Coupa and HSBC team up to offer virtual cards

The trend of banks and payment companies partnering with spend management software providers continues.

This week, business spend management company Coupa Software has announced that it has partnered with HSBC under its Coupa Pay offering. In this, the collaboration will provide European companies with virtual cards which the press note states would be beneficial in managing their business funds and payments under their comprehensive Business Spend Management strategy.

The press release also noted that the demand for B2B payment methods have continued to grow and more corporations and businesses have started to adopt ‘remote work policies and continue to fight fraudulent activity on traditional payment rails’.

Last year, Carahsoft and Coupa teamed up for spend management solutions while in North America, American Express expanded its virtual card footprint with Coupa Pay integration.

Virtual cards help businesses to get visibility and control over the pre-approved spending and reconciliation which helps the finance and procurement teams.

Roger Goulart, executive vice president of Business Development and Alliances at Coupa, noted that the availability of HSBC virtual cards on the Coupa platform will ensure the clients have the benefits the virtual payments have which include ‘speeding up payment processes and improving liquidity and working capital’.

In Europe last year, BNP Paribas integrated its virtual cards with Coupa Pay.

While Brian Tomkins, global head of Commercial Cards at HSBC, noted that the integration of virtual payments with spend management platform would bring together ‘the operational efficiency, security, and working capital benefits’ of their cards with ‘digital procurement and payables automation of Coupa’s spend management software’.

The companies using this platform would also be able to improve efficiency in AP processes and also generate insights on company-wide spend which would make businesses take better decisions, manage risk and optimize liquidity and working capital.

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