With Payhawk cards, you can empower your employees and help them save time and effort while still keeping track of your company's spend.
You can issue the type of card that is most suitable for the use cases you and your employees need to deal with daily, set the spend limit that's tailored to your experience, and define the card controls you need both for individual cards or cardholders and on a company level.
Types of cards
You can choose the Payhawk cards you need depending on your use case and requirements.
Individual employee cards
Depending on your company's requirements, you can issue the card that fits the needs of each employee.
Name | Type | Description |
Standard | Physical | Plastic Payhawk cards for regular contactless or POS payments. |
Standard | Virtual | Digital Payhawk cards for secure online payments that become active immediately upon issuing. Standard virtual cards can also be used as temporary cards for a specific purpose and can be set to a custom active period - for example, for a business trip or payments related to a specific project. |
Premium Metal | Physical | Brushed, 18g metal Payhawk cards. |
Single-use | Virtual | Digital Payhawk cards for secure one-time payments to a specific supplier that become active immediately upon issuing. Single-use virtual cards function like standard virtual cards but are automatically closed after a single transaction is completed. |
American Express | Virtual | Digital American Express Cards, issued and managed through Payhawk, while linked to a physical one as a funding source. |
Credit cards
To be able to issue credit cards for your account, your company must have gone through an application process for a credit line with Payhawk. Once, successful, you can issue any of the available individual cards, but for American Express ones, and link them to your credit line as a funding source.
Team cards
In Payhawk, you can define a shared limit for a team that does not necessarily correspond to a hierarchical team within your company structure. For example, you may have a group of employees coming from IT, Marketing, Finance, and Sales working on a single project together. In such cases, you can add their cards to the shared budget thus making them part of the team card for that project.
Linked cards
Currently, if your company is based in the US and has physical American Express Main Cards, you can link these Cards to Payhawk and use them as funding sources for the virtual American Express Cards you can then issue and manage through Payhawk.
Pre-order cards
Pre-order cards are unassigned physical Payhawk cards that can be issued in bulk. Once delivered, you can distribute them to employees and assign each card by using the assignment code on the card envelope. For more information, see the articles on issuing and assigning pre-order cards.
Stand-alone limits and spend card policies
When issuing a Payhawk card, you need to select whether the card will have an individual monthly limit (stand-alone limit) or will be added to an already existing spend policy at your company.
Stand-alone limits are designed to allow you the flexibility of providing individual monthly limits for cards. Such cards are suitable for recurring payments that are easy to estimate and do not require complex approvals- for example, purchasing office expenses or paying subscriptions.
Limits based on company spend policies are suitable for organizations that want to group their cardholders into different categories based on their spending behavior. For example, you can define a high-level management policy that can have a high-spend limit. Whenever you choose a card to belong to this policy, the limits will be automatically enforced.
Spend limits
In Payhawk, spend limits define how much a cardholder can spend from their card based on a condition or duration - for example, per single transaction (single-use cards), per day (daily limit), and so on.
Depending on your requirements, you can choose either of the following spend limit options in Payhawk:
Recurring limit - Allows you to determine the available funds and the period for which they can be spent, for example, per week (weekly), per month (monthly), per year (yearly).
Limit settings - Adjust the way a recurring limit is applied. For example, whether a surplus is allowed (carryover) or not (hard limit).
In Payhawk, spend limits can be defined in the following use cases:
Setting and managing spend limits and card controls for individual cards
Setting and managing spend limits and card controls for team cards
Setting and managing spend limits and card controls for spend policies
The following table lists the spend limits that are available for you to define in Payhawk. They can be set for individual cards or as part of your company's spend policies.
Spend limit | Definition | Card | Policy |
Weekly recurring limit | The amount of money available on the card for the cardholder to spend per week. If at the beginning of the week, the available funds are less than the recurring limit, the card will be automatically topped up. | ✔ | ✔ |
Monthly recurring limit | The amount of money available on the card for the cardholder to spend per month. If at the beginning of the month, the available funds are less than the recurring limit, the card will be automatically topped up. | ✔ | ✔ |
Yearly recurring limit | The amount of money available on the card for the cardholder to spend per year. If at the beginning of the year, the available funds are less than the recurring limit, the card will be automatically topped up. | ✔ | ✔ |
Daily limit | Allows cardholders to cumulatively spend a pre-defined amount for 24 hours irrespective of the available limit on the card. | ✔ | ✔ |
Single transaction limit | Allows cardholders to spend only a pre-defined amount per transaction. A transaction above the specified amount won't be executed irrespective of the currently available card amount. | ✔ | ✔ |
Increase-to limit | Allows cardholders to carry over any unused funds from the previous period. | ✔ | ✔ |
Increase-with limit | Allows cardholders to increase their limit by the defined amount, allowing their funds to accumulate over time. | ✔ | ✔ |
Set-to limit | Reinstates the original limit every time and doesn’t permit fund request carryover. | ✔ | ✔ |
Card controls
In Payhawk, card controls allow or block the spending of company funds. For example, blocking a merchant or a merchant category, always or conditionally (upon approved request) allowing ATM withdrawals, time and day (defining a day or time frame for transactions), region and country (defining locations for transactions), and so on.
ATM withdrawals are supported for physical Payhawk cards only.
In Payhawk, card controls can be defined in the following use cases:
Setting and managing spend limits and card controls for individual cards
Setting and managing spend limits and card controls for team cards
Setting and managing spend limits and card controls for spend policies
The following table lists the card controls that are available for you to define in Payhawk. They can be set for individual cards or as part of your company's spend policies.
Card control | Definition | Card | Policy |
Online payments | By enabling them, you allow the cardholder to use their card to pay for required goods or services online. | ✔ | ✔ |
ATM withdrawals | Within their card limit, you can allow cardholders to draw company cash at ATMs whenever needed or only after receiving explicit approval of an ATM withdrawal request. | ✔ | ✔ |
Fund requests | By enabling them, a cardholder can request additional funds before the automatic top-up if the available card funds have been exhausted or are insufficient. Additionally, you can control the spending by:
| ✔ | ✔ |
Fund request carryover | Allows cardholders to carry over any remaining funds from previous fund requests even if the funds become more than the limit allows. | ✔ | ✔ |
Country & region | Prevents cardholders from spending in a given country or region. | ✔ | ✔ |
Day & time | Allows cardholders to use their cards only during a given time zone. By default, the time zone is automatically detected from the browser. | ✔ | ✔ |
Merchant category | Allows or blocks Payhawk-defined merchant categories. The allowing and blocking of merchant categories in Payhawk is based on merchant category codes (MCCs), grouped at the policy level. Payhawk Administrators can allow or block transactions by selecting or typing a category, or directly entering a specific MCC. Transactions outside of the allowed categories will be declined, and the spender will be notified through a push notification. | ✔ | ✔ |
Merchant | Allows or blocks specific merchants so that cardholders can execute payments only toward approved merchants. | ✔ | ✔ |
Auto-blocking cards | A card will be blocked automatically if the cardholder has late expenses that are more than a pre-defined number for a pre-defined period. | ✔ | ✔ |
Custom active period | For standard virtual cards you can define a custom period after which they'll automatically be closed. | ✔ | ✔ |