Prepaid cards: the modern way to manage business spending
Traditionally, business expenses have been a source of vexation for both employer and employee; requiring a time-consuming paper trail of records and receipts. Employees were irritated by having to use their personal finances before being able to claim back their expenses and finance departments wasted countless hours tracking expenditure and processing claims. The guidelines for admissible employee expenses are clearly delineated on the Financial Ombudsman website but expenses claims have long been seen as a perk of the job to be exploited where possible and when employers are forced to take action in the case of fraudulent claims or overspending, the process is lengthy, expensive and demoralising for all concerned.
Providing employees, with access to company funds with which to pay business expenses by means of a company credit card, is a much more efficient model and has the additional benefit of building employee self-esteem. The problem is that conventional credit cards were never designed to be used in this way. They can be lost, they can be hacked, and they can be used to overspend, there is also a time lapse in the monitoring of their use.
Prepaid credit cards enable individualised financial autonomy for all employees without the risks involved in using traditional credit cards. It is then hardly surprising that their use in business is gaining popularity rapidly. Prepaid credit cards are pre-loaded with a set sum, which means that all employees, from the most senior to the most junior can be issued with a card according to their needs. Not only can the employer set limits on total spending but limits can also be imposed on specifics such as dining or accommodation. With the use of a payment control dashboard employers can monitor spending in real time and overspending becomes impossible because the employee can only spend the money that has been loaded onto the card.
Prepaid cards are also a cheaper and more convenient way to provide your employees with access to funds while engaged in foreign travel. Foreign currency can be pre-loaded onto a card, thereby avoiding foreign currency exchange fees. Should the card be lost or stolen it can be easily frozen without the need to freeze an entire account.
Online purchases with a conventional credit card reveal your billing address, card number, expiration date and security code, but because a prepaid credit card is not linked to a bank account, company financial details cannot be traced by hackers. This level of security makes prepaid cards ideal for online use by employees, whether they are taking out a subscription to a professional journal or booking an Uber.
Providing employees with a prepaid credit card is the most convenient, efficient, economic and secure way of enabling everyone in your organisation, whatever their level of seniority, access to company funds wherever in the world they need to be working. The real-time monitoring of expenses means that there is an expenses transparency which should preclude misuse and the security of the card, coupled with the ease with which it can be frozen, should ensure that there are never any unpleasant surprises.
