Banks have been looking for ways to improve their relationships with small businesses, and Visa just added a new tool to banks’ offerings. Visa Payment Controls is a web-enabled application that lets small businesses configure the capabilities of the commercial cards given to employees, but it will be available only from the Visa-participating banks that sign up to offer the service.
According to Visa:
With easy, online management controls, Visa Payment Controls gives small business owners the flexibility to manage how employees can use their cards based on location (i.e., international and domestic travel blocking), spending limits (i.e., purchase limits, cash-access restrictions and ATM withdrawal limits), and categories (i.e., channel, transaction type and merchant category restrictions).
These controls (at the level of the merchant, the time of day, and the geographic location) have become standard parts of the control structure available to larger corporate clients. Small businesses that are large enough to have multiple employees who need different kinds of buy privileges should benefit most from Visa’s new offering. Even if the transaction volume is relatively low, small businesses will also benefit from the efficiency of card-based expenses being passed directly into accounting systems, and the reduction of risk that comes from transparency of transactions and eliminating petty cash accounts.
Click here to read more from the press release.