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B4B make it as finalists for the biggest awards event of the payments industry for 2023

We are thrilled to be shortlisted as a finalist for the Best Payment Facility category

We are delighted to be shortlisted as a finalist for the Best Payment Facility category by the Cards and Payments Awards.

The Card & Payment Awards serve as a beacon of excellence, recognising success and innovation across the Payments industry over the past two decades. Each year, many organisations apply for one of these prestigious awards that are judged by an independent panel of esteemed industry experts. As one of the UK and Irish’s leading networking events, The Card & Payment Awards galvanise key players in the sector to celebrate their achievements with fellow card and payments professionals. 

For the Best Payment Facility category, B4B and Voly have worked in partnership over several years, and provide a 360 financial solution to niche verticals. Voly leveraged B4B’s payments knowledge to extend their offering in the musical tours industry, where tracking expenditure is paramount. The partnership has also developed from a card-based solution to a complete payment offering for Voly’s international clientele.

To find out more about the partnership with B4B and Voly, read our case study here.

For further questions about our products and services, please complete our contact us form here and our team will get back to you!

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Company News Newsroom

UWL student completes internship programme with B4B Payments

Jenny highlights her incredible experience as an intern at B4B Payments

About Jenny Sherpa

Jenny is an ambitious and engaging entrepreneur who is currently studying International Business at University of West London in her final year. She has experience working in the Financial Services, IT Services and Insurance industries, giving her a well-rounded background to innovate in the Entrepreneurial world. In 2018 she launched her own Textile start-up on top of that. But Jenny does not limit herself; she also indulges her passion for fashion, as well as taking a keen interest in Real Estate and the Fintech markets. With such an ambition and engaging spirit, there’s no telling what innovative ideas she will come up with next!

Account Management Department

Account Management Team and Jenny on a social outing

In the first 4 months, Jenny had an opportunity to experience the London-based Account Management team up close and personal. Through face-to-face training, she was able to gain a comprehensive understanding of their roles and working styles. She took part in numerous activities that honed her resourcefulness, like looking after small client accounts, sending emails and calling clients, preparing presentations for meetings and organising trips all while attending various events too.

Upon the end of her 4 months, Jenny gained a wealth of new skills. She developed proficiency with Zoho CRM for emailing, creativity with Powerpoint for presentations, as well as obtaining knowledge from the Data Warehouse to produce reporting – enhancing her analytical acumen. Additionally, she strengthened her communication skills giving her great confidence going forward.

Marketing Department

Jenny engaged in a stimulating 3 months at the company’s Marketing department, gaining an invaluable learning experience. Under the guidance of the Marketing Manager, she learnt new skills that included crafting captions for social media campaigns, preparing email communications for clients, conducting market research as well as liaising with event organisers for Money 20/20.

At the end of her three months, she came away having gained an abundance of knowledge. She was able to further develop her marketing skills, learning new platforms such as Google Analytics, Hootsuite, Canva and Jaspa, and honing her already existing skills in terms of being more on the go, creatively engaging with language and researching for marketing purposes.

Sales Department

Jenny at the Luxury Travel Fair

Jenny was eager to begin her journey in the Sales department, and the Chief Commercial Officer’s guidance on the first couple of weeks provided valuable insight. Jenny initially received 1-1 training from all the Business Development Managers and had the opportunity to observe prospect calls where she learnt more about negotiation techniques. She quickly familiarised herself with her role as a ‘Sales associate’, engaging in activities such as cold calling, emailing potential prospects, extracting data reports, and attending events. Jenny’s enthusiasm and dedication to these tasks proved to be beneficial for one of the Christmas campaigns she was involved in at the time – her efforts yielded a considerable number of leads that proved fundamental to the business.

After 3 months of hard work, she emerged a more engaging communicator. Her newfound confidence lent itself to tailoring her emails and calls to fit a more sales-driven approach. She even became adept at dealing with rejections in the course of cold calls and other situations where she received no response. In short, her communication skills were vastly improved due to her diligent training over the previous months!

The end of her internship at B4B Payments

B4B at the UWL Careers Fair

Overall, her experience was a rewarding one in every sense of the word; she gained valuable knowledge from attending events and socialising with people from different vocations. By far the most engaging aspect was that everyone at B4B made her feel as though she were truly part of their family; appreciated for the work she put in and making a difference. It was evident that this internship allowed her to get an exclusive peek into what operations at financial services would be like, a great starting point to head into real-world roles!

We’re so pleased to announce that Jenny Lama has completed her internship with B4B Payments. Jenny came to us last year from her studies at The University of West London as our first ever intern. Over the last year, Jenny has spent time in Account Management, Marketing and Sales where she has been working with the various teams and learning all about the business from different aspects.

We’ll miss Jenny’s smiling face in the office but we know she’ll make a success of whatever she chooses to do in life. B4B will be looking for a new intern in September.

B4B Account Director and Jenny’s Sponsor, Tim Robson

Applications for the internship programme will start in July 2023! In the mean time, if you have any questions please email careers@b4bpayments.com.

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Case studies Company News

B4B and Voly continue to grow strong in Partnership together

Voly, a Fintech provider for the Yacht and multi-assets industry, works with B4B Payments to provide a 360 financial solution to niche verticals.

About Voly

Voly is an award-winning fintech provider specialising in financial management for the yacht and multi-assets industry. Founded in 2016 and within a relatively short space of time, Voly has become the market-leading treasury financial management organisation used by superyacht owners, yacht management companies and family offices globally.

The situation

Voly provides an all-in-one expense management solution for both the yacht industry and – more recently – the music industry. Using their deep understanding of the necessity to manage expenses, Voly designed a bespoke system to enable superyacht owners and yacht management companies to manage the outgoings. The lessons learnt from this have been transferred to the music industry where management of the music tour finances is incredibly important.

B4B’s payment rails and cards fit in seamlessly with Voly’s product offering. Each Voly client can make low-cost and easy-to-use payments as well as distribute branded Mastercard prepaid cards on the yachts for in-cruise expenses.

The solution

By leveraging B4B trusted card issuing and payment platform, Voly focuses on developing the advanced features and innovations that make them unique, with the confidence that the basics are taken care of via a robust, established, and secure technology platform.

B4B and Voly have developed their partnership over several years. The two companies together provide a 360 financial solution to niche verticals that have been underserved in the past. Using Voly’s core accountancy product and B4B’s payments knowledge, the two have built a powerful partnership. Initially, this joint offering was used in the yachting world where tracking expenditure can sometimes be difficult. This has now been extended to Voly’s new venture in the music industry for managing artists and music tours where tracking expenditure is also difficult. The partnership has also developed from a card-based solution to a complete payment offering for Voly’s international clientele.

The benefits

The partnership between Voly & B4B has been hugely successful due to the deep understanding of each other’s business needs. The financial services landscape has changed significantly since we first started working together but both companies are committed to staying at the forefront of our industries. We have worked hard to adapt and evolve our offerings to ensure our clients have the best available solution.

Voly’s collaboration with B4B has been a great success. B4B understands our product and the industries in which we provide financial management services. In working with B4B, we have built a relationship that provides a market-leading treasury management solution for the yachting and music space. It was definitely a learning experience for both parties to begin with, but one which has gone from strength to strength over the years and we look forward to continued growth and collaboration with B4B.

Ian Flanagan – Voly Group Founder & CEO 

To find out more, contact us today!

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Company News Newsroom

Rewards and Incentives made easy with B4B Payments

With economies across the globe on the brink of recession, retaining important figureheads in business has never been more important.

Some minds would automatically flip to customer retention, and rightly so – customer churn rate can be as high as 30% in some global industries, and as cost of living increases, we can only expect this to rise. However, it’s not only customers that will help businesses sail through hard times. Retaining staff and partners is crucial to keeping businesses afloat, recession or not.

Creating reward and incentive programs for employees, partners, and customers alike could be the key to maintaining a healthy business in the near future. But with different needs, cultures and locations to take into consideration – a one-size fits all approach is hard to come by.

Are you incentivising the key players in your business? Read on to find out the different approaches to incentives, how they can help your business, and what B4B Payments can do to give you the master key for you

What are incentives?

Rewards and incentives come in all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re focused on B2B, B2C, or B2B2C, there’s always a way you can utilise incentives to create value, loyalty and retention for customers, partners and employees.

Customer loyalty rewards

84% of global customers are more inclined to shop with retailers if they offer a loyalty reward programme or scheme. Some of the popular types include: 

Point based reward systems

Offering customers points in return for their purchases or continued service is an effective incentive to encourage them to stay a loyal customer. Points are usually tradeable for certain prizes, products or cash sums through these types of loyalty schemes.

Tiered incentives

Cashback incentives can be offered to customers that hit a certain tier level with their purchasing. With tiers completely customisable by companies themselves, often taking the form of length of contract or amount spent, they are a great way to ensure that people are getting extra value for their custom.

Omnichannel incentives

Want to inspire customers to use different channels in your business? Offering cash rewards or discounts to customers who are purchasing or completing actions on different channels like mobile applications is the way to go. Not only can these incentives phase out the resource intensive channels like phone or email.

Staff retention incentives

Retaining trained employees has never been more important than it is today, and with 74% of employees saying that incentives and rewards were important to them, offering schemes like this can be an easy win to keep them onside:

Time-based incentives

Rewarding staff for their ongoing service, or keeping employees happy during the holidays is becoming more common in competitive industries. Through prepaid or cash offerings, your staff are motivated to stay with your business until the next milestone, and are more likely to be satisfied when they return from traditional periods of annual leave.

Target based rewards

Traditional bonus schemes are a great way to incentivise staff to go the extra mile while in service, whether it’s based on deals completed or targets met. Offering percentages of business deals, or flat rate recurring bonuses through prepaid cash cards will help retain staff, as well as attract new employees to the business.

Partner incentives

Partners are among the most important people in your business, and may hold the key to continued business. In fact 57% of companies use partnerships to acquire new customers. Popular ways to incentivise partners include:

Referrals

Rewards based on referrals are popular for partners and individuals alike. Schemes that involve cash incentives for business referrals can bring new business into your organisation, negating some of your existing sales and marketing process.

Research

Knowledge is power, and market research is the key. Rewards for partners who engage in market research is a great way to strengthen connections, as well as ensuring constant visibility on the state of B2B and B2C markets.

How incentives help

Incentives provide a constant reason for staff, employees and partners to continue to interact with your business.

However, in an international, diverse, and often remote-based society the trend for the instant gratification of cash is emerging moreso. In fact, 84% of remote employees surveyed named prepaid cards their preferred reward.

Not only is cash universally accepted for partners, employees and customers around the globe, it also eliminates the need to navigate cultural and political trends, as well as logistical issues that can stem from availability and delivery of alternative physical rewards.

The B4B Payments solution

B4B Payments allows businesses to execute their rewards and incentives scheme in one unified manner – thorough physical and virtual (closed and open loop) services.

Prepaid virtual and physical cards can be distributed as rewards on incentive schemes to partners, customers and employees alike to encourage referrals, repeat business and retention. Instead of receiving bespoke rewards or gift cards that can only be redeemed in certain stores, B4B Payments allows payments that are recognised internationally, and managed through an easy-to-use iOS or Android cardholder app, giving your recipients the oversight on their spending and remaining balance.

What’s more, B4B Payments allows you to brand your card services, extending the reach of your marketing efforts, as well as incentivising the key players in your business.

Discover more about B4B Payments engaging rewards and incentives

Looking to add prepaid virtual or physical cards into your incentive schemes? Take a look at how B4B Payments’ solution can help you maximise your goals through seamless reward payments.

To find out how our solutions can help you, contact us today!

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Evolving fintech businesses with BIN Sponsorship 2.0

By 2030, the global fintech market is projected to reach circa $700 billion representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.3%, it’s clear that businesses and individuals alike are continuing the trend of using technology for their payments.

With the competition in the sector fiercer than ever, and only expected to grow, speed-to-market has become a crucial factor when it comes to establishing new startups in a crowded market.

While direct scheme memberships through the likes of VISA and Mastercard can often be a laborious, time consuming process requiring significant investment, there is a quicker alternative to card issuing. BIN Sponsorship bridges the gap for fintechs wishing to offer payment solutions to their customers straight out of the gates.

Read on to find out how BIN Sponsorship can benefit your fintech business, and how B4B Payments BIN Sponsorship 2.0 could give you the tailored support needed to get your product to market quickly.

What is BIN Sponsorship?

For fintech start-ups, BIN Sponsorship is a solution that allows them to connect to the card scheme network through an e-money organisation, like B4B Payments. This allows them to perform the operations of a financial institution, before becoming principal members of card issuers like Visa and Mastercard. Drastically speeding up product launches, it is the perfect way to to bypass long and arduous direct scheme applications, and get products to market ahead of the competition. With an industry saturated with over 27,000 startups worldwide, gaining a speed-to-market advantage can prove significant.

Here’s a breakdown of BIN Sponsorship…

A Banking Identification Number (BIN) references the four or six initial numbers on the front of a payment card and helps to identify the issuer of the card during the transaction, giving fintech companies the ability to make payments quickly and efficiently between accounts.

Sponsors are third-party payment providers or e-money institutions, like B4B Payments, that connect fintech start-ups to approved BINs and account ranges. Sponsors effectively act as the middle-men to enable new businesses to offer payments solutions, allowing businesses to leverage their scheme memberships with issuers.

Looking for BIN sponsors to kick-start your fintech operations can be a tricky process. It’s important to consider a number of factors when partnering with a sponsor, including compliance, speed-to-market, and experience within the industry.

At B4B Payments, we have used our 15 years’ experience in the payments industry to evolve our BIN Sponsorship offer to the next level with BIN Sponsorship 2.0.

How does BIN Sponsorship 2.0 set you apart from the competition?

Using our extensive experience in payments, we have developed an end-to-end bridging solution for fintech startups. This best-in-market offering  provides support to businesses as they launch their service, connect with card issuers, and beyond.

We go the extra mile with BIN Sponsorship 2.0, extending our service to cover the most important areas of partners’ needs:

Functionality and compliance

Functionality and compliance are priorities for fintech businesses – often the deciding factor for whether new products and companies sink or swim. BIN Sponsorship 2.0 puts compliance at the heart of its offering, combining the responsibility to handle Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, with funds safeguarding and fraud monitoring for all partnering companies.

More importantly, B4B Payments offers complete authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Bank of Lithuania with e-money licences, as well as Mastercard Principal Member status, which can be leveraged by startups wishing to expand internationally into European markets.

Tailored support

While BIN Sponsorship is sometimes used as a quick-win when gaining an e-money licence, B4B Payments offers an extended service outside of regulated EMIs, allowing businesses to continue to outsource scheme management, collateral requirements and settlements.

BIN Sponsorship 2.0 is not an off the shelf solution, it can be tailored to Fintech needs. It offers partners the chance to use our e-money permissions while building their own relationships with card issuers.

Partnerships to suit fintech needs

With BIN Sponsorship 2.0 there are a variety of partnerships to suit fintech businesses, whatever stage in the cycle you may be at.

For unregulated EMIs businesses, we offer a full end-to-end package. This allows total use of our scheme licences and e-money permissions, with the support of our experts as you choose your own suppliers and develop your own card programme using our framework. For fintechs who require a less hands-on approach, we also offer a BIN sponsorship light package, allowing direct integration into our platform, and enabling speed-to-market. 

For regulated EMIs without a scheme licence, we offer settlement, or turnkey settlement only packages, allowing you to leverage our issuing capabilities, while building your own UI.

What’s more, B4B Payments also offers a support service for regulated EMIs with scheme permissions, providing a continued service for safeguarding, accounts and payments.

Proven Speed-to-Market success

Our BIN Sponsorship 2.0 partners’ success speaks for itself. In 2021, Juni, an e-commerce fintech, partnered with B4B Payments.Through using our solution, they were quickly able to bring their card to market without first needing to navigate the process of gaining their own e-money licence and card scheme membership.

Juni continued to lean on B4B Payments as a partner for support throughout their rapid scale-up as they became one of 2021’s fastest-growing fintech startups, taking advantage of BIN Sponsorship 2.0’s product flexibility, as well as the experience of the experts behind the scenes.

Discover more about BIN Sponsorship 2.0 with B4B Payments

Do you want to know more about how BIN Sponsorship 2.0 can make a difference to your fintech startup? Discover our memberships and how B4B Payments’ experience in the industry can help keep you competitive.

To find out how our solutions can help you, contact us today!

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The Smarter Way to Transform Your Payment Service

If you’re looking to optimise your B2B payment services, or provide innovative Fintech payment opportunities to others, there are several key challenges with overhauling or expanding payment solutions that you’ll need to deal with.

These issues are particularly significant for those working toward optimising payment, payout, and card services.

The granular complexities of payment processes can sometimes be overlooked by businesses (particularly those in the start-up phase), who will instead focus on acquiring new customers and boosting brand awareness. However, without an effective payment process in place, organisations are more likely to experience abandoned carts and delayed payouts. Two-thirds of adults worldwide now make or receive a digital payment, and 80% of B2B payments are now digital. So, the time for streamlining your online payment process is now.

A common misconception by companies building out a payment solution is that speed to market can easily be gained by using multiple third-party providers. However, managing these specific payment capabilities can be extremely challenging and time-consuming, resulting in greater investment and loss of time to market. In this article, we examine the key challenges in managing payment processes and how to optimise them effectively.

The key challenges of payment optimisation

Legacy technology

Legacy technology can be problematic for your payment infrastructure. Disconnected tech stacks (i.e. legacy tools that do not integrate with new technology) can increase the amount of internal and customer touchpoints when making payouts and receiving payments.

Shockingly, over 90% of UK financial firms still rely on legacy tech. Businesses that rely on those firms for payment solutions will likely experience a high rate of abandoned carts as customers give up on lengthy payment processes. Legacy technology can also lead to a delay in receiving payments, which could cause operational and financial problems for any business.

Multiple payment services

Implementing multiple payment services, and forcing users to negotiate the different platforms, is a serious drain on your company’s resources. Among other issues, doing so can drastically affect speed to market and create supply chain disruptions. Instead, a company should look to connect services where possible, or offer all payment options under one platform.

Multiple third parties

As with using multiple digital solutions for your payment services, relying on multiple third parties can cause delays in payment and payout processing. These delays stem from the increased approval times, spread out permissions, and extra steps in authorisation users must take when navigating a payment system that uses multiple third parties.

For Fintech companies, the solution is to utilise a platform that allows you to manage your own payment processes and retain control. Having complete authority and a solid understanding of your payment infrastructure is the key to quicker payments and payouts.

Hidden fees

Another issue to consider when optimising your payment infrastructure is if your plans have greater internal build requirements than originally planned. Without careful budgeting beforehand, you might find yourself without sufficient resources to cover the increased costs.

Partner-specific challenges

There are various partner types that have their own unique challenges. For example, utilising a bank or niche service provider to support instant payment can lead to a loss of management control and added expenses in transaction fees.

Streamline your payment process with B4B payments

A 360° payment solution

B4B Payments can help you achieve your payment optimisation goals quicker through an effective all-in-one solution. We offer an easy-to-use platform that connects services together under one roof. This includes prepaid, instant virtual, and branded card creation as well as handling, payout and payment processing across multiple countries.

By leveraging a single source solution for card issuing and payment services, companies can avoid the heavy lifting of building out functions and quickly enhance the user experience without disrupting existing services. This also means a faster path to revenue, which is an easy target to miss when you’re trying to collaborate or build out the necessary operations.

Latest technology

Being held back by legacy systems? B4B uses robust APIs and cloud-based solutions that can be embedded in their native form, which saves companies from having to develop or manipulate new infrastructures.

Flexibility & security

Our system combines all our products into an all-inclusive platform for businesses to manage their payment processes. We offer everything you need to launch a card programme in a single turnkey solution, with advanced features, full flexibility and industry-leading security.

We have built for Fintech success and ensured that internal and external management is all in one place, so payers and payees have real-time views of all payment and card functions.

Take full control of your own payment processes

B4B Payments offers a tried and tested infrastructure that allows you to manage your own payment services and permissions, and remove the need for engaging third-parties through our sleek and easy-to-use platform.

Clients are provided with the full infrastructure and permissions to manage their own payments or Fintech within the UK and Europe. Our single unified service removes the need for overloaded tech stacks and reduces touch points from both business and customer standpoints.

Payment services from B4B

Optimise your payment processes with B4B Payments. We have over 15 years of experience in innovations in the payments space, and our unique card services can help you overcome any payment service challenges.Our focus is ensuring our clients are ahead of the game with fast and efficient transactions around the globe.

Discover more about B4B Payments and the services we provide on our website. If you’re interested in working with us, you can contact our team HERE.

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How to streamline your corporate expenditure process

Keeping track of corporate expenses can be difficult for companies of all sizes, particularly those operating globally.

Tracking receipts and managing timely repayments for an extended team spread across multiple locations is a complex task. Human error and convoluted reporting systems can create much confusion and cause problems with budget monitoring.

In some cases, the expenses process might have taken a back seat during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as the world returns to a sense of post-pandemic normality, this means business-related travel, networking events and Christmas parties are back in full swing. As a result, it’s crucial to ensure that your expense management strategy is functional and serves your employees effectively.

Weak expense processes can cause dissatisfaction among employees, set your business back, and prevent your organisation from claiming back tax deductions. Read on to discover more about key challenges in corporate expenditure, and how to streamline your expenses process.

What is corporate expenditure?

Expense management determines how employees are reimbursed for business-related spending, including travel, food, supplies, and more. Typically, employees will need to fill out an expense claim form with details of their expenditure, and then the accounts team will process this information in the finance system and provide a reimbursement.

A good expense process should be quick, fraud-proof, easy to use, trackable, and provide timely repayments. There should also be a clear, enforced expense policy so that employees know what they can expense, how to expense it, and what their daily or monthly limit is.

Key expense management challenges

Complexities of numerous stakeholders, multiple locations, and manual processes can make streamlining expense management strategies a challenge. Here are a few of the main difficulties that businesses can often run into.

Manual error processes

The world is still swimming in spreadsheets and paper receipts. Over 43% of businesses still rely on manual expense processes. Manual processes make the capturing, recording and claiming of expenses awkward and prone to mistakes.

The probability of human error when manually entering data into spreadsheets is between 18% and 40%.The high error rate means there is likely to be misalignments between the receipts received and the amounts claimed, causing difficulties for the accounts team and inaccuracies when providing reimbursements.

Slow payment

Many employees cite an arduous reimbursement process as a key problem, with 40% of expense claimants experiencing cash flow issues because of slow repayments from their employer. During the current cost-of-living crisis (when many are already struggling with cash flow problems), difficulty in claiming expenses could cause serious discontentment among employees.

An estimated 38% of all employees pay for business expenses out of their own pocket at least once a month, which is likely due to a combination of payment delays and  a lack of clarity on the expenses system, or inefficiencies in the process itself.

Insufficient reporting visibility

An effective business should have complete awareness of what their employees are spending company money on and why. However, just like the ongoing use of manual processes, many businesses still rely on out-of-date tracking and monitoring systems. In fact,  26% of enterprise-sized companies have no awareness of how many expenses submitted are actually compliant with their corporate expenditure policy.

The lack of visibility means that companies aren’t able to keep track of employee spend, which could lead to expense fraud and exaggerated claims. It also means that businesses may struggle to understand how much they spend on corporate expenses. By streamlining their tracking and monitoring system, they could optimise their budget and save costs.

How to improve corporate expenses process

There are a number of ways businesses can work to improve their corporate expenditure processes. These include:

  • Adopting a cloud-based expense management system to replace manual processes, reducing the the number of lost receipts and preventing delays
  • Refreshing your policy to ensure it’s fair, compliant, and easy to understand
  • Categorising expenses to make tracking and reporting expenses a lot easier
  • Making use of mobile technology, so that receipts can be digitally uploaded instantly using an app

One way to quickly and efficiently optimise your corporate expenses program is through the use of a virtual prepaid card. Commercial card services are becoming increasingly beneficial in a cashless society, allowing customers and clients alike to make and receive payments instantly across the globe.

Card services also give companies of any size a flexible, all-in-one expense management solution that allows them to easily keep track of where money is being spent and on what. Not only do virtual cards make accounting and money management a lot easier, they also reduce the risk of theft and fraud while saving both time and money. Plus, businesses can easily access data which enables them to track spending habits and improve their financial strategy.

Enhance your expenses strategy with B4B Payments

B4B Payments provide virtual, or digital, prepaid cards which allow businesses to make a large number of online payments which are secure and within the expenses budget. Each transaction is tracked and receipt uploads are a breeze with the mobile app.

The self-managed, unified platform is quick and easy to install, and allows businesses to pay anyone overseas instantly. As a streamlined and one-stop solution, you can reload and deploy funds as you see fit to ensure that your employees are always covered for their travel and expenses. Meanwhile, the iOS and Android application lets employees track their expenditure and store photographic proof of purchase receipts at the click of a button.

Find out more about how B4B Payments could help you optimise your expense management process today, by booking a demo.

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Virtual Gift Cards for Rewards and Incentives Businesses Great Value

With the economy continuing to struggle, the use of incentives to retain high-performing employees and valued partnerships is a major strategy for many companies.

The holiday season presents a perfect opportunity for businesses to strengthen employee and partner retention efforts. One of the easiest and fastest-growing ways companies can deliver thanks is by presenting virtual cards.

It’s no surprise that the global virtual gift card market is estimated to grow by $420.49 billion, with a CAGR of 20.13 % between 2021 to 2026, according to an Infiniti Research market study. The rapid digitalization of currency, the increased usage of contactless payments via tap-and-pay physical point-of-sale devices and eCommerce, and the convenience factor virtual cards offer are key reasons why this digital alternative to traditional physical gift cards is growing rapidly.

Companies and consumers alike have realized that obtaining and sending physical gift cards can be time-consuming and expensive, especially if you have a large number of recipients on your list. The cost typically incurred by a company looking to present physical cards includes having an additional budget for packaging and shipping, and should the package get lost or stolen, then the cost to reship comes into play.

An unfortunate reality today is that logistics and shortages are creating unexpected delays in shipping and handling, even with drop shipping. Sending physical gift cards to employees and partners is even more expensive and complicated for businesses with a global presence.

Sending a virtual gift card directly through email is more efficient and cost-effective. An advantage of using virtual cards for your business is that the cardholder can use their card immediately. No need to wait for a traditional card to be sent in the mail. As soon as the card is created and funds loaded, the user will receive an email with instructions on retrieving their new card details.

Other benefits of offering virtual gift cards to employees, team members, or partners include:

Flexibility and choice

Offering a virtual gift card, supported by major networks like Visa and MasterCard, ensures your recipients receive the gift of choice. This means they can reward themselves with whatever is most important to them. With no limitations, each recipient can choose a gift that’s perfect for them. The flexibility of virtual cards also easily allows recipients to donate to charitable organizations.

Support Sustainability Values

The rapid digitization of the world is supporting growing interest and focus on sustainability. Companies are becoming more aware of consumer interest and demand for sustainability and transforming and innovating their businesses to stay relevant. In fact, 85 percent of consumers have shifted toward being more sustainable during the past five years, according to a recent survey by Simpon-Kucher strategy and marketing agency. A virtual gift card has a small carbon footprint, and unlike physical cards and gifts that may not really be on anyone’s wish list, won’t end up in a garbage fill.

To find out more, please complete our form HERE and we will be in touch.

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This festive season is the perfect time to reward your employees with the gift of choice

Claim your FREE Virtual Cards today and spread cheer amongst your employees.

Why let employees choose their own rewards

The festive season is here! Event planning has started, business gifts are being ordered and discussions around employee Christmas rewards have begun. Some of those discussions will soon be about a Christmas bonus that could be dependent on performance or business revenue. Although a bonus is a great way to show appreciation towards employees, it’s also taxable so they won’t receive the full benefits. Especially, when the cost of physical gifts are soaring a virtual card is the perfect cost effective option.

Businesses this year need to consider how their rewards can support employees during this cost-of living crisis. That’s why B4B payments believe you should allow your employees to choose a gift that is meaningful to them. 

Virtual cards are hassle-free easy gifts

We recently rewarded our own B4B employees with virtual cards! They loved having the choice to buy anything they wanted online or in-store. 

With virtual cards, there are no delivery costs or waiting times. You can choose any of our festive themed templates, personalise the email and send it straight to your employees inbox. It’s that easy! They can add the virtual card in their Apple pay or Google pay wallet, and spend online or in-store where Mastercard is accepted. 

Show your appreciation with the gift of choice

Studies show that businesses across the UK could do more for their employees, according to Appreciate Business Services. In their most recent report, they found at least 33% of all UK employees feel undervalued at work. And, alarmingly, it reported 74% of people said they would look for a new job if they felt undervalued.

Now you would imagine Christmas would be the perfect time to let your teams know how much their work all year round is valued. Take advantage of the festive season, and spread cheer. 

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Simplify corporate expenditures with B4B Payments

The complex process of serving customers, balancing corporate expenses, and delivering consistent payroll can be costly and resource intense for businesses.

The complex process of serving customers, balancing corporate expenses, and delivering consistent payroll can be costly and resource intense for businesses. With the UK alone predicted to become a cashless economy as early as 2026, developing other physical ways to manage and spend has become a top priority for many businesses across the globe.

At B4B payments, we specialise in providing tailored card services to help businesses achieve their payment goals by allowing complete customisation of branded, prepaid and virtual cards, incentives and rewards, and more.

Read on and discover how B4B Payments can help take your payments to the next level with our card services.

Corporate expenses solved

Keeping track of corporate expenses can be difficult for large-scale companies, whether you’re planning a corporate event or providing ongoing travel and work expenses for your employees.

At times, juggling your outgoings through multiple platforms can increase the chance of human error, and give birth to a variety of challenges that can impact your finances too. For example, missing out on opportunities to secure contracts for events, or even forcing your staff to temporarily cover their own expenses due to slow payments, or lack of processing resources, can be detrimental to your business, and even affect retention. To remedy these situations, B4B Payments offers corporate card and payment services, allowing clients to issue employees card and platform access to complete daily expenses across the globe.

B4B Payments hands you complete control through a streamlined, one-stop platform, allowing you the power to reload and deploy funds as you see fit to ensure that your executives are always covered for their travel and expenses. Our iOS and Android application lets employees track their expenditures and store photographic proof of purchase receipts at the click of a button.

What’s more, with built-in measurement and reporting capabilities, you have complete oversight over all outgoing expenditures and the power to identify leaking pipes within corporate expenses.

Branded, prepaid and virtual pay-out cards

Commercial card services are becoming increasingly beneficial in a cashless society, allowing customers and clients alike to make and receive payments instantly across the globe. At B4B Payments, we offer a variety of card solutions that tackle our client’s individual needs and the customers they may be serving.

Our virtual cards provide instant reimbursement or payment services, giving businesses the power to pay people overseas instantly, without the need for time-draining or unsecured delivery processes. Our prepaid cards are perfect for customers without established account information, particularly useful for retail cashback schemes, or helping charities and refugee communities in a cashless environment. But, of course, there are benefits for your business, too; with our branded cards, you can alleviate the stress of setting up regular or recurring payments and generating brand awareness through a customisable look and feel.

It’s easier than ever to deploy cards with B4B Payments through our unified platform, which gives your business complete control over the design, distribution, and loading. In addition, streamlining your card operations into one platform eliminates breaks in the process caused by multiple third-party communications and approvals, allowing you to create a method of payout or payment quickly and efficiently.

Rewards and incentives

Rewards and incentives are a time-tested tradition for retaining employees and customers, and maintaining partner relationships. While there is a place for gift-giving in smaller businesses and niche customer sets and industries, it’s hard to argue with the language of cash when it comes to the perfect reward or incentive.

For larger industries, using B4B Payments physical and virtual (closed and open loop) card services will eliminate the challenges of navigating sensitive areas of requirement like gender or religion for customers, employees and partners. Cardholders also get access to an easy-to-use application, which is downloadable on both iOS and Android devices, allowing them to view card balances, and keep track of their spends and rewards. 

Using these services, your business can seamlessly offer customer acquisition and employee retention schemes through prepaid card bonuses, cashback offers, and bespoke partner reward programmes.

To wrap up

Whether you’re looking for corporate solutions or payment services for B2B, B2B2C or B2C clients, we’ve got you covered at B4B Payments. With over 15 years of experience in innovations in the payments space, and unique card services that cover all bases, we make sure that our clients are ahead of the games with fast and efficient transactions around the globe.

Strengthening your payment and payout solutions through card services has never been easier. Discover more about B4B Payments and the transparent, quick and effective card services that we provide contact us today!