Sage Adds Expense Management Prepaid Cards To Accounting Mix

U.K.-based B4B Payments is partnering with Sage to combine their services to small businesses, the companies announced on Monday (May 21).

Sage will offer its small business customers of its accounting and business services offerings in Spain B4B Payments’ existing expense management prepaid card solution. Sage will promote the card products to its network of account managers, the company said, while B4B will integrate transaction data from purchases made with the prepaid corporate card tools into the Sage accounting platform.

“The addition of B4B expense management cards to the Sage package offers our customers a very clear and valuable new benefit,” said Sage VP, Partners & Alliances, Jose Luis Martín Zabala in a statement. “We are very pleased to be working with B4B as a strategic partner as they are making an important contribution to the continuing market leadership of Sage solutions.”

“Through improved processes and a greater understanding of their expense management, we can help [Sage’s] customers improve the financial wellbeing of their business, whether they are a startup or a global enterprise,” added B4B Payments CEO Paul Winton in another statement. “This is a great example of how large, established corporates can offer greater choice and value to their customers by partnering with FinTech innovators such as ourselves.”

The addition of prepaid corporate cards to its offering follows Sage’s integration of payments software Stripe, which adds invoicing capabilities for its accounting platform. Those invoices can be paid via Stripe, a move that Sage said could facilitate faster payments to small businesses. A report published by Sage late last year found 17 percent of all B2B payments in the U.K. are made late, with 9 percent ultimately written off as a loss.

According to Sage EVP Payments and Banking Seamus Smith, businesses in the U.K. spend an average of 15 days chasing late invoice payments.

“This is unacceptable,” he said in a statement last month. “These are problems that can be easily fixed with the right technology solutions, designed to make invoicing and other admin tasks seamless.”