When employees go on business trips, they must use their physical cards, such as debit or credit cards, to make business transactions. However, while making such transactions, especially during international travel, employees’ sensitive details, such as name, address, phone number, etc, are exposed. This can lead to fraud or data security breaches, affecting your company’s bottom line.
To avoid this issue, many companies nowadays are leveraging virtual cards. Virtual cards have emerged as a powerful tool to revolutionize corporate travel and expense management. These digital payment solutions offer numerous benefits that streamline the entire process, from the issuance of cards to expense reporting and reconciliation.
Let us try to understand what virtual cards are and ways in which they can simplify your corporate travel and expense management.
What are Virtual Cards?
Virtual cards in business travel refer to digital payment cards that are issued electronically and explicitly used for making transactions related to business travel expenses. These cards are not physical-their details, including the card number, expiration date, and security code, and are typically generated and accessed through a mobile app, online portal, or corporate travel management platform.
Virtual cards contain a temporary 16-digit number, a CVC, and an expiration date. These cards are not linked to your bank account, allowing you to set a maximum spending limit. With these features, you can reduce the risk of fraud and protect your company from potential damage. Hence, these cards are a boon for travel managers, employees, and the organization.
Benefits of Virtual Cards
After understanding what virtual cards are, let us look at the various benefits it offers:
1. Instant Issuance and Accessibility
One of the key advantages of virtual cards in corporate travel is that you can quickly get them issued and accessed. Unlike traditional cards, which take days or sometimes even weeks to register and arrive, you can generate virtual cards instantly. This speed is particularly beneficial for last-minute business trips or unexpected expenses.
This ensures that you, as a travel manager, or your employees can access the amount without delays.
As soon as you receive the virtual cards, your employees can start booking travel immediately. This instant accessibility eliminates the need to plan in advance and ensures business travelers can focus on their tasks without worrying about insufficient funds or lengthy card processing times.
2. Better Control and Compliance
One of the major challenges that most companies face is expense control, management, and compliance. Virtual cards are a great way to ensure this. You will find specific numbers on these cards, enabling you to monitor the expenses made using the card conveniently. When you generate a virtual card for a specific employee, your finance department gains complete visibility and control over the expenditure. It allows you to track where the money is being used and for what reasons.
Compliance with expenses is also another crucial factor to consider. With virtual cards, you can ensure expense compliance as the budgets are already pre-assigned. Moreover, the finance department can also check if the company’s policies are being followed with every expense incurred by the employee, thus enhancing your business travel management process.
3. Enhanced Security and Fraud Prevention
Securing employees’ and company details is of utmost importance during business travel. Fraudsters are always on the lookout to loot money from people. Even if a single piece of information is leaked, it can expose your company to great risk. However, with virtual cards, you don’t have to worry about this as it adds an extra layer of protection to all sensitive information.
Firstly, from the operational perspective, the account number linked with the card can be immediately canceled or frozen. As the card is made virtually, you do not need to order again like a physical card and wait for it to arrive. Organizations or employees can easily generate a fresh card with just a few clicks.
Secondly, these single-use virtual cards can be issued to a specific vendor for a certain dollar amount. This limits any overcharges and ensures that the hackers cannot use the card as the is no direct linking to the bank account. This prevents any kind of expense fraud or misuse by a third person.
Managing travel and expenses can be risky, especially when dealing with physical cards. On the other hand, business virtual cards present a more secure option by providing remote controls and readily available data, greatly improving the safety of the travel management procedure.
4. Real-time Expense Visibility
Another advantage of virtual cards is the visibility and reconciliation facilitated through the technology. With virtual cards, you gain visibility in real-time into your company’s spending. The finance team can monitor transactions as they occur, eliminating the wait for credit card statements at the end of the month. This real-time expense visibility empowers your finance managers to closely track the budget and identify areas for optimizing expenses.
Moreover, virtual cards enable swift adjustments to spending limits and restrictions. For instance, if an employee needs to make an emergency purchase that exceeds your standard limit. In such cases, your finance team can temporarily increase the limit for that specific transaction, ensuring smooth operations while maintaining control over expenditures.
This way, both you and the finance department have real-time visibility of the expenses incurred by the employee and adjustments made to it.
5. Rebates on Transactions
Another important benefit of using virtual cards is that it acts as a revenue generator. When you use virtual cards on a corporate scale, it can lead to cost savings through rebates. The majority of virtual card payment platforms provide attractive rebates, discounts, and points as incentives for their usage.
Just like your physical cards, specific expenses made through virtual cards will help you get cashback or refunds. Similarly, when you make early payments or on-time corporate card payments to your vendor, you will be eligible for certain rebates and discounts. Additionally, making early or on-time corporate card payments to your vendors may qualify you for various rebates and discounts. Considering the numerous transactions involved in corporate travel bookings, this offers an exceptional travel roi for a business travel expense management system utilizing virtual cards.
Switch to Virtual Cards Now!
Virtual cards have emerged as a game-changer in simplifying corporate travel and expense management. Their instant issuance, enhanced security, and seamless integration with expense management systems have revolutionized how businesses handle employee expenses.
If you want to set up a virtual card for your organization, ITILITE can help you. ITILITE is a SaaS-based travel management company that helps you get instant access to physical and virtual cards for your business travel process. Moreover, you can also link your cards with our application and experience a smooth payment process during your travel.
To know more about the benefits, book a demo now.
