Optimise spend: Tailor single-use cards to department and team needs

Issuing corporate cards to fit your business needs is critical to controlling spend. Without temporary virtual cards, unauthorised expenses can sneak in, leading to budget overruns and chaos.

What are single-use cards?

Interested in the idea of single cards, but not sure what they are? A single-use virtual card is a card you can use for one single transaction, such as online purchases.

Single-use cards are especially useful as they give you superior control over company spend and mitigate any fraudulent activity with your business funds.

And how might you use them as a Payhawk customer? We let you virtually issue the cards instantly to non-cardholders, such as freelancers or contractors, so that they can spend a specified amount of money with a specific merchant. Plus, the spend is tied to the transaction, making reconciliation easy and stress-free.

The need for customisable cards to support internal policies

Internal spend policies exist for a reason — to enforce permissible spend across the entire organisation. Policies give you and your coworkers a framework to spend within, keeping you under budget and on track to drive business growth.

You know, you can’t leave responsible spend to chance, particularly in a large or growing organisation with lots of budget owners and cardholders. Therefore, your internal policies set the standard of what coworkers can and can’t spend allocated funds on.

Every business is different, but thanks to the customization options, you can ensure that your company’s expense policies work properly and that you enforce them easily and effectively. This also includes the ability to issue custom corporate cards, which allow the finance team to better control employee purchases. For example, through cards issued specifically for a certain purchase, for business travel, or for a specific subscription.

Finance teams lack proactive controls

Proactive controls over finances mean you can set spend boundaries as and when they’re appropriate, adjust budgets whenever needed, block cards, issue temporary cards, and generally have better control over how your company spends money.

If you don’t have access to these kinds of proactive card controls, it’s easy for cardholders to spend out-of-policy as you can’t effectively block spend decisions. As you know, this causes a whole host of other problems, such as budget overrunning, fraudulent risks, and a significant increase in admin.

The Payhawk solution

The solution is to swap reactive card controls for proactive advanced ones. This swap involves implementing single-use cards, additional limits, and controls that will enable admins to issue cards that cover many more use cases, including fuel cards, travel & entertainment cards, and more. Basically, you will have the ability to create a card for every purpose and need you have in your business, for example:

• Adjustable limits
• Merchant controls
• Date & time controls
• Ability to customs the card active period
• And more

This granular level of card control gives admins the chance to issue any card they want to cover any scenario, all without risking out-of-policy spend or fraudulent spend. These cards improve spend visibility by separating types of spend on dedicated cards and make controlling spend even more secure.

Issue single-use virtual cards

Already a Payhawk user? As an admin, you can now issue single-use virtual cards, giving you ultimate control over specific use case scenarios. After one transaction, the virtual card will deactivate, making it even easier to control where and when cardholders can make payments.

Single-use cards improve financial security, as once the specific transaction has been completed, the card no longer exists and can’t be used again.

The single-use card is set up for a specific need, i.e. for an employee who makes one-off sporadic purchases, like signing up for training. The fact that the transaction is tied to the amount and the specific card makes real-time reconciliation even more straightforward, improving accounting accuracy.

And the best bit? You can instantly set up a virtual single-use card, meaning the recipient can spend immediately after issuance. No spending delays mean teams can spend freely when projects require it, keeping business operations running smoothly.

**Please note this feature is available for virtual cards only.

Use cases for different types of cards

Single-use cards are just one piece of the puzzle, and at Payhawk, we offer multiple cards and controls to ensure you have every kind of spend control you need in your pocket.

As Mehdi Sli, Executive producer and film director at Explose Digital Agency, says:

Virtual cards can help you be more efficient. For example, if someone in the art department makes an expense request for an item with Payhawk, it's simple. You can just create the card, set the limit, and it's done.

As we mentioned above, a single-use card deactivates itself after one transaction. So, while it's not possible to combine it with custom active periods and determine how long it will be active, there are plenty of further options for that kind of need.

Different kinds of card setups have different benefits – and here are a few top use cases:

• For project use. A dedicated card can come in handy for specific projects. Set the start and end date for the card's active period and set relevant merchant categories, such as taxis, parking or accommodation. You can also set the relevant country, day and time if required.
• For business trips. To use your card as a travel card for business trips, you can set the start and end date for the card's active period and set relevant merchant categories so the card isn't used for anything unauthorised. Choose categories, including accommodation and restaurants, and set the relevant country or region.
• For any kind of use case. The great thing about Payhawk's single-use cards is that you can mix and match controls and limits to suit any use case. So, if your use case doesn't fit neatly into the options above, that's okay; create your own.

Ready to control card spend with more nuance and customisation than ever before? Explore more card benefits on our dedicated corporate cards page. Or request a personalised demo today to learn how our single-use cards can supercharge control and efficiency at your organisation.