Credit cards at the movies

Ah, the memories of first hearing about credit cards. You know, those times when maybe you'd catch your family chatting about them at the dinner table or see them being wielded like magic in movies. It's funny how these little plastic rectangles could stir up such a mix of excitement for us in pop culture before we were even old enough to know what they were.

Credit cards at the movies

Before we had virtual cards, e-wallets (and the wider digital revolution), credit cards were only physical. Typically, plastic cards that could get the protagonist into and out of all kinds of financial and non-financial scrapes.

To celebrate the launch of our 18g meticulously crafted brushed metal cards, we've gone through some hit shows and movies (old and new) and pulled together a short list of our favourite times when the card was the star.

Non-financial scrapes, you ask? Yep, look at James Bond in "A View to a Kill," for example, turning his Visa card into a lockpick with the help of Q. Now, that's some next-level spy gadgetry.

Or back in the financial sphere, and Rachel Green's power move in season one, episode one of Friends. Rachel (and friends) decide to cut up the credit cards provided by her father to help her stand on her own two feet in the "real world.”

And, what about the timeless antics of the classic UK character, Mr. Bean? In The Curse of Mr Bean (1991), he finds himself stuck in the park with all the fixings for a picnic but no way to put them together. Enter his trusty credit card, doubling up as a butter knife for the perfect sandwich.

But credit cards didn't just make waves in dramas and comedies. They even found their way into the world of superheroes. Take Batman and Robin (1997), for example; a bit cheesier than the usual Batman fare, it featured mega-camp baddies like Poison Ivy and Mr Freeze. In one big fight scene, Batman whips out his very own personalised Bat Card to pay $ 7 million for a date with Poison Ivy.

Credit cards in reality

In reality credit cards are a bit less glitz and glamour (apart from maybe our super-sleek new metal corporate cards). But what smart corporate cards can do well, is offer security, flexibility, and speed to large and growing businesses with lots of spenders.

Lights, camera, time and cost-saving benefits… Here are few of the biggest advantages of our customisable corporate Visa cards. With our cards, you can:

• Manage cash flow effortlessly with Visa credit and debit cards in the EEA, UK, and US, and expand your global spending reach with a combination of physical and virtual cards across 32 countries
• Track carbon emissions associated with card spend effortlessly and enhance your ESG reporting efforts
• Customise your cards to your exact needs with versatile spending controls, including card freezes, vendor restrictions, auto-blocking for late expenses, and more
• Ensure compliant spending with customisable workflows for on-the-go fund requests and more
• Save time by quickly capturing receipts in the app and automating data entry with an advanced OCR technology
• Simplify payment reconciliation by automatically matching card payments between Payhawk and your ERP system
• Enhance security for online purchases with 3DS password protection and transaction monitoring
• Automate bulk onboarding and off-boarding processes with smart HR integrations, saving valuable time and resources

And much more: See the Payhawk corporate Visa card benefits in full.