Virtual Cards, Spend Management Help SMBs Cut Costs — and Red Tape

When employees must pay their expenses out of pocket and get reimbursed later, the process isn’t just tedious — it’s expensive too. As a result, there’s a continuing transition away from legacy solutions.

Providing a better solution is the challenge Torpago set out to solve three years ago with a platform that includes real-time integration and other benefits, starting with Visa commercial credit cards it rolled out in late 2020.

Today, the FinTech corporate card and spend management platform offers physical cards, virtual cards, automated expenses, integrations and credit.

“We’ve done a really good job of building a plug-and-play customizable solution,” Torpago CEO Brent Jackson told PYMNTS. “If you’re approved for our card, you get access to the full suite of solutions.”

Enabling Cost-Cutting and Access to Capital

The company has scaled rapidly since its launch, with 1,400 small- to medium-sized business (SMB) customers using the platform.

To support its continued growth, Torpago announced March 17 its acquisition of Wishlife, a technology company that specializes in secure video communications and content management software. If the pairing of the products of the two companies doesn’t seem intuitive, Jackson said it’s all about the team.

Read more: Spend Management Firm Torpango Acquires Wishlife

“What the acquisition is all about is bringing in amazing engineering talent that’s going to allow us to speed up our product road map and really help us scale the business of the next couple years,” Jackson said.

Torpago’s customers are predominantly SMBs with around 18 employees in traditional verticals like real estate, insurance, manufacturing and construction.

Larger customers using the platform tend to focus on the cost-cutting aspect and the spend management part, using the software to get granular with their departments and budgets. Smaller customers often are more interested in the access to capital that Torpago offers.

Deploying Virtual Cards

Smaller customers tend to use virtual cards because those are quicker and easier, while larger companies often give plastic cards to employees in the field while managers and back-office staff use virtual cards for recurring purchases, Jackson said.

“You can deploy the virtual cards instantly, you can have unlimited virtual cards, you can do a virtual card for specific vendor, and we have a burner virtual card that you can use just for single charges, and it automatically expires,” Jackson said. “It’s really about control, preventing fraud and not having your full account number exposed on the web.”

About 65% of Torpago’s gross spend is on virtual cards, but Jackson said he expects that to level out to 50% as the company onboards some larger companies.

Coping With Inflation

More and more customers are looking for solutions to help mitigate the effects of inflation.

“Definitely inflation is something that we’re seeing affect a lot of our customers,” Jackson said. “I’d say we’re just starting to see some of the ripple effects, and we’ll see how it continues to play out.”

Looking ahead, Jackson said Torpago will continue growing, hiring and acquiring. In addition to the acquisition of the Wishlife team, the company has seven new employees starting over the next two weeks.

“We’re on track to double our revenue each month for the next three months,” Jackson said. “We’ve got a great pipeline of customers, great platform and [are] just excited to see what’s ahead for the next year.”