Pleo Launches Expense Management Tool Pleo Pocket

Pleo is offering new services bundled under the brand Pleo Pocket that will make it easier for businesses to centralize financial information, according to a blog post.

The new tool streamlines employee spending data, like mileage costs, employee reimbursements and ATM withdrawals, according to the post. It also allows business to set limits on employee spend.

“Pleo Pocket is the place where you keep track of money owed between the employee and the company,” Pleo said on its website.

Pleo’s main business is providing smart credit cards that make it easier for employees to document expenses and for employers to pay only for purchases they deem appropriate.

Pleo’s introduction of the new product comes 10 months after the company announced it was pivoting to offer business credit cards from its prior business focus of offering pre-paid corporate cards.

“Collaborating with JPMorgan and Mastercard will … help us move from our initial version of a product — the prepaid card — to something much more scalable for the future, and more widely accepted: corporate credit cards,” Pleo CEO Jeppe Rindom said at the time.

Smart cards are gaining popularity in the business world as the pandemic appears to be exacerbating the pre-existing problem of employees spending significant sums in the services of their companies only to then have to battle expense-reimbursement systems to get their money back.

According to the inaugural edition of PYMNTS B2B Workforce Spend Playbook: A Guide To Modernizing Everyday Spend, prepared by PYMNTS in collaboration with Conferma Pay, “Studies suggest that close to 40 percent of all employees in the United States and the United Kingdom use their own money to pay for work expenses, and that the average business transaction costs them well in excess of $100. This can be both frustrating and financially challenging for many, as there is no guarantee that they will be reimbursed for their expenses on time once purchases have been made.”