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The virtual commercial card space is heating up as Amex and Coupa Pay fight back against competition from Visa and Mastercard. WEX and Visa had partnered back in 2019 to issue Visa commercial virtual cards in North America and Europe.
This week, American Express and Coupa have announced the expansion of their partnership in the US. Under this, US-based customers can now use American Express virtual cards as a payment option with Coupa’s business-to-business (B2B) payments solution, Coupa Pay.
Earlier this year, BNP Paribas had announced that its virtual cards as a payment option will be integrated with Coupa business spend management (BSM) platform. Other companies such as J.P. Morgan partnered with Marqeta to launch virtual credit cards and Conferma Pay had partnered with Visa to integrate Visa virtual cards in the Conferma Pay mobile app this year.
Back in 2019, American Express and Coupa had undergone a similar partnership in which they announced the availability of the American Express virtual card as a payment option within Coupa’s business spend management (BSM) platform. This came in the UK first later with Austrian markets in late 2019. Under that similar expansion program, this partnership has moved to US markets.
Both the companies tout this initiative as this ‘simplifies outdated, complex, and inefficient payment processes for businesses around the world’.
“The pandemic has created widespread work from home policies, meaning previously fragmented and manual business payment processes are no longer an option,” said JR Robertson, vice president of Coupa Pay at Coupa, according to the release. “With Coupa Pay, Coupa and American Express are making it easier for our joint U.S. customers by empowering them to pay using virtual Card technology.”
Other features which the press release highlights are extended pre approvals for card spends, enhanced security, invoice matching and reconciliation and use of card’s payment cycle for better management of working capital for buyers.