New Bento MasterCard Safeguards SME Procurement

Small businesses are especially in need of resources to help manage procurement spending and mitigate the risk of fraud. But the smallest startups do not often qualify for a corporate credit card, forcing business owners to resort to giving their personal cards to employees to make business purchases.

Financial solution provider Bento for Business, however, has just come up with a new way for small businesses to gain the same benefits of a corporate card seen with their larger peers. The firm announced Wednesday (March 25) that it has launched a new corporate card with MasterCard.

The Bento MasterCard is the firm’s first prepaid card product for small businesses as a way to protect business owners from either wasting time by procuring products themselves or risking a loss of spend control by having employees do the purchasing for them.

“Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, yet they continue to be very underserved financially,” said Bento CEO and co-founder Farhan Ahmad in a statement. “We set out to create a commercial card that would eliminate the administrative and financial headaches small business owners face when trying to manage their spending, without putting their credit on the line.”

The card will be particularly effective at combatting fraud, Bento said, and will help eliminate so-called expense “leaks,” a type of fraud that Bento said could cost businesses up to 5 percent of their revenue every year. Real-time spend controls and custom purchasing guidelines mean businesses can easily obtain a corporate procurement card without depending on the business owner’s personal credit score.

Any unauthorized purchases from the employee are automatically rejected, Bento said, and all spending data is aggregated online and can be exported to QuickBooks or other accounting programs already integrated within small businesses.

The solution, Ahmad added, is a way for small businesses to gain access to the same type of financial services that can be easily obtained by big corporations. “Larger commercial banks are not equipped to serve this market well,” he said, “so Bento is ready to help small businesses get the attention and financial services solutions they need to make their operations run smoothly.”