandinavia’s largest corporate card issuer, Eurocard, which will connect its own corporate customers to travel expense, purchase and receipt management capabilities provided by Cardlay.

“We’re the first FinTech to crack the code for complex legislation and complex IT systems in the banks,” said Cardlay CEO and Founder Jørgen Christian Juul in a statement. “This means we can quickly add a digital layer over all banking and credit card systems. In return, banks and card issuers can offer their corporate customers a wide range of new services directly on their existing card platform[s].”