How Virtual Credit Cards Protect Corporate Spend From Disruption

While there are many reasons for corporate spend programs to use virtual credit cards over physical credit cards, one of the most compelling is payment continuity. Corporate virtual credit cards ensure that payments are protected from disruption—something that is imperative to typical card-on-file use-cases such as vendor payments, shipping (FedEx, UPS, USPS), advertising (Facebook, Google, Apple), automated checkouts (Amazon, Ebay, Paypal), and other business-critical transactions.

The danger and hassle of using physical credit cards

It’s pretty safe to say that most, if not all, businesses today have their American Express card number saved on file with at least one vendor. The number might be saved in an online payment portal or it might be written on a piece of paper and lying on someone’s desk for anyone to access. The truth is, as soon as a card number is shared you can’t tell who might be laying eyes on it and this exposes your payment streams to disruption.

Picture this; your physical credit card number is on file with various vendors. Payments happen automatically and everything runs smoothly until that credit card number encounters disruption.

Disruption could be due to a fraudulent event, the credit card reaching its expiration date, or something as simple as having left that physical card behind at last night’s dinner. Once a credit card needs to be replaced, the business is faced with the daunting task of manually updating all of their vendors with the new card information.

You won’t have to ask around much, before encountering someone that has gone through this and is still venting their frustrations.

The safety and ease of using a corporate virtual credit card

The Tradeshift Go Amex virtual credit card connects to American Express on an account level; this means that when your physical source card gets replaced, the respective virtual cards automatically link to the new card number. No disruption, no manual updates, no upset vendors facing declines.

Additionally, corporate virtual credit cards reduce the exposure of a business’ physical card number, mitigating the risk of it getting compromised in the first place.

If you would like to learn more about the advantages of virtual credit cards and how to prevent disruption to your credit card payments, please reach out to us at Go@Tradeshift.com

You can also request a demo of the Tradeshift Go virtual American Express card here.