Are you looking to improve the way your business manages its expenses? Prepaid cards present an adaptable and flexible alternative payment option that can help businesses manage and gain visibility into their expenses in a variety of ways.

Processing and Reconciliation Made Easy

In the old days, managing business expenses was a long, drawn-out, and convoluted process. Expenses reports had to be filled out, receipts scanned or photocopied, and files had to be manually submitted to accounting to be processed. Claims and receipts and contracts had to be properly examined and matched before expenses could be paid out. These expenses would then be paid via cheque, which takes a lot of time and costs your business money.

Today, however, there are alternative payment and expense management solutions that are accessible online, mobile friends, and streamline the process. Prepaid payments help trim the costs and remove the risk of outdated and inefficient expense management systems and allow your business more opportunities to grow and succeed.

Prepaid Can Help Your Small Business

Many small businesses have problems with expense management, especially when it comes to employee expenses. Often times, small companies rely on a single corporate credit card, which is then shared amongst employees. This can create problems with reconciliation–the process of ensuring that the amount of money leaving an account matches the actual money spent–especially with temporary staff, contractors, or those without access or eligibility to use credit.

“Many small businesses have problems with expense management, especially when it comes to employee expenses. Often times, small companies rely on a single corporate credit card, which is then shared amongst employees.”

Traditional methods of tracking spreadsheets, invoices, and managing budgets are time-consuming and expensive, and offer no advantage over new, technology-drive alternatives. A full-time, well-expensed employee will incur expenses such as travel, meals, and equipment. It is estimated that traditional expense reporting can cost a business $2,000 a year in time and productivity per employee. Things get even more murky and confusing when it comes time to report finances for taxes.

Lack of up-to-the-minute accounting and reporting means that a business owner never has a clear idea of how much funds are available, or how much funds are going out. Giving each employee their own unconnected business credit card also opens up the business to multiple problems related to liability or misuse. In the corporate business world, why would business owners take on such needless risk?

Managing Business Expenses Doesn’t Have To Be Complex

Prepaid is an efficient and simplified way to handle expenses, for businesses both big and small. Prepaid corporate cards have stored value, easy interaction with mobile apps, real time reporting, and security procedures in place to protect against lost or stolen funds.

With prepaid, management or ownership can distribute funds to a multitude of employees whenever necessary. Emergency or last-minute funds can be added whenever necessary, and any unused funds can be taken back if needed. Funds can be added or removed instantly, and the entire process is seamlessly carried out online. Cards that are not in use can be turned off until necessary, ensuring funds are not misused or mismanaged, limiting liability to the business. Purchases and transactions are tracked and categorized to enable easy analysis and reporting, and all data can be sent to business owners to streamline tax reporting.

As a business owner, you should be focused on growing your business, not running around dealing with receipts and complicated expense reports. You also shouldn’t have to stay up at night worrying about your finances. Free up your time and money and make the switch today..

The platform is targeted at large corporates, start-ups and service providers who want to offer a complementary service for international payments.

The API gives developers unprecedented levels of access to Currencies Direct’s digital infrastructure, that facilitates and authenticates cross-border for customers on a global scale.

It gives external developers a chance to experiment and explore every aspect of the Currencies Direct digital experience, including the ability to manage currency wallets, request currency conversions and incoming and outgoing payments as well as undertake cash and settlement management.

Speaking about the launch, Vivek Awasthi, Chief Information Officer at Currencies Direct, said: “The API will give developers access to our digital architecture fabric and we’re excited to see the results of the community’s efforts.

“We believe that the benefits offered through API-based development are the future for our industry. The democratisation of services and increasing shifts towards a marketplace-based structure shows the clear benefits of investing in APIs. The collaborative and open approach to development stands to deliver substantial benefits to consumers and we’re proud to be among the leaders in the industry in this area.” 

Now, Mastercard says that it has let its Earthport offer lapse "in order to focus on the integration and expansion of Transfast".

Transfast is a cross-border payments network provider that covers over 125 countries across Asia, Europe, Africa, Americas and Australia. The firm boasts direct integrations with more than 300 banks and other financial institutions to enable P2P, B2P and B2B payments services via APIs, SFTP, web and mobile product applications.

Mastercard says that the firm will increase its worldwide connectivity in the account-to-account space, boosting compliance capabilities and offering more robust foreign exchange tools.

Michael Miebach, chief product officer, Mastercard, says: "We believe Transfast gives us the strongest platform to immediately enhance our cross-border capabilities and further deliver on our strategy."

The acquisition is slated to close in the second half of 2019, subject to closing conditions.

There is a global shift toward increasing demand for instant access to funds driven by changing consumer expectations, partly fueled from the rapidly growing gig economy. As more tasks are being requested on-demand, gig economy workers expect to be paid out just as quickly as the task they completed. This demand disrupts the traditional payroll cycles and begs the question: “why is payday every other week?” Currently, more than 50 million Americans struggle to pay bills, and over 78% live paycheck-to-paycheck.2 This trend is leading to productivity loss at work, as one-in-three US employees say they are distracted by personal finance.3

“Visa Direct is helping to power a fundamental shift in how employees access wages they have already earned, outside of the traditional two-week payroll cycle,” said Cecilia Frew, SVP Global Commercialization of Visa Direct, Visa. “We are proud to be partnering with PayActiv to offer additional choice and flexibility to employers and employees when managing their financial well-being.”

With on-demand access to earned wages from PayActiv and the ability to receive them in real-time through Visa Direct, eligible employees can unlock the benefits that real-time access to funds provide and participating employers can have a competitive advantage and incentive to attract and engage employees. By implementing Visa Direct, PayActiv is able to give users real-time access to PayActiv’s on-demand payroll program, and allows employers to quickly implement the solution, with little to no set-up costs.

PayActiv Visa Prepaid Card

The PayActiv Visa Prepaid Cardis the first general purpose reloadable prepaid card that offers real-time and recurring access to already earned, unpaid income. The timely access to these funds is intended to provide users liquidity and relief from unforeseen fees. These fees can reduce take-home pay by up to $200 every month4.

The PayActiv Visa Prepaid Card has worldwide acceptance at merchants that accept Visa debit cards. Keeping in line with its mission to be a social impact organization, PayActiv does not charge any monthly fees to cardholders and can act as a solution for those who do not have access to a traditional checking account.

Key cardholder benefits of the PayActiv Visa Prepaid Card include:

Real-time access to earned but unpaid wages, tips, and commissions when using PayActiv.
The entire suite of financial wellness services of PayActiv are included as an ancillary benefit on the PayActiv Prepaid Visa Card.
No fee for loading earned wages on the card multiple times within a pay period.
No cardholder fees for usage at merchants within the United States accepting Visa debit, or cash withdrawals at MoneyPass® ATMs.
Feature-rich mobile app that enables cardholders to track spending and access to earned wages.

“With financial stress our industry needed earning enlightenment. The PayActiv Visa Prepaid Card is exactly that - a game changer and a win-win solution. Employers can get better retention, recruitment and engagement and employees can get on a path of holistic financial wellness with timely access to their earned but unpaid wages,” said Safwan Shah, CEO of PayActiv. “The PayActiv Visa Prepaid Card changes the paradigm of how workers get paid. PayActiv processed more than $1B in 20185 and we anticipate a significant expansion in both customer base and volumes during 2019.”

The PayActiv Visa Card is issued by Central Bank of Kansas City, Member FDIC, and processed by i2c.