BofA Links Corporate Cards To Mobile Wallets

Bank of America is adding mobile wallet functionality to its suite of commercial card products, the bank said Wednesday (Sept. 12).

In a press release, Bank of America said its corporate cards are now compatible with mobile wallets including Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, citing business travelers’ mobile payment needs as a stop motivation behind the initiative. Support for a range of mobile wallets adds to Bank of America’s existing mobile corporate payment service capabilities, the FI noted.

“Cardholders will no longer have to search for their physical wallet for every business purchase,” said Hubert J.P. Jolly, Bank of America head of financing and channels in Global Transaction Banking, in a statement. “The result should be faster transactions and greater peace of the mind for the cardholder.”

According to Bank of America, mobile wallets can enhance payment security by tokenizing account numbers, effectively using a physical commercial card to generate a virtual card for a particular purchase. That virtual card number is not stored and can only be used for that transaction. Further, mobile wallet solutions often require an additional layer of security in the form of biometric authentication or passwords to confirm the identity of the payer.

Bank of America’s announcement comes less than two months after the bank announced the launch of a mobile app for customers using corporate prepaid cards. The app allows business users to view card balances and transaction data, locate an ATM, and suspend or activate prepaid cards, among other functions. The FI had also previously released biometric authentication capabilities for its corporate mobile banking customers.

Financial service providers have only recently begun to provide compatibility for their commercial card products with mobile wallet solutions. Last year, U.S. Bank announced support for mobile commercial card payments for Visa-branded cards by enabling its corporate cards to be used in Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. In 2015, American Express became the first major credit card issuer to link its commercial cards to Apple Pay.