Making Your Business More Efficient

Corporate credit cards have always been a great tool to help employees pay for business travel and entertainment. But today’s business credit cards offer a variety of additional benefits that can make the process of accessing, managing, and tracking cash more efficient and rewarding for companies from large enterprises to recent start-ups.

Listed below are a few ways that adding a corporate credit card may help improve your business operations:

• Corporate credit cards provide quick access to capital which can be especially useful during times of expansion or growth. By providing immediate funding for things like inventory, equipment, or new technology, credit cards can make companies more nimble and responsive to market opportunities. In the process, users can also take advantage of “digital float,” the time between when a transaction is posted to the credit card and when the balance needs to be paid before interest is charged.

• Global credit card adoption rates have been increasing rapidly, and this has made cross-border purchases simpler and faster with a credit card than with traditional payment methods such as ACH or wire transfers. It’s often easier to use credit cards for purchases from online merchants as well. Finally, suppliers and vendors generally appreciate the use of credit cards in B2B purchases because the transactions settle faster than other payment alternatives.

• Today’s corporate credit cards offer increasingly robust financial management and reporting tools that can provide businesses with key data for analyzing spending and accurately projecting cash flows. These tools can also be employed to set up spending controls that help manage costs and make it easier for employees to adhere to company spending policies. Card data can also be integrated with a company’s accounting and ERP systems, avoiding errors from manual entry and freeing up more time for value-add analytics.

• Finally, like retail credit cards, corporate cards often allow businesses to earn rewards based on their spending, and they may provide users with other perks.

Today’s corporate credit cards can offer significant value to growing businesses, regardless of their size. If your company is considering the benefits of adding business credit cards, we at Washington Trust are here to help you select the best option for your firm’s specific needs.

Click HERE to learn more about Washington Trust’s business credit card options.