These 5 Indian Fintech Startups Are Triggering A Corporate Card Revolution In India: How It Works? Advantages?

How often as an employee you have faced this challenge where you have to use your personal credit or debit card for official spends?

It is quite a common phenomenon with smaller startups and businesses and it takes weeks to months for the reimbursements making it a complicated process.

What if companies had their own corporate cards that could be used for expenses towards the company making reconciliation easy and faster without the employees having to have bear the burden or inconvenience. Indian companies are  slowly moving over to Corporate cards for reimbursing expenses of employees so that they can keep a firm tab on the expenses that employees can make, while for employees, they need not worry if certain expenses will be reimbursed fully or even partially when the bills are presented. So, it’s a win-win for both employers and employees.

So, it’s a win-win for both employers and employees.

However, it is taking time for this concept to catch up in India. Currently, only large corporates with a number of employees who are permitted to spend money on the company account, use Corporate cards issued by some large multinational banks. Smaller companies and startups still have to struggle. But no more. 

The startup ecosystem has witnessed a bunch of specialized players in the last two years offering Corporate cards without taking any collaterals or 

Karbon Card

Bengaluru-based fintech Karbon Card that specialises in corporate cards is charting a strong growth path. Just in this Diwali season, it has signed up 15 percent more companies than in the whole of the month before as more and more companies opted to use corporate cards for company gifting this festive season. Karbon witnesses a strong bounce back in corporate travel too which is one of the biggest used cases of corporate cards after marketing spends. 

Karbon’s card replaces personal credit cards for use by corporates – companies give these cards to their employees for a variety of use cases, including as part of salary, expense reimbursement, payment for travel and hotel stay, and perks, among others. These cards give the freedom to the users to know exactly how much they can spend, without having to seek permission every now and then. 

Karbon’s card offers credit with no personal guarantee or fixed deposits, payment transactions to its customers, and rewards specific to the requirements of the start-up.

In September, Karbon raised $12 mn as part of its pre-Series A funding from US-based fintech unicorn Ramp, Roka Works, Y Combinator, and Rainfall Venture, among others. In all it has raised over $15 mn. 

Kodo Card

Spend smart – that’s what Mumbai-based Kodo Card says its card makes it customers do. And they need have no worry on the cash front while they continue doing what they love most.

Kodo was founded in 2016 by Deepti Sanghi and Gaurav Thapa. It was part of Y Comnbinator’s Winter Batch 2021, announced in March of the same year.

Kodo, which offers corporate cards, and B2B payments solutions to small and medium businesses (SMBs) and start-ups, is said to have a 3-minute approval process for automated expense management tools. These tools help automate repetitive financial tasks.

Kodo’s customers can issue physical and virtual cards to their staff members. These cards help the company management and finance team to track the expenses made by the staff in real time. The staff can upload receipts on the Kodo app and receive automated expense reports. As for the management, they can increase or decrease the credit limits on the Kodo cards handed over to their staff; they can even lock and unlock these cards instantly.

In May this year, Kodo raised $8.75 mn in Seed capital from investors including Brex, Goat Capital, Pioneer Fund, and other Silicon Valley investors. 

EnKash

EnKash is yet another player in the Corporate Cards segment. Describing itself as an all-in-one comprehensive commercial payments platform, It offers a number of cards that can be put to a variety of use cases, including Travel and Entertainment, Fuel, Gifting, Multi-Currency foreign exchange. It has witnessed rising adoption of corporate cards by India’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) year after year. The Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) capabilities associated with corporate cards is seeing more corporates board the bandwagon. 

It’s the partnership between banks and fintechs that’s making this new innovation possible. Traditionally, corporate cards were instrumental only for travel-related expenses, however, through Fintech-bank collaborations, corporate cards are now useful and acceptable for payments across use cases.

EnKash started its journey in mid-2017 and turned operational in early 2018. Since then, it has distributed over two lakh corporate cards and digitised spending for over 70,000 businesses in India. In partnership with both national and global banks, EnKash is providing corporate cards for multiple use cases, including working capital, marketing, payroll, e-procurement, subscription and services, cloud, and supplier/vendor payments. It has offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Pune. It clients hail from the logistics, manufacturing, textiles, insurance, NMBFs, marketplaces, travel, and hotel spaces, among others.

Zeta

Zeta is a digital wallet app for all types of payments, and fund transfers. Payments can be made for shopping, and paying bills. Zeta is also a corporate card, where the employer company can provide perks such as meal vouchers, and reimbursements, such as medical, fuel, leave travel and communications, to its employees. Cash stored in the wallet is stored on the Cloud in order to provide greater security to the user. Zeta also offers a Cash card, which can be used on over 11 lakh outlets across the country. The Zeta app is capable of keeping a track on spending by the consumer, keeping tab on the entitlement limits as well as the submit claims. The Zeta Super Card can be used for online purchases too. The banking tech firm, in May this year, raised $250 mn in a Series C round of funding. The round of funding was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. This round of funding pushes the company to Unicorn status, with a size of $1.45 billion. It has offices in Bangalore and Dubai.

Razorpay

Razorpay’s RazorpayX Corporate Cards offers features specially designed for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups to help battle the economic fallout of the Covid-19. Thanks to the higher credit limit offered by RazorpayX Corporate Cards compared to other corporate and personal cards in the market, the working capital of SMEs and start-ups will not need to be tied up in a significant manner for employee expenses. These cards offer zero personal risk and liability and a repayment period of up to 45 days of interest-free credit – a big relief to the owners of these organisations.

RazorpayX Corporate Cards can be used by entrepreneurs to set up recurring and non-recurring online payments and monitor monthly operational expenses. These Corporate Cards offer dynamic credit limits of up to Rs 20 lakh, and great flexibility that can help create a smooth reimbursement experience. Purchases can be done both online, as well as at brick-and-mortar outlets.