The Bank of Montreal (BMO) has partnered with virtual card and spend management platform Extend to add a set of payments functionality to BMO Corporate Cards. Following the already existing Mastercard partnership, North America-based BMO Commercial Bank clients will be enabled to make use of Extend’s mobile and desktop app to create, send, and manage virtual cards for simplified payment and reconciliation processes.

BMO marks the first organisation working with Extend in Canada and is set to make the company’s solution available to all North America-based Corporate Card clients. As per information found in the press release, Extend offers clients the possibility of deploying secure virtual cards from their existing Corporate Card programme, free of any technical integration in a matter of minutes. Business payments, virtual cards and what the partnership entails A 2021 Juniper Research article on ‘The Impact of Virtual Cards on the B2B Market’ highlights that charge volume on virtual cards is expected to have a threefold increase within the following four years, with business payments accounting for a majority of spending.

When it comes to spend management challenges faced by businesses, virtual cards are thought to help solve many of these difficulties due to the control, efficiency, and flexibility they are associated with. Extend enables Corporate Card clients to offer their employees virtual cards to pay vendors, track spending by creating different cards for different expense categories, and automate reconciliation to simplify bookkeeping, amongst others, everything from the Corporate Card programme that they already make use of. BMO Commercial Bank officials stated that Corporate Card Clients are looking to have their spending kept secure and controlled, while the costs are reduced.

The Extend for BMO app is believed to help solve this need through means of virtual cards that help retain the benefits clients enjoy with their Corporate Card programme, while simultaneously enabling them to progress from a financial standpoint. API, virtual cards, and spend management platform capabilities Apart from an easy-to-use mobile app and extensive desktop features, the Extend API enables tech-savvy Corporate clients to have an onramp within payment innovation. Users are given the option of leveraging easy configuration and open documentation to have virtual card issuance and management integrated directly into their systems and existing workflows.

Clients can simplify finance processes and optimise core business functions with a flexible virtual card API, which is allowed due to instant transaction matching, strict security controls, and high-volume transactions’ support. Mastercard Canada officials have stated that with the delivery of these virtual card capabilities, BMO leverages the existing Mastercard – Extend partnership to benefit North America-based small and medium-sized business clients. Extend representatives added that oftentimes, teams try to take care of their miscellaneous spend tracking and management by sharing physical Corporate Cards, which leads to unmanageable expense reports, manual reconciliation, unattributed spend, or card misuse.

By enabling BMO’s clients to extend the features of their Corporate Cards in an easy manner, BMO aims to make the future of spend management a reality for today’s business users. Through the Extend virtual card and spend management platform, BMO clients are provided with the ability to do the following: Control vendor payments; Manage receipts, recurring expenses, and subscriptions; Create, modify, send, and cancel virtual cards in real-time; Set spending limits, expiration dates, and recurring rules. With BMO looking to pave the way as a digitally enabled bank that leverages the potential of emerging technologies for real-time information and processing, the agreement represents a step forward in the company’s Digital First journey, building on the FISPAN partnership announced in November 2022.

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