OCBC Bank Taps Visa Commercial Pay To Digitize B2B Payments

OCBC Bank announced that it is harnessing the Visa Commercial Pay Mobile solution as part of its first virtual purchasing card product, according to a Monday (May 10) press release.

Virtual cards provided via the OCBC Virtual Purchasing Card initiative can be for one-time or ongoing use, with control parameters set ahead of time. Those parameters can include a spending limit among other restrictions, according to the announcement.

“The OCBC Virtual Purchasing Card is very relevant to businesses today. It is a highly secure payment solution that gives a bird’s-eye view on spending – which is data that many businesses do not yet have access to today,” Melvyn Low, head of global transaction banking, OCBC Bank, said in the announcement.

Visa Commercial Pay Mobile lets employees and non-employees of the bank’s business customers ask for virtual cards on demand. This opportunity makes it less necessary for employees, visiting delegates and contract staff to pay out of pocket, as the card can be immediately provided “even for ad-hoc transactions,” per the release.

“We believe it is important for us to work with our partners, such as OCBC Bank, to introduce innovative solutions that will benefit corporates, including the ability to issue virtual commercial cards instantly to employees of [organizations] so they can make business payments seamlessly,” Kunal Chatterjee, Visa country manager for Singapore and Brunei, said in the announcement.

As previously reported, companies’ interest in business-to-business (B2B) payments innovation has peaked during the last couple of years, as firms inch closer to attaining the payment speeds and ease afforded to business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. Up to one-third of companies are now using electronic payments for most of their B2B transactions, while 60 percent of firms remain confident that they could soon migrate domestic transactions toward digital payment options from hardcopy, check-based methods.

COVID-19 has further restricted companies from continuing the use of antiquated, non-automated workflows, leading more firms to consider using emerging digital tools and technologies.