Businesses need ways to facilitate their operations and streamline their finances. Virtual prepaid cards are one of the ways to help organizations with their daily operational needs. A new and innovative method to manage business finances, virtual prepaid cards can help businesses execute their operations with efficiency and automation at the forefront.

What is A Virtual Prepaid Card?

The digital versions of traditional prepaid cards, fintech companies, or non-traditional financial institutions provide virtual cards. These cards work exactly like payment cards with a major distinguishing feature — digital format.

Virtual prepaid cards in India offer flexibility and transparency, enabling businesses to set spending limits for each department, monitor transactions in real time, and reconcile expenses easily. These cards can be both reloadable and one-time usage.

These cards also minimize the risk of fraud as they can be controlled and restricted when subjected to any suspicious activity.

How Do Virtual Prepaid Cards Work?

Purchase: Buy a virtual prepaid card online from a bank or a payment service provider. Post its purchase, get the card activated after KYC authentication, and load it with a specific amount of money.

Card Usage: These virtual prepaid cards can be used to make online purchases wherever credit or debit cards are accepted. Whenever checking out, enter the card details including name, number, and CVV, and make the payment. You can also save the card details in the app for future purchases.

Spending Limits: The spending limit of the virtual card depends on the amount of money loaded onto it. You cannot make a transaction more than the preloaded amount. This makes it easier to manage spending.

Reloading: Virtual prepaid cards can be both — reloadable and single-time use. While reloadable cards can have additional funds, single-use cards can discarded after the balance is exhausted.

Security Features: Virtual prepaid cards have enhanced security for online transactions. In case the card details are compromised, you can immediately block it and if not, the loss will be restricted to the amount loaded on the card.

Management and Monitoring: These virtual prepaid cards can be managed online via a dashboard where you can check your balance, view transaction history, and reload the card too.

Expiration: Virtual prepaid cards have an expiration date. The remaining balance after the expiration date may be forfeited if not transferred or used before expiration.

How to Use Virtual Prepaid Cards?

To use a virtual prepaid card, the provider needs to register your business on their platform and give you access to control and manage the card according to your requirements. As soon as your business gets registered, funds can be loaded by the administrator or the one controlling them. These funds can be used to make online payments, buy subscriptions, get groceries and food, and also get fuel while traveling for business purposes.

Types of Virtual Prepaid Cards in India 

Businesses can track and reconcile their payments using a virtual card. EnKash provides the following prepaid virtual cards for businesses to streamline their operations.

Meal Cards

Businesses can issue these cards to their employees to purchase food and grocery-related items across multiple food chains, retail outlets, and supermarkets. Meal cards help employees in saving their taxes. 

Fuel Cards

Employees traveling for work can be issued fuel cards. Limits can be defined on these cards to ensure fuel expenses are within the predefined budget and there is no misuse.

Digital Marketing Cards

Businesses need to promote their products and services online and for that digital marketing campaigns are required. Having a digital marketing card can help the team to define their budgets and run them independently.

SaaS Cards

Businesses can use a SaaS card for all subscription-based products. These cards come with smart controls.

T&E Cards

Sales professionals and other teams may need to travel for business-related work. The T&E card helps manage all travel expenses efficiently by tracking them in real-time.

Purchase Cards

An essential part of any business is procurement. To do it easily and without any hassle, P-Cards or purchase cards can add great value to your business.

DIY Card Module 

EnKash provides a DIY card module to businesses. Using this card module, businesses can:

• Create purpose-based cards according to their needs and use cases, and define spending rules that are aligned with their organization's policies
• Enforce policies and easily streamline approval workflows to ensure business spending aligns with the budget
• Gain real-time insights to analyze the spending patterns and reports, allowing businesses to make better decisions and optimize business spending 

How to Choose the Right Virtual Prepaid Card?

Here is a handy checklist for you to purchase the virtual prepaid cards:

Identify Business Needs

Before purchasing any virtual prepaid card, identify why your business needs that card. Which expenses can be streamlined with these cards? Also, identify the frequency of this card usage. 

Know Associated Fees

Any virtual prepaid card provider will charge you for the card. It is important to know the issuance fees, reloading fees, maintenance fees, and transaction fees associated with these cards. First, compare, then purchase. 

Usability

Ensure the virtual prepaid card you are opting for is valid across multiple merchants and online platforms. Only then, you will be able to make full use of the card.

Security Features

Choose cards that offer robust security features. Cards with two-factor authentication and real-time transaction alerts are more dependable.

Reloadability 

It is vital to check the reloadable methods available for the card. The reloading process should be convenient, safe, and easy for anyone operating. 

Benefits of Virtual Prepaid Cards

Real-time Tracking

Businesses can check the spend visibility of any of their linked virtual prepaid cards in real time. Business virtual cards can be tracked on the EnKash dashboard where all transactions and expenses are updated immediately. Companies can track all spending data from anywhere, anytime. 

Secure Online Payments

EnKash corporate cards are compliant will all regulatory guidelines. All cards have encryption and security and cannot be exploited. Businesses can generate an infinite number of virtual cards and allocate them to different departments in the organization. These cards can be immediately blocked in case there’s any misuse.

Spending Limits

Companies can set spending limits for each virtual card to track how and where they are being used. Transactions exceeding a specific limit will be declined automatically. Policies can be enforced for cards linked to specific departments or projects.

Approval Workflows

Organizations can define approval hierarchies as per their structure. It can be at a single level or multiple levels depending on the budget and needs of the organization. Cards once issued to the departments can be controlled by the department head.

Accounting Automation

Businesses can integrate their accounting softwares with EnKash and can easily reconcile all virtual card data. This way there will be transparency in accounting books facilitating data management and bringing in efficiency.

Virtual Prepaid Cards for Employees

Businesses can reduce their burden and improve their efficiency by issuing virtual prepaid cards to their employees. Know the benefits of issuing prepaid virtual cards to employees.

Vendor Management

Create virtual cards depending on the number of vendors. Assign these cards to individual vendors and keep track of all the payments. Online payments can be done quickly and tracked for each department and vendor expense without any hassle. Create more virtual prepaid cards as you add more vendors to your business and make timely payments.

Quick Business Payments 

Booking flight tickets and making hotel reservations can be a matter of seconds with a virtual prepaid card. You can get fuel card recharge instantly and travel easily. These cards make business travel via online payments easy and efficient.

Easy Reconciliation 

Payments made via virtual prepaid cards are easy to track and reconcile. The finance team can easily find receipts, bills and details of all transactions done via these cards and can maintain the accounting books.

Benefits of EnKash Virtual Prepaid Card

Easy to Get

Companies can easily create their virtual prepaid cards and assign them to a spending category or employee with a few clicks.

Security & Compliance

Adherence to compliance and with double encryption, EnKash protects your data.

Transparent Costing

There are no hidden charges in corporate cards by EnKash.

Unlimited Virtual Cards

Issue unlimited virtual prepaid cards to your employees to help them manage business spending by themselves. Assign these cards to your trusted and authorized employees.

Expense Management 

There cannot be overspending as transactions beyond the defined limits will be declined. The virtual card can manage and control employee-related and departmental expenses.

Budget Management 

Budgets can be easily allocated to each department using virtual prepaid cards. Moreover, department heads can keep track of expenses related to a particular department or project, and spot overspending. By directing departmental funds to virtual card payments, you will get greater control over how the company's money is used.

To know more about virtual prepaid cards, read the FAQs below:

How to get a virtual prepaid card in India?

Visit EnKash.com. Simply go to the corporate cards section and click on the card you want. 

How long will it take to get a virtual card generated?

You need to provide certain necessary details and a virtual card can be issued immediately. The card will be ready to use as soon as you generate it.

How to spend control using my virtual card?

Your virtual card is under your control. Manage it according to your company’s budget and goals.

What is the need for KYC authentication?

RBI has made it mandatory for all financial and non-financial institutions to get KYC authentication for their customers wherever PPI instrument issuance is involved.