There is new financial assistance to your workforce and beyond
Right now the world is hard at work fighting two things: the coronavirus and the collateral damage it’s leaving in its wake. The challenges and roadblocks that stand in the way of addressing the current crisis are unquantifiable and now more than ever our communities need to be working together. It’s going to be a team effort to stop the virus, find a cure, and restore the health of our economy.
When it comes to the workforce, people have been stranded abroad, jobs have been put on hold, some jobs are critically overwhelmed while others have just disappeared, and employees everywhere are working from home. These people need support, they need access to supplies, or maybe they just need the tools to keep on working—but one of the biggest questions everyone is asking is, “how am I going to pay for this?”
A large tech company came to us asking for help. They had dozens of interns in quarantine who needed a means to buy food, toiletries, and other supplies they were previously getting for free on the company campus. You would think getting these interns the resources they needed wouldn’t be an issue for an organization of such stature, but the options out there are limited and inefficient even on a good day. In a crisis like this, we’re suddenly alarmed at how inadequate our processes really are.
And this is just one example. Companies and employees of all industries have been displaced in one way or another and we know getting a means of payment into people’s hands is an issue so many are facing right now. CNBC conducted a survey among their Global CFO Counsel and 40% reported stranded employees were an issue. Beyond stranded or remote employees, you have schools trying to ensure that families have the resources to continue education at home; government organizations trying to receive aid and redistribute that money to necessary programs; companies wishing to help their out-of-work employees pay for food while simultaneously supporting local businesses. And with employees everywhere spread out, there’s a big need to carefully distribute access to payments.
This is where virtual cards could really come to the rescue. For companies the benefits are innumerable: they can be digitally distributed, you can control spending limits, cancel them at any time, and they give you better oversight over how money is being spent. Companies also can utilize their credit in new ways, and can reduce the burden of reimbursement and reconciliation processes.
For employees, though, the benefit of virtual cards is really a necessity. For individuals, laying out personal finances to cover company expenses is an additional burden at a point in time when many are questioning how they are going to pay rent. Even worse, for individuals who do not have the excess financial resources, covering these corporate expenses even temporarily is simply not possible.
Virtual cards provide immediate access to funds and eliminate these financial concerns for employees while also making it easier on the bookkeeping side for companies. To ease these financial burdens in an already difficult time, Extend, the virtual payments platform, has decided to offer our services for free. There are a number of different solutions on the market today, all with their pros and cons, but many aren’t aware of the options that exist. One thing all business owners should be aware of is that individuals should not struggle to cover corporate expenses.