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Solution helps businesses instantly provide virtual corporate cards to customers, employees and contractors.

Getting stuck at the airport due to flight delays is a hassle on multiple levels. A new solution from U.S. Bank, however, can help airlines take one worry off the shoulders of stranded travelers.

Using the U.S. Bank Card as a Service (CaaS) solution, an airline can send a time-restricted virtual corporate card from its app to a passenger stuck at the airport. The airline can push the card from their app to the passenger’s mobile wallet and use the card to pay for a hotel or meals. When the passenger gets on the flight, the card is deactivated. This is just one example of several ways CaaS can help businesses leverage their own platforms to distribute virtual corporate cards for customers, employees, and contractors.

Throughout the pandemic, companies have turned to U.S. Bank to provide their employees quick access to virtual corporate cards through the U.S. Bank Instant Card™ app, which helped newly remote staff make purchases needed to keep operations running. The newly developed CaaS product promises to create many new opportunities for businesses to provide digital, experience-specific payments more efficiently, saving them time and money. Businesses seamlessly integrate a collection of U.S. Bank-created Application Programming Interfaces – commonly known as APIs – into their own user experience to create and manage virtual cards.

“With the value virtual corporate cards have created for our clients over the last year and a half, we wanted to give clients tools to find new ways to integrate this solution into their own platforms,” said Bradley Matthews, senior vice president in Corporate Payment and Treasury Solutions at U.S. Bank. “Card as a Service helps businesses easily provide their employees, contractors, or customers with funds to make needed purchases. They can do so with confidence knowing that the funds will be spent appropriately thanks to the controls and instant transparency provided.”

CaaS has extensive controls – like those to limit the types of purchases, spend amounts, and duration of use – that make fraud or misuse nearly impossible.

U.S. Bank is working closely with clients in various industries to quickly expand the number of ways CaaS can be used to simplify payment processes while retaining important controls. For example:

• A company can create virtual cards that are available when employees log into their travel management system, allowing the employee to book travel without thinking about the payment process, and focus on finding a flight at the right time and price.
  
• A company can distribute cards to contractors in the field who need supplies or services with greater control over spending all within the security and ease of their spend management portal.

U.S. Bank recently hosted a Hackathon, where participants had less than 24 hours to build an app or experience using CaaS. The winner was University of Texas student Anjali Sridharan, who created a solution using CaaS to solve the difficulty in coordinating grant funding for research projects. In addition to efficiently providing virtual corporate cards to those needing to make related purchases in real time, the solution would provide the leader of the research project with a real-time view of spending and allow them to put in place spend limits and controls on the types of purchases allowed.

“We’re focused on providing the tools to make digital payments simple and easy for businesses and organizations, so they can focus on what they do best. We look forward to working with our clients to expand the number of innovative uses and applications that Card as a Service can support,” said Matthews.