Tradeshift Enables Employee Virtual Cards On Demand

Supply chain payments firm Tradeshift is expanding capabilities for companies to manage employee spend with Tradeshift Go 2.0, the company announced Monday (July 1).

Tradeshift said in a press release that its new “team version” of Go 2.0 is now live with enhanced functionality that expands visibility into employee spend and enables managers to connect their employees with virtual cards on demand.

The enhancements aim to tackle friction linked to tail spend, which often relates to small, one-off purchases that require significant administrative overhead and can slip through the cracks of traditional procurement and spend management operations within an organization. Enabling managers to issue virtual cards on demand captures tail spend data while streamlining back-office processes, without requiring organizations to approve purchase orders and invoices for small-value tail spend purchases.

“Purchasing policies have traditionally been centered around a model in which, due to liability concerns, only select employees have access to a corporate or p-card,” explained Tradeshift Chief Strategy Officer Sarika Garg in a statement. “Tradeshift Go levels the playing field for business teams so that every employee on the team has access to authorized payments.”

According to Tradeshift, as many as 90 percent of suppliers managed by a procurement team remain outside of a procurement system’s catalogue, often requiring employees to make rogue purchases or take the time to on-board a new supplier to a system, even for a one-time purchase. Tradeshift Go aims to address that friction by promoting purchase approval for these transactions without extra administrative tasks.

Tradeshift first announced Tradeshift Go in 2016 to tackle payments and travel booking for corporate travel and expense management processes. The company described the technology as a virtual assistant for business users. In an interview with PYMNTS at the time, Garg explained it is user-friendly, a key factor for adoption.

“What you’re almost trying to do is give every employee a business assistant so they can get their job done and do what they need to do – to buy their items and get back to work,” Garg said.