Pacific Western Bank To Launch Virtual Commercial Card

Pacific Western Bank (PWB) has announced a new partnership with Extend, which will help launch a virtual Mastercard commercial credit card solution, a press release said on Thursday (April 29).

PWB will now be the first bank to roll out such a simplified solution for payments processing in a white-labeled app available through both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

“Launching a virtual card solution is a critical step in our ongoing effort” to provide a premier digital banking experience, said Mark Yung, chief operating officer at PWB. “Pairing enhanced security and a handy mobile app to manage and track payments, we are delivering our clients greater control over their payment processing needs.”

With the new offering, the bank’s clients will gain the ability to generate virtual cards and make for simple and secure virtual payments. The clients, once enabled, will be able to instantly empower their employees, contractors and vendors to use the cards for single or recurring purchases. And clients will be able to use the cards for controls for ongoing vendor payments.

The release noted that demand has continued to increase and PWB has been working on delivering better security via the new cards, without card numbers exposed.

With the virtual delivery, the cardholder’s Mastercard account number will be replaced with a secure token, which protects the underlying card number from fraud or identity theft.

There will also be other benefits, including improved reconciliation as well as receipt and invoice attachments, which all contribute to seamless expense management integration.

Corporates have been inching closer to digitization for some time, with more electronic B2B payments being used and more commercial cards being adopted in accounts payable (AP).

Dean M. Leavitt, founder and CEO at Boost, said it was only recently that the industry had begun to turn its head toward the acceptance side of the equation to drive adoption. Card acceptance, he said, was a way for accounts receivable (AR) departments to boost operations and connect vendors with valuable transaction data.