No Code, No Card, No Problem: Virtual Commercial Cards on the Rise

Marcus Lobendahn, senior vice president of strategic partnerships at Bond, recently told PYMNTS that no-code solutions could further the creation, use and uptake of commercial cards.

Bond enables FinTechs, vertical software-as-a-service companies and brands to embed financial solutions — particularly credit products — into their own apps. No-code offerings create software using a graphical user interface in an intuitive way that sidesteps the complexities of writing and rewriting code.

Doing so via a no-code solution can solve a number of pain points for enterprises, said Lobendahn.

“These companies may not have the available engineering resources to implement and embed those payment solutions,” he said. Engineers are in high demand and, of course, the companies themselves may not have the ability to focus on building payments technology because of their focus on their core product.

But done right, commercial cards can wind up being a complement to the business. Picture a property management software company that adds a commercial charge card that creates additional lines of business and revenue — but they need help in getting there.

See also: Bond Launches Secured Credit Card for FinTechs

Typically, engineering resources are devoted to the core offerings, Lobendahn said and building banking products while continuing to maintain their primary product can become a significant hurdle.

“That’s where we really see no-code solutions coming into play, allowing them to build something quickly that is fully functional, that has their branding, their logo and their feel onto it, and without the heavy burden of a complete engineering team,” he told PYMNTS.

Speedy deployment is critical. In this inflationary environment, taking 12 months to build out a new payment offering and get it to market can be very costly. He noted that companies, regardless of vertical, need to be thoughtful about how they are allocating investment dollars — and human capital.

The stage is set for a wider embrace of commercial cards, he continued, with a nod to the fact that companies like Brex, Ramp and others have taken off in the last few years and have brandished billion-dollar (or more) valuations among investors as well as heady top-line growth rates.

Virtual Cards Hold Appeal

The flexibility of virtual commercial charge cards holds particular appeal for enterprises, Lobendahn said, given the fact that the cards themselves can come with parameters — allocated to a certain employee or limited to a specific spend component, for example.

In years past, with traditional commercial cards, an employee would be issued a card,  and, upon leaving the firm, that card would be canceled along with the vendor relationships linked to it (because invoices would then go unpaid).

With the virtual card option, he said, strict confines around spending ensure that certain invoices always get paid and that there is no interruption up and down supply chains.

“You’re breaking up banking in ways it had never been intended to be broken up,” he said, “but it is all still regulatory compliant. And that dynamic nature of it allows the end businesses to think about how they would use commercial charge cards, or commercial credit products.”

See also: PYMNTS Intelligence: How Virtual Cards Are Reinventing How Businesses Pay Their Vendors

Along the way, the costs of commercial card acceptance and some misperceptions about those costs fall by the wayside.

Lobendahn told PYMNTS that, traditionally, employees have taken photos of receipts and passed them on to the finance department for reimbursement. Friction abounds, he said, and there always is the risk of internal fraud or cards being lost.

But with virtual cards and no-code solutions behind the creation of those cards, he said, companies can bring new payment solutions to end customers — and learn quickly if they are working or not. If they’re not, if the adoption has not gone as anticipated, then the engineering team can simply turn the project off.

In terms of value propositions, virtual cards are not just a way to optimize how a firm might pay people within their ecosystem or how they might streamline employee expenses, Lobendahn said.

“It’s really to drive a new revenue stream for your company,” he said, adding, “today, we’re seeing companies that can launch products and can generate monthly revenue from them because they’re driving value … and ultimately that is what any firm wants to do.”