Through its existing relationship with Mastercard, BMO Commercial Bank clients across North America can now use Extend’s mobile and desktop app to create, send, and manage virtual cards for simplified payment and reconciliation processes.

BMO is the first organization to work with Extend in Canada and will make Extend solutions available to all Corporate Card clients across North America. Extend provides an opportunity for clients to deploy secure virtual cards from their existing Corporate Card program, without any technical integration, in as little as five minutes.

Juniper Research reports charge volume on virtual cards is expected to more than triple in the next four years, with business payments accounting for most of the spending. The control, efficiency, and flexibility of virtual cards solves many of the spend management challenges businesses face. With Extend, Corporate Card clients can seamlessly empower their employees with virtual cards to pay vendors, track spending by creating different cards for different expense categories, automate reconciliation to simplify bookkeeping, and more – all from the Corporate Card program they already use.

"Our Corporate Card clients want to keep their spending secure and controlled, while reducing costs," said Derek Vernon, Head of Product Management and Enterprise Payments Modernization, BMO Commercial Bank. "The Extend for BMO app solves this critical need with the power of virtual cards that retain all the benefits our clients already enjoy with their Corporate Card program while helping them make real financial progress."

In addition to an easy-to-use mobile app and extensive desktop features, the Extend API gives tech-savvy Corporate Card clients an onramp to payment innovation. Clients can leverage easy configuration and open documentation to integrate virtual card issuance and management directly into their systems and existing workflows. Instant transaction matching, strict security controls, and support for high-volume transactions allow clients to streamline finance processes and optimize core business functions with a flexible virtual card API.

"Mastercard is committed to empowering businesses with flexible and secure virtual payment solutions that grant more control over spending while helping to alleviate the headache of disjointed expense processes," said Darrell MacMullin, Senior Vice President, Products and Platforms at Mastercard Canada. "By delivering rich virtual card capabilities, BMO is leveraging the value of the existing Mastercard-Extend partnership for the benefit of its small and medium-sized business clients across North America."

Extend CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Jamison said, "Too often, teams try to manage and track miscellaneous spend by sharing physical Corporate Cards. This leads to cumbersome expense reports, manual reconciliation, unattributed spend, or card misuse. By giving BMO’s clients an easy way to extend the features of their existing Corporate Cards, BMO is bringing the future of spend management to business users today."

Extend’s virtual card and spend management platform offers BMO clients the ability to:

Control vendor paymentsManage receipts, recurring expenses, and subscriptionsCreate, modify, send, and cancel virtual cards in real-timeSet spending limits, expiration dates, and recurring rulesBMO is paving the way as a digitally enabled, future-ready bank harnessing the potential of emerging technologies for real-time information and processing. This agreement represents another milestone in BMO’s Digital First journey, and builds on the bank’s recently announced partnerships with FISPAN and Xero.