- Key insights: PNC has partnered with Extend to expand virtual cards, an older payment option that has gained steam in recent years.
- What’s at stake: Banks and payment companies are boosting investment in virtual cards, creating more competition.
- Forward look: Businesses are looking to automate treasury management, creating an opportunity for virtual cards.
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“We’re seeing strong and growing demand from clients who want to simplify vendor payments, enable remote and project-based purchasing, and manage departmental budgets without expanding their plastic card footprint,” Tom Lang, executive vice president and head of PNC Treasury Management Product and operations, told American Banker.
PNC’s upgrade
The bank has partnered with Extend, an expense management and payment technology company, to link traditional commercial cards to a mobile and web platform. Businesses can use the platform to issue virtual cards to themselves or their own employees, then add these virtual cards to mobile wallets such as Apple Pay or Google Pay.
The cards can have granular spending limits based on budgets and corporate approvals, along with tracking and remote controls.
PNC’s treasury management platform has enabled budget management and spend visibility, enabling virtual cards under shared limits with real-time visibility, according to Lang. The target market is smaller businesses with less than 100 employees, Andrew Jamison, CEO of Extend, told American Banker.
By using Extend’s internal artificial intelligence, the platform can “learn” payment trends, such as types of expenses, travel needs and activities in different departments.
“You may have two people to manage accounts, receivable, accounts payable, and payroll,” Jamison said. “I think the office of the CFO has been forgotten over the years.”
There are many challenges companies face in managing corporate payments, such as distributed purchasing control and vendor card-on-file management, receipt capture and month-end reconciliation, according to Lang.
“Organizations face significant challenges when managing travel and business expenses for employees who do not have corporate cards,” he said, adding that without direct card visibility, companies must rely on individuals to retain and submit receipts, or, in the case of per-diem models, deposit cash into personal accounts and later attempt to reconcile actual business expenses—sometimes needing to recover excess funds.
“This process creates gaps in oversight and increases administrative complexity,” Lang said.
Virtual world
Virtual cards are digitally provisioned and have their own numbers and security codes. They are distinct cards and are not the same as using a traditional card to pay on a mobile app or website. The appeal to businesses stems from a broad move to digital payments over the past ten years, plus business challenges in recent years, such as inflation and changes in work patterns following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Payment companies and banks have added virtual cards to their product mixes.
Mastercard cited an internal study that found two-thirds of corporate travel planners said remote or hybrid work is complicating business travel expense management, and 90% said virtual cards will become the primary way to book and pay for corporate travel within the next five years. The number of virtual card transactions is expected to rise from 36 billion in 2023 to 175 billion in 2028, according to
Virtual cards have been growing at a very healthy pace the last few years and this shows little sign of slowing, Gilles Ubaghs, strategic advisor for commercial banking and payments for Datos Insights, told American Banker. Datos’ latest global survey of mid-to-large sized organizations found that about 35% of them report they have used a virtual card in the last 12 months (38% in the U.S.) and growth is expected to continue. “It’s not quite ubiquitous but it is expanding,” Ubaghs said.
Virtual cards have major benefits in the purchasing card space, particularly for single use transactions that can significantly enhance fraud protection and ease reconciliation challenges later on, according to Ubaghs.
“This has been a core use case for many years and continues to expand especially via payables and integrated payment solutions,” Ubaghs said. “The core challenge here has primarily been supplier acceptance but even then it continues to expand.”
And virtual cards are evolving beyond purchasing use cases into much more day-to-day usage and operations, including things like instant issuance direct to mobile wallets or desktops and specific uses such as subscription management, Ubaghs said.
“Fintechs have been pushing hard on virtual cards for years, with many of them touting their ability to issue unlimited virtual card numbers instantly,” Ubaghs said. “For many of them virtual cards are a core plank of commercial cards as a broader digital payment tool rather than just a line of unsecured credit from their bank.”