City National Bank, Extend Team On Virtual Corporate Cards

City National Bank has enlisted New York City FinTech Extend to enable the bank’s clients to offer virtual corporate cards to employees, vendors and other business partners, the companies announced in a press release.

A key selling point for virtual cards is that users can easily control how they’re used, including canceling them with minimal effort if doing so is necessary, according to the release. Replacing them is much easier than replacing plastic cards.

City National, which has a significant number of clients in the entertainment sector, said in the release that the arrangement should be especially useful for account holders who want to conduct quick, one-off transactions, such as those involving vendors working with film crews.

The release stated, in part, that the two companies are offering a “virtual Visa commercial credit card solution that is able to generate true virtual cards on demand that can easily be added to Google Pay and Apple Pay mobile wallets for simplified and secure contactless payments at point of sale. With Extend, City National is the first issuer in the U.S. to launch this competitive solution.”

The virtual cards City National customers will be able to send will include the ability to set spending limits as well as expiration dates, the release stated.

“We’re all about providing our clients with state-of-the art, efficient and secure payment solutions,” Linda Duncombe, executive vice president and chief marketing, product and digital officer of City National Bank, said in the release. “City National has a long history of serving our clients in new and innovative ways, and providing our clients with easy-to-use digital solutions for their payment challenges allows us to better support them — especially at a time when many are working remotely.”

Andrew Jamison, CEO and co-founder of Extend, said in the release that his company’s arrangement with City National “is a huge industry first.”

“Until now, no one has been able to tokenize true virtual cards for mobile wallets, which brings virtual cards to the point of sale — a hurdle that has stood in the way of serious mass adoption. Now virtual cards can be used just like plastic cards,” he said in the release. “We’re very excited to see the new value it can create for City National and their business clients.”

Nick Reid, director of B2B Partner Development at Conferma Pay, told PYMNTS in December the pandemic has highlighted the need for contact-free payment options.

“I don’t think there was ever any doubt in the industry that digitizing payments was better than the status quo,” Reid said. “I just think COVID proved to be one of the necessary catalysts in overcoming corporate inertia and converting businesses.”