OCBC Bank ups the ante on its virtual commercial card offering with the integration of a first-of-its-kind mobile employee payment solution for corporate-based spending.
OCBC Bank has utilised the Visa Commercial Pay mobile solution as part of its inaugural virtual purchasing card offering. The OCBC Virtual Purchasing Card enables businesses to digitalise and streamline all of their payment requirements while providing real-time visibility into employee spending, alongside captured data regarding automatic reconciliation. The accessible benefits of such enhanced operational visibility include the identification of core spending categories and the capability of more effective price negotiation with suppliers.
Visa Commercial Pay mobile enables the employees and non-employees of OCBC corporate customers to request virtual cards on-demand via their mobile app and use the virtual cards for making mobile contactless, in-app and online payments at all Visa accepting merchants. This reduces the need for employees and non-employees such as contract staff and visiting delegates, to pay out of their own pockets first as the card can be instantly issued even for ad-hoc transactions.
Melvyn Low, Head, Global Transaction Banking, OCBC Bank, added, “The OCBC Virtual Purchasing Card is very relevant to businesses today. It is a highly secure payment solution that gives a bird’s-eye view on spending – which is data that many businesses do not yet have access to today.
“Many of the bank’s clients have expressed interest in adopting this solution, with SUSS being the first to come on-board,” he continues. “We expect the take-up to be strong, especially for businesses looking to introduce a commercial card scheme for the first time as they can now leap-frog physical cards and go straight to a virtual card scheme.”
B2B Offerings
The OCBC Virtual Purchasing Card also features two other B2B payment offerings:
Visa Commercial Pay B2B: A digital platform that allows corporates to generate unique virtual card numbers with pre-defined control parameters and customised data fields for each invoice payment to their suppliers.
Visa Commercial Pay travel: A solution that enables businesses to centrally manage their business travel spend, such as air travel, hotel, rail and car rental. The solution seamlessly integrates into business travel reservation processes and can deliver enhanced travellers’ data, full spend visibility and automated expense reconciliation through the use of unique virtual card numbers for each booking. Travellers are also able to view their travel reservations together with their trip spend within the Visa Commercial Pay mobile app.
Virtual cards issued under the OCBC Virtual Purchasing Card programme can be for single or recurring use, with pre-defined control parameters. These control parameters can cover spending limits, a validity period or even a specific category of goods and services.
The launch of the OCBC Virtual Purchasing Card is timely as such digital payment solutions are expected to grow in popularity. According to Mercator Advisory Group, which specialises in global payments, their research on commercial cards for international markets showed that the adoption of virtual card solutions by companies in Asia-Pacific is poised to grow at 40% over the next four years. The benefits that such virtual card solutions can bring to working capital were cited as one of the factors behind this potential growth.
Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) has become the bank’s first customer to sign up for this solution and will be piloted to its employees in the second quarter of 2021.
Currently, university employees use personal cards to pay for certain corporate purchases and seek reimbursements thereafter. The OCBC Virtual Purchasing Card programme will replace the manual processes of reimbursement and account reconciliation with a streamlined and user- friendly alternative that saves time for employees.
Kwek Peck Lin, Director for Planning & Finance, SUSS, comments “We want to digitalise the way we work and that extends to all aspects of the university’s operations. This virtual card solution makes payments easier for our employees – everything can be done via mobile app – and for our finance department too. In terms of security, virtual cards provide more assurance compared to traditional commercial card solutions, and that was also an important factor for us when deciding to come on-board.”
Kunal Chatterjee, Visa Country Manager for Singapore & Brunei closes with “The opportunity to convert more business payments to be made digitally is tremendous in the commercial sector in Singapore. We believe it is important for us to work with our partners, such as OCBC Bank to introduce innovative solutions that will benefit corporates including the ability to issue virtual commercial cards instantly to employees of organisations so that they can make business payments seamlessly. We are also proud to share that it will be the first time in the world that corporates are able to make mobile contactless payments using their virtual payment cards with Visa Commercial Pay.”
