A recent study from Visa found that 73% of businesses realize that new forms of digital payments are fundamental to growth. And it's true, since companies that embrace payment innovation often gain substantive benefits. In this blog, I’ll discuss a handful of reasons why you, too, should jump on board with an increasingly ubiquitous innovation: virtual credit cards.

Virtual credit cards vs. physical cards 

Why should you choose a virtual card over a physical card? When it comes to facilitating payments across the business and among various employees, virtual cards are invaluable. 

First, your finance team can easily monitor and manage virtual credit cards through an app or online platform. Through an easy-to-use app, you can track who paid what, when, why, and to whom, all in real-time. 

Second, virtual cards are more versatile and reduce hassle. You can generate virtual credit cards instantaneously and deactivate them just as quickly and even tag each virtual card for specific uses in your business, like for different departments, employees, or even client accounts. This allows you to facilitate and streamline payments as they occur rather than waiting until the end of the month to get a clear view of all transactions.

Third, virtual credit cards are secure—they safeguard your company’s card number and prevent misuse. Whereas physical cards can be easily lost or compromised, virtual credit cards use a unique card number separate from your account number. This means that if your virtual card information is ever hacked or stolen, the thief would only be able to access the funds allocated to that specific virtual card instead of compromising your entire credit line. If this happens, you can easily deactivate the compromised card and create a new one in just a few minutes. 

Instant benefits of virtual credit cards

Instant virtual credit cards offer a number of benefits for businesses, including:

Instant spend management

Instant virtual credit cards make it easy for businesses to manage their company spend and eliminate manual work. With virtual credit cards, you can choose the amount of funds allocated to a virtual card and set spending limits accordingly. Additionally, you can give your employees the power to manage projects or team expenses with a fixed budget. Your staff can create virtual cards and field card requests while you maintain complete visibility over spending activity at all times.

Instant control

Virtual credit cards give business owners immediate control over employee spending with preset spending limits and a digitized ability to address unauthorized or fraudulent charges quickly. Business owners can also edit or deactivate a card at any time. 

Instant insights

With instant insight into transactions and virtual cards, businesses can avoid end-of-the-month surprises. This allows you to control your spending and makes it easier to understand where the organization spends money.

Instant efficiency

Virtual credit cards give your business the efficiency you need to make purchases quickly and securely. You can finally stop sharing a single company credit card across the entire organization and reduce cumbersome reimbursement processes. 

Where to get instant virtual credit cards

If you want to start using virtual credit cards in your business, there are several ways to go about it. 

Many large providers offer them as an addition to a physical credit card. Still, when it comes to business finance, these institutions often lack the spend management support that dedicated solutions provide.

If you need a faster and more flexible solution without leaving your existing bank or opening new lines of credit, consider using Extend, a spend management platform that allows businesses to partner with their bank of choice. 

Getting started with virtual credit cards 

When you pay with Extend, you can create, send, and manage virtual cards to manage expenses across the business. 

Want to test how easy this is? Explore the platform.