Are you looking for a new business credit card? Look no further. We're exploring top credit card features to look out for and how the offerings look in 2025. Plus, we've narrowed down the top seven contenders, so you don't have to.
Not all business credit cards are created equal. And while many will let you manage company spending at a surface level, not many offer the features you need to add real value to your business.
Selecting the right business card is important (as is all the corresponding software). Imagine spending lots of time setting up your new cards and an expense management system, only to realise your new setup isn't quite as efficient as you thought it would be…
The right corporate credit card should enhance your financial processes. It should make it easier to see exactly where your company is spending funds. It should also help you track spending accurately. With a robust corporate credit card program, you can control expenses tightly from afar by setting spending limits and card restrictions for teams or individuals.
From digital expense tracking (that means you always know where you stand) to scope 3 emission tracking (that helps you manage your carbon footprint), uncover the corporate card features you should look out for in 2025 and the biggest benefits of business credit cards.
With so many credit card options available, where do you start? Here are seven sought-after corporate credit card features you should consider.
Proactive spend control is key to effective spend management. Choose a business credit card with granular controls over spending limits, approved merchants, and vendors. And look for features like time, day, country, and region restrictions to prevent fraud.
The right card will help you balance control with staff autonomy and accountability.
Corporate cards should be versatile and suit your specific company needs.
Need to issue a card for travel and entertainment purposes? Set your corporate card up to allow for easy business travel and automatically deactivate it once the trip is over.
Or perhaps you want to set your card up to support those working from home? You can set up a card to purchase office supplies and equipment with a monthly renewal allowance. And you can set preferred merchants to ensure automatic compliance with company policy regardless of where your employees work.
You need your corporate cards to work for you and your team structure. You need a highly customisable solution, like Payhawk.
How else can you use your card?
FX fees are a big expense if your employees travel a lot or if you regularly spend funds in other currencies. So, choose a supplier that can offer you cards in multiple currencies to allow local card payments.
At Payhawk, for example, you can open accounts and issue cards for free local payments in seven currencies (GBP, EUR, USD, BGN, RON, DKK, and PLN). You also get global acceptance and market-leading performance as our corporate Visa cards are accepted at over 46 million merchants worldwide and come with the lowest FX fees in the industry.
According to a Road to Net Zero Study report, only 1% of companies with 501 to 1,000 employees say they feel on top of all scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions reporting systems and processes.
With a solution like Payhawk, you can automatically track emissions from every card transaction, making it much easier to track scope 3 emissions (which are notoriously difficult).
Let's say your product team has a stall at a marketing event; they use their corporate card to pay for taxi travel. As soon as they record the expense in the system, we work out the carbon emissions like in the below image:
Accurate emission measurement lets you better understand your impact on the world around you and properly report within CSRD regulations. And with this information in hand? You can improve strategic planning and efficiency, help fulfil sustainability goals, and make you more attractive to both investors and customers.
There's nothing worse than finding out your card isn't accepted at a particular merchant; this can delay business operations and put cardholders in a tricky position, particularly if they're in another country.
At Payhawk, our cards are not only accepted by over 46 million merchants but also widely accepted in EU countries and across the US (200 countries, to be precise), from online advertising to car rentals and beyond. Removing borders when purchasing the best goods means business operations aren't held back by location.
And if your people are travelling and need to spend but they're low on funds? With Payhawk, you can keep everything moving without risk.
Diana Ruseva, Finance Manager at Eleven Ventures, says, "My favourite feature is the low funds alert. It helps me avoid leaving some of my teammates without any funds in the middle of a business trip abroad."
Look for a card solution to help you centralise your overall card management (and spend management). This means having everything you ever need under one roof — from accounts payable to subscriptions and procurement.
From flexible spending policies, instant fund requests, and card transaction synchronisation to automated subscription detection and payment management, you need everything in one place to avoid data gaps, delays, missing information, and wasted time switching between screens.
As Carolina Einarsson, CFO at Essentia Analytics, says:
Before Payhawk, we used a couple of point tools, excel, and a few different credit cards, but we didn't have an all-in-one centralised solution. We knew spend management could be a quick win for us in finance; we saw Payhawk as the future where we could have expense data entry, credit cards, approvals, spend requests, paying invoices, and reimbursements all in one.
At Payhawk, we have an internal saying, "The cards are just the start."
In a nutshell, the saying means: Yes, using corporate cards with inbuilt controls means you can improve spend policy compliance. And yes, improving policy compliance will reduce the risk of overspending, cost creep, and fraudulent expenses.
On top of the card benefits, with Payhawk, you can also use features like automated workflows and spend policies to help you manage spend at every point of the process, before, during, and after payment.
We also support card auto-blocking for when your team doesn't submit expenses on time. And you can set predefined spend limits to keep tight control of all card spending. (Find out more in the short video below).
We explore seven viable business credit card options for your organisation in 2025.
With an impressive 4.6 stars on G2, we're extremely proud of our customer rating and put customers at the centre of everything we do.
We offer a comprehensive credit card and spend management solution for growing multi-entity businesses that want customisation, control, and visibility over their company-wide business spend.
Our corporate cards offer customers benefits, including:
Offering prepaid MasterCard and debit cards, Soldo is an alternative to a business credit card. Soldo ensures expense management is as straightforward as possible and enables customers to issue prepaid cards to staff members to ensure they don't use their personal funds. This makes the hassle of reimbursement a thing of the past.
Other features include:
Airbase (recently acquired by Paylocity) offers credit cards alongside its spend management platform. The platform enables customers to build automated approval workflows, analyse spend in real time and integrate with general ledgers for better financial management.
Other features include:
Airwallex cards are ideal for businesses dealing with regular international transactions due to their competitive Forex rates. Manage spend closely by creating automated approval workflows and tracking expenses in real time.
Other features include:
Similar to most corporate credit cards, Pleo notifies the cardholder after every purchase, prompting them to snap a picture of their receipt and submit the expense digitally. Administrators can set individual card spending limits through the platform, helping to control spending across the company. With access to both virtual and physical cards, funds have never been so readily accessible for projects or one-off transactions.
Other features include:
Although a Ramp card works outside the US (including Mexico, Canada, and Europe), your business must be registered in the US to apply for one. With real-time monitoring, customers can keep track of spending and quickly identify unauthorised or unexpected transactions. As a charge card, the balance must be repaid in full every month.
Other features include:
Spendesk corporate cards sit within the company’s spend management solution. Customers can automate approval workflows, set spend limits, load prepaid cards to keep control of funds and issue both physical and virtual cards.
Other features include:
You can't choose a credit card without first knowing how you currently spend. What do you need from an expense management and corporate card solution? Taking time to analyse expenditure and pinpoint the purpose of the card makes researching your card options much easier.
The last thing you want is to find the best corporate credit card solution and then realise it doesn't integrate with your tech stack. You need a corporate card solution that promotes real-time reconciliation, which means seamless integration with your accounting software.
Finding a tool that slots into your ERP, accounting, HR and business travel systems can improve operational efficiency and expense data accuracy tenfold.
There’s no point in choosing a credit card that’s missing some vital features purely because you didn’t know they existed. Shop around and understand what you can expect from a corporate card. Some features to evaluate include customisable card controls and limits, an adjoining spend management platform, an expense process (e.g. Can you scan the receipt?), etc.
Need more advice? Fill in our card checklist.
You need a solution that aligns with your business needs — it's non-negotiable. And with business needs varying significantly from company to company, you need a corporate credit card solution that's customisable for your specific organisational needs.
Want to check out customisable cards for yourself? Book a personalised demo to talk to one of our in-house experts today.
Trish Toovey works across the UK and US markets to craft content at Payhawk. Covering anything from ad copy to video scripting, Trish leans on a super varied background in copy and content creation for the finance, fashion, and travel industries.
Whether you have tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees, we’re making your business spend work for you, giving you control over spending at scale with a single solution. Say goodbye to tedious finance tasks, schedule a demo with us today.
Payhawk Limited, All rights reserved. Payhawk Limited is registered under company registration number 11747263, Chancery House, 53-64 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1QS. Payhawk Debit and Credit Cards are issued by Payhawk Financial Services UAB and Paynetics AD in the EEA, Payhawk Financial Services Limited and Payrnet Limited in the UK, and Cross River Bank, Member FDIC in the US.
The Payhawk product is not available for micro-enterprises or small charities based in the UK as defined in the UK Consumer Duty Regulations. See the FCA website for more information.
The Payhawk Visa Debit card and Payhawk Visa Credit cards are issued pursuant to a license from Visa.
