Commercial Cards Round Out B2B Financial Services

As more financial service providers explore how to capitalize on corporates’ growing adoption of commercial cards, firms are looking at the card as a way to round out their products and services with a more holistic offering.

In India, Shell, for example, has introducing a new fleet card as part of a wider fleet management and payments service. TripActions, meanwhile, is introducing a card solution to provide an end-to-end corporate travel management and payments offering.

Below, PYMNTS takes a look at the latest in commercial card innovation.

CSI, Conferma Collaborate on Virtual Cards

Corporate Spending Innovations (CSI) and Conferma announced this week they’re teaming up to connect CSI’s corporate customers to Conferma Pay virtual card solutions to facilitate corporate travel payments. Conferma Pay connects users to a network of travel management companies, online booking solutions and global distribution systems to book and pay for business travel, a service that CSI said will complete its accounts payable (AP) virtual payment capabilities. In their announcement, the companies noted that corporates are demanding virtual payment solutions for both AP and travel spend from a single provider.

TripActions Wields Cards for Corporate Travel

In another initiative looking to enhance the corporate travel experience with commercial card technology, TripActions, a business travel platform, revealed its end-to-end global corporate travel management and payments platform, TripActions Liquid. With a $500 million credit security, TripActions will debut its suite of solutions that integrates and streamlines the business travel process from booking through to payment. TripActions Liquid will connect businesses with corporate cards for enhanced spend visibility, control and analytics, while unifying the process of booking and payments into a single platform.

Shell Combines Cards, Telematics for Indian Fleets

In India, Shell has rolled out a suite of solutions for fleet managers designed to lower the cost of fleet ownership. The company is combining prepaid fleet cards, fuels services and telematics technology for a holistic fleet management and payments offering designed to enhance fleet spend management and efficiency while combatting fraud.

“The prepaid card allows fleet owners to have transparent operations through extensive control over fuel spend, ease of operations, enhanced convenience and security to prevent and detect fraud in reduced TCO [total cost of ownership],” said Parminder Kohli, general manager of Business Development, Marketing and Operations for Shell Fleet Solutions, in a statement.

Cashplus Augments Corporate Cards With Google Maps

U.K. FinTech Cashplus is introducing a new feature for its small business credit card products designed to provide managers with heightened visibility and control over employee spend. The company recently announced its Spending Insights feature with Google Maps, a solution that uses Google Maps data to allow managers to geographically pinpoint where and when payments were made. Cashplus also revealed the enhancement of Payment Track’s fraud mitigation capabilities, which enables immediate freeze of an account if any suspicious payments are made. Further, the upgrades target freelancers with the capability of tagging transactions for the correct client. The rollout of the new small business card features comes as Cashplus readies to apply for its full U.K. banking license, it said.