Stick or Twist

Are Corporate Cards Modern Tools or Remnants of the Past?

Corporate cards have long been touted as more than just a travel and entertainment tool, but where do they fit in the modern treasury arsenal? In this Q&A, Stephanie Wilczewski, Head of North America Card and Intelligent Payables Partnership Strategy, Bank of America; Duygu Tasdelen-Stavropoulos, Head of EMEA Commercial Cards, Bank of America; Yvonne Yiu, Head of Global Payments Solutions, Greater China, HSBC; and Romain Mialane, Director, Visa Commercial Solutions - Europe, offer their insight.

Are corporate cards still as much in evidence in terms of volumes and values compared with five or 10 years ago?

Yvonne Yiu (YY): While expenses related to travel and entertainment [T&E] continue to anchor a good proportion of corporate-card spend, supplier payments, both as a share of volume and as a share of value, have been growing. The pandemic prompted both buyers and suppliers to re-examine the entire order-to-sales process so as to achieve greater operational efficiency and provide a better customer experience. Part of this journey is a comprehensive review of the payment-collection process – and cards have been a huge beneficiary.

Stephanie Wilczewski (SW): Absolutely, but the landscape has evolved. While traditional corporate-card volumes tied to T&E dipped during the pandemic, they’ve since rebounded. More importantly, we’re seeing significant growth in card volumes tied to B2B use cases. This shift is driven by organisations looking for a more holistic payment strategy, providing better control, visibility, and efficiency in spend management. While the ‘why’ behind usage may have changed, the overall importance and volume of corporate-card programmes remains strong, and is growing.

Romain Mialane (RM): A decade ago, corporate cards were primarily a cornerstone for T&E expenses, low value procurement, and employee initiated spend. The pandemic brought a sharp contraction in T&E activity, temporarily dampening card usage. This disruption also became a catalyst for innovation, as financial providers and corporates worked together to redeploy card volumes and unlock greater value. This has driven the rapid adoption of virtual corporate cards for online purchases, SaaS subscriptions, digital advertising, and broader supplier payments, including higher value transactions.

While T&E volumes have rebounded strongly and now match or exceed pre pandemic levels, this expansion has boosted transaction counts, enhanced working capital efficiency, and enabled procurement and treasury teams to reduce the costs of manual processes and to improve cash flow. Besides, deeper integration with expense management tools, procure to pay platforms, ERP systems, and digital wallets, has further driven adoption, streamlining purchasing cycles, extending payment terms, and improving reporting accuracy.

If physical corporate cards remain the norm for in-person expenses, their virtualised format is capturing an additional and growing share of corporate spend, reflecting a more digital, flexible, and strategically managed payment landscape.

For what purposes are cards typically being used?

RM: In recent years, there has been a marked increase in their use for supplier settlement in situations where speed, control, and payment certainty are valued, such as paying smaller vendors, international suppliers, or ad hoc project costs. They are also an effective mechanism for managing spend in distributed or remote workforces, where issuing physical purchase orders is impractical. This expanded role is underpinned by stronger policy controls, spend limits, and real time monitoring, which give finance teams confidence to delegate purchasing power while maintaining oversight.

Furthermore, the ability to align card transactions with budgets and cost centres has turned them into a valuable source of spend analytics. The result is a versatile payment instrument used not only for convenience but as a lever to optimise procurement agility, supplier relationships, and financial governance. In many organisations, corporate cards are a preferred tool for decentralised purchasing, enabling teams to acquire goods and services quickly without going through lengthy procurement approvals. They are also widely used to settle recurring operational expenses such as utilities, software licences, membership fees, and others.

What are the alternatives to card use in their traditional T&E hunting ground?

YY: When it comes to the T&E segment, the alternatives to card usage remain limited and relatively underutilised. Traditional payment channels, such as cash reimbursements or manual invoicing, tend to be less efficient and provide limited transparency. And while e-wallets are increasingly adopted for T&E, they remain predominately individual-driven solutions, offering limited centralised control and streamlined reconciliation.

Corporate cards continue to be the preferred instrument for managing T&E spend due to their scalability, ease of reconciliation, and integration with travel-booking platforms and expense management systems. They deliver real-time visibility, enhanced policy enforcement, and streamlined reporting – none of which are easily replicated with conventional payment methods. For businesses focused on agility and governance, I believe that the value proposition of corporate cards in the T&E domain remains unmatched.

Duygu Tasdelen-Stavropoulos (DTS): Expense reimbursement and invoice-based payments are still around, but they’re not ideal. They’re slower, harder to track, and introduce more manual effort. Most companies want to move away from these methods, especially as they require more automated tools and real-time visibility. Corporate cards, when paired with modern expense tools, still offer one of the cleanest, most efficient ways to manage T&E spend. For instance, Pay-by-Bank, where customers pay directly from their bank account via their bank’s app, has some traction in T&E.

Personal cards are still being used, but this method comes with issues such as manual inputs, oversight challenges, and expense policy concerns. Corporate card is still the strongest candidate in this space, especially with the advent of virtual travel and mobile digital options.

RM: A study we commissioned last year, and carried out by BTN among many European T&E decision makers, revealed that while 80% of large companies have adopted corporate cards, their use is far from universal across all travellers within those organisations.

The research shows that 36% of large enterprises still use a billback model with their travel management company (TMC), where the TMC effectively acts as a bank for the client. This puts significant pressure on TMC cash flow. A further 31% still rely on employees’ personal cards. This multiplicity of payment solutions introduced tangible consequences: increased time spent managing expense reports, recurring manual processes, lost opportunities in terms of direct financial benefits (such as incentives, VAT reclaim, and insurances), and weaker reporting capabilities – an essential factor for controlling a travel programme and negotiating effectively with suppliers.

Another fact revealed by the study is that 72% of employees still report difficulties getting expenses reimbursed. This is a clear sign that the sector needs more education and better change management. I see financial providers playing a key role here, not by reinventing the wheel, but by shining a light on the top procurement and travel performers, and giving them the stage to share the results they’ve achieved. When benefits are visible and demonstrated by peer advocacy, change follows. Alongside that, doubling down on proven tools is where FIs excel. The central travel account [lodge card] works alongside the corporate card, consolidating pre-booked flights, rail, and hotels into one account to cut friction and keep high volume programmes running smoothly.

Do companies generally understand that cards can be used for non-T&E purposes?

YY: In the higher interest-rate environment, companies are taking steps to lower their cost of borrowing and preserve cash. On the buyer side, companies are looking to increase their DPO, and they increasingly see the value of using cards to pay their suppliers. On the seller side, companies want to lower their DSO and as a result are more receptive to accepting cards as a payment method, especially in areas where card acceptance has been traditionally lower.

DTS: Awareness of the benefits of using cards for procurement spend is definitely increasing, but many companies still view cards as just a T&E tool. Clients should be helped to understand the specific card benefits for supplier payments by taking a consultative approach. This could be achieved by analysing their accounts payable data to identify where cards can deliver value. Some banks, including Bank of America, have diversified their product portfolios to meet the varied payment needs of corporates across industries, regions, and countries. For example, our Virtual Payables Direct solution in Europe enables companies to pay suppliers via bank transfer while still funding those transactions through their card programmes.

SW: While adoption of card beyond T&E is certainly growing, we have an opportunity to continue to educate on the value for both buyers and suppliers. Virtual cards, for example, are increasingly being used for supplier payments because they add security, deliver rich data, offer working capital benefits, and can be delivered in a variety of ways that meet the needs of the recipient. However, the real opportunity is helping clients see cards as part of a holistic payment strategy, rather than a stand-alone tool. This could mean combining them with enhanced ACH, real-time payments, and cross-border solutions, all integrated into treasury and ERP systems. In North America, for example, our supplier-network-backed suite of Intelligent Payables solutions deliver digital conversion across multiple payment modalities.

RM: Unlike T&E, where the value is widely understood, B2B payment adoption often needs a deeper, case by case approach. That’s why we collaborate with large corporates to analyse, using our data, where the real opportunities lie and how to capture them. A key lever is expanding B2B card acceptance among priority suppliers. When companies share the vendors, they want more flexibility to pay – including by card – we proactively engage those suppliers to join the acceptance network. We commissioned KoreFusion to quantify the business case for card acceptance, from operational efficiencies to measurable revenue growth, and we use those insights to demonstrate the upside.

Another driver is helping procurement quantify hard savings in supplier onboarding. Ad hoc suppliers often cost more due to manual work, exceptions, and expedited processing. By demonstrating economies of scale achievable with virtual cards, we usually quickly reach a shared understanding of value and the path to capture it. Paired with technology that enables companies to directly identify and source card accepting suppliers, and with payment capabilities embedded to make the virtual card seamless by design, we are accelerating adoption while strengthening the partnership between procurement and treasury.

How has card technology developed in recent times?

YY: Among the recent technological developments we have provided for our clients are online card management, virtual cards, and multicurrency debit cards. Just before the pandemic began, HSBC introduced MiVision, a digital platform that provides an end-to-end process for spend management across an entire card programme. It offers real-time insights and analytics, helping our clients to manage their card programmes in a more dynamic fashion, enabling them to use up-to-the-minute insights to analyse cash flow, spending patterns, and overall financial performance.

Our virtual cards have helped clients generate single- and multi-use cards in real-time, driving higher volume and value. The security aspect of virtual cards has helped our clients to better manage their reconciliation. The most recent innovation, which we have introduced in Australia and Hong Kong, is the ability to generate a virtual card that can be integrated into a mobile wallet such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. We introduced multicurrency debit cards about two years ago to enable our clients to better manage their payments to the suppliers. The ability to tap into their multicurrency accounts for better accessibility and usage has been highly welcomed.

SW: We’re continuing to see significant technology advancements in the card space that unlock new efficiencies and strategic benefits. Virtual cards enable more secure one-time supplier payments, with enriched data that simplifies reconciliation. These are being leveraged in ever more use cases. We’re also seeing API connectivity transform cards into a payment rail embedded directly into treasury, procurement, and ERP platforms. This is reducing manual intervention and providing real-time visibility into cash flows, while meeting them where they are in the systems they’re using every day. This creates a more seamless, automated payment flow that reduces friction and broadens where cards can be applied, particularly in B2B supplier payments and accounts payable.

Together, these developments are driving utilisation beyond traditional T&E, and positioning cards as a core treasury tool - one that not only facilitates payments but also supports broader goals such as automation, digitisation, and financial optimisation.

DTS: One standout development is card-to-cash products, offering the ability to use card funding for non-card payments. Our Virtual Payables Direct solution converts card spend into ACH or wire payments, expanding card utility far beyond traditional limits. This flexibility supports more sophisticated procurement and supplier finance strategies, without losing out on card-specific benefits.

RM: Agentic AI has the potential to be a real game changer for corporate payments. Unlike traditional AI, which simply responds to prompts, Agentic AI can act proactively within carefully defined parameters, identifying card payable suppliers, issuing virtual cards for approved spend, optimising payment timing to support cash flow, and even initiating transactions without manual intervention. It can also automatically categorise expenses, flag anomalies, and enrich transaction data in real time, dramatically reducing administrative workload and improving accuracy.

In a corporate context, this means finance teams could delegate routine payment and reconciliation tasks to AI agents, freeing up resources to focus on strategic priorities. Procurement teams could benefit from instant supplier onboarding and spend analysis, while treasury gains greater visibility and control over cash flow cycles.

Visa is heavily investing in and applying AI across commerce and payments. Our first breakthrough, the Visa Intelligence Commerce solution, is designed to enable AI agents to conduct transactions securely and seamlessly – from browsing and selection to purchase, settlement, and post purchase management – while fully complying with corporate requirements.

What is the future of corporate cards?

YY: Corporate cards are fast becoming a key channel of paying suppliers, and we expect that trend to continue. At the same time, the rise of embedded finance opens a world of opportunity for corporate cards. We’re the first global bank to integrate virtual cards into the Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, and also soon to be the first global bank to integrate with SAP Taulia. This innovation enables customers to make payments effortlessly through an automated process, enhancing working-capital management and boosting operational efficiency. As businesses demand smarter and more secure payment options, corporate cards will become an indispensable tool for strategic financial management.

SW: The future is all about integration and intelligence. We’re moving beyond the idea of cards as just a tool for employee expenses. They’re becoming a key part of treasury strategy, helping manage liquidity, improve vendor relationships, and increase visibility. As technology continues to evolve, cards will be even more embedded in workflows and used for everything from procurement to supplier payments. It’s not about replacing other payment methods, it’s about having the right tool for the right job, and cards are increasingly proving that they fit into more of those jobs than ever before.

RM: The future of corporate cards isn’t set in stone – it’s being shaped every day by technology, regulation, and how businesses choose to pay. What we do have is a vision and a pretty good sense of the forces guiding the journey ahead. From my perspective, corporate cards are set to evolve from being just a payment method into a fully integrated part of a company’s infrastructure, embedded directly into the platforms, workflows, and systems that teams already (and will) use. They’ll become far more intelligent, with AI automating approvals, optimising payment timing, and delivering richer insights instantly.

Corporate cards could capture complete invoice level data at the point of payment. It’s something we’re already seeing early signs of through richer transaction standards, supplier system integrations, and AI driven data enrichment. This would remove the need for separate invoicing processes in many cases, making payments and reconciliation seamless.

I also expect the lines between T&E and non-T&E to keep fading, with cards being used for a much broader range of spend, while security will keep strengthening through tokenisation and biometric authentication. If there’s one constant I see, it’s this: corporate cards will keep adapting to how companies operate, not the other way around. This is what will keep them relevant in the years ahead.