Coupa, American Express Team On Virtual Cards

American Express is working with Coupa on a new partnership to use virtual cards for Coupa’s B2B solution, a press release says.

Coupa Pay, the Coupa B2B solution, will be available for customers of AmEx’s virtual cards, in a move meant to streamline the old payment processes which the release calls “outdated, complex, and inefficient.”

The move toward virtual cards comes with a rising demand for work-from-home solutions, more popular now during the pandemic. Now, companies need matching virtual ways to pay their suppliers, according to the release.

The press release touts the process as simple — users can tie eligible business accounts from American Express into Coupa Pay, and then the virtual cards can be sent to the authorized suppliers. From there, they can be used for “quick and easy” payments for items in demand and provide better visibility into finances.

Other benefits, the release says, include extended pre-approvals for card spend, better security when paying with virtual card technology and using the card payment cycle to better management working capital for buyers.

“The pandemic has created widespread work from home policies, meaning previously fragmented and manual business payment processes are no longer an option,” said JR Robertson, vice president of Coupa Pay at Coupa, according to the release. “With Coupa Pay, Coupa and American Express are making it easier for our joint U.S. customers to thrive in this challenging environment by empowering them to pay using virtual Card technology. Now, every transactional step in the business spend management process can be done smarter and simpler.”

Coupa also worked on new risk management and business spend tools through a cloud-based app, PYMNTS writes. The tools purported to add new visibility capabilities via adding ranking for how every prescription will affect the business as a whole. That will give more visibility into how businesses can cut costs effectively.