Everything you need to know about Open’s Corporate Cards

Corporate cards are now growing in popularity, thanks to the efficiency and flexibility they offer. Not to mention, using corporate cards makes life easier for everyone – be that of an employee, or an accountant or you, the business owner. By streamlining the entire business expenditure, corporate cards help in reducing costs. This is done by avoiding overspending, monitoring expense reporting, tracking employee spending and also by analyzing vendor/subscription preferences.  Definitely, using corporate cards is good for your business. There’s a catch though! Usually, card networks and legacy banks have multiple offers in-store when it comes to offering bigger corporations a corporate credit card of their choice. On the other hand, small businesses and startups often struggle to even be eligible to get one.  On top of it, when it comes to choosing a business corporate card, owners, founders or even their finance team have a lot of questions in mind. To begin with:

1. What is a Corporate Card?

A corporate card is a type of debit or credit card that helps companies track employee spending and monitor other expenses on a regular and detailed basis. In other words, by issuing a corporate card a company aims to track every rupee that it intends to spend. It can be for business travel or for paying online subscriptions or even for paying the local t-shirt company to buy branded t-shirts for your employees.  Corporate cards come with a spendable limit. If it’s a credit card, it will have a set credit limit. If it’s a debit card, its spendable limit will be tied to the amount in the account it is linked with. Corporate cards can be used wherever credit or debit cards can be used.

2. How do Corporate Cards work?

Companies make use of corporate cards to create a distinction between authorized business and employee expenses. It could range from travel to online subscription payments and more. Corporate cards are assigned to a particular employee/team. So it’s easier to track all the payouts.

3. What are the different types of Corporate Cards

Well, for starters, the most popular type of business card is a corporate credit card. Usually, these business cards are issued by a card issuance company like VISA or Mastercard in partnership with a bank or a third-party issuer. Corporate cards are the most sought after credit cards since they help in separating personal and business expenses. Small businesses or startups more often end up using a personal credit or debit card since it’s not easy to get a corporate credit card from the banks without hefty collateral. That’s why growing businesses are always looking out for a smart and secure business corporate card that can fulfil their immediate and growing needs of emergency credit.  Now the business owners or founders can acquire a corporate business card with Open, famously referred to as a VISA business card. And manage cash flow for business easily.  Then there are prepaid cards that can come in two forms. One is a virtual card that is generated digitally and the other is a physical card. The idea of using a corporate card is to take the hassle out of monitoring expenses and avoiding the long hours spent on reconciling every month.  Since it is important for businesses to monitor their spendings, Open has built a complete expense management solution which it offers to its users via its corporate cards.

4. Why do you need Open’s Corporate Cards?

The financial world has changed faster than ever before and made us aware of the primary banking limitations. Open’s corporate cards are powered by VISA and revolve around solving all the digital banking related troubles with their wholesome financial operating system.  Here are a few key factors that make Open’s corporate cards game-changers for businesses. 

• No hassle of lengthy documentation

Applying for a corporate card usually involves tedious documentation, verification processes and branch visits. With Open’s corporate cards, the process is fast and effortless as it’s completely online.

• Provides a secure banking experience 

With Open’s corporate cards for business, you have multi-level approvals & complete data encryption to ensure secure transactions. 

• Helps reconcile spends easily 

Track and reconcile all expenses both online and offline without hassles. Create and assign cards and set limits to avoid going over budget.

5. How to apply for Open’s Corporate Card?

Open has partnered with VISA to bring you the smartest business cards in town, and you can get them in a few simple steps. Just sign up on Open and complete your KYC. This includes providing your basic business details and verifying your PAN card and Aadhaar card details.  And that’s it!  You can start using your corporate card to manage your finances seamlessly.

6. What are the additional benefits of using Open’s Corporate Card?

Spending is rewarding on Open. The more payments you make with your Open corporate card, the more rewards you will get which includes highly sought-after discounts and access to various SaaS products available in the Apps section on Open. These curated apps and SaaS-based platforms help your business to grow. 

7. What is Open’s Virtual Card? Is it different from a Corporate Card?

A virtual card is essentially a digital business card that can be generated and assigned to a team member and/or pay for a specific subscription or a digital campaign. It is accepted everywhere debit and credit cards are used. The best part of Open’s virtual cards is that they function like debit cards. This means you or any of the admin can load the card with a pre-set spend limit from the Open account directly and hand it over to the employee or team for the specific spend. This helps in avoiding spending twice or going over budget. In short, virtual cards are the form of corporate cards that can be used online effortlessly as these cards are just specifically designed to make online payments. And they function exactly like a physical debit or credit card.

8. How do Open’s Prepaid Expense Cards work?

Open’s prepaid expense cards are similar to virtual cards — the only difference is that they are physical cards and are issued to employees or teams who need to make offline transactions. These include business travel & lodging, food expenses or any other admin/ HR expenses like buying office supplies offline or paying vendors offline etc.  The best part about Open’s prepaid cards is that it does not require you to save receipts of your offline purchase. Every time you swipe the card, you’ll instantly get a notification on your WhatsApp number. You can just take a picture of the receipt and upload it on WhatsApp directly.   No need to save those hundreds of receipts anymore. Every time you upload the receipt as a picture on WhatsApp, the transaction details get automatically reconciled with the help of Open’s powerful automated accounting module.

9. How to choose the right Business Corporate Card?

Open is constantly working towards providing our users — business owners and founders like you — the best services in business banking and finance. That includes simplifying your expenses and reconciliation workflow with the help of our smart and powerful corporate cards powered by VISA.  Be it for online subscription payments or offline transactions, Open has got you covered. Our corporate cards will help you make payments the easiest way and auto-match every payment against its receipt, be it online or offline. If you’ve any further questions on how our corporate cards work or how we can help your business specifically, leave your comments below and we will address them right away!  You can also sign up on Open and explore all that we have to offer to your business. Aside from simplifying your expenses, we connect your banking, payments and accounting to give you a unified and real-time view of your cash flow and the financial health of your business.  So, what’s the wait for? Sign up on Open, get your corporate card, run your banking, payments, accounting and expenses together and grow your business.   Related Articles – What is Neobank? Everything you need to know in detail! How neobanks are defining the future of banking All you need to know about Open – banking that gets your business All you need to know about BaaS How neobanks are disrupting the banking space Why you need a business account, now more than ever