Why do digital agencies rely on virtual credit cards for corporate spend?
By Steffen Vater, Customer Success and Partnerships, Tradeshift Go
The overall digital advertising spend on Google, Facebook, and Amazon exceeded $250bn in 2021, accounting for more than 50% of the entire industry. If you think that is a big number, imagine the amount of revenue dependent on those advertisements and the headaches that agencies face tracking settlements to their respective projects.
Digital marketing and ad agencies trust our corporate virtual credit card platform not only to protect their business-critical payments and prevent disruptions, but also to provide clearer tracking and visibility. This is why Google, Facebook, and Amazon make up 3 of the top 5 merchants flowing through the Tradeshift Go platform. More than half a billion dollars in ad-spend charge volume has been spent through Tradeshift Go.
What is a Tradeshift Go virtual credit card (VCC)?
Tradeshift provides an online platform which allows commercial American Express cardholders to generate unique virtual credit card numbers that feed back to their existing physical card programs.
Each virtual card acts as its own isolated payment stream, effectively eliminating the risk of disruption to the payments that flow through it. Picture each of your advertising campaigns protected by its own unique payment method. Simply put, using virtual cards is the opposite of keeping all of your eggs in one basket.
Interestingly, this security benefit works in two ways. If the physical source card is disrupted (i.e. fraud, loss, expiration), virtual credit cards remain uninterrupted and automatically tie over to the physical card’s replacement. Additionally, virtual cards hide the physical card number and reduce the likelihood of fraud.
It’s an unfortunate truth that advertising platforms house a lot of payment information and thus make prime targets for hackers. When a breach happens, one can better rectify and limit damages if a virtual card number is leaked because it can be deactivated and replaced in seconds with just a few clicks.
What else does a corporate virtual credit card help with? Reconciliation!
We’ve all succumbed to analysis paralysis when skimming through that monthly statement filled with generic settlement data. How many times can one look at a $500 charge from Meta Platforms or Google Services before going cross-eyed?
The frustrating task of reconciling that data with a specific client, brand, campaign is a dreaded, recurring headache and one that can be alleviated through the use of corporate virtual credit cards.
Virtual credit cards are embedded with customizable data or tags that are reflected in Tradeshift Go’s enhanced reporting.
Picture that lengthy statement broken down into the buckets you need, effectively streamlining reconciliation and allowing for easier import into your Quickbooks, NetSuite, or other accounting software.
How do I get started?
Tradeshift Go is a complementary feature of all American Express business, corporate, and purchasing credit card programs.
Set up and training can be completed in as little as 15 minutes. If you’re interested or have any questions, what are you waiting for?
Register here or reach out to Go@Tradeshift.com and add the continuity, control, and visibility of virtual credit cards to your American Express program today!
