Business
Introducing Volopa’s Shared Company Wallet Balance – New platform feature
Stop chasing your tail – Eliminate the need to load funds on individual company cards and gain control and complete visibility on your employee spending in real-time.
As your company grows, gaining control over employee spending can become increasingly complex. Loading individual company cards in multiple currencies that your employees spend in requires unnecessary manual work resulting in time-consuming admin and unique approval workflows across departments leaving your finance team feeling like they must be in multiple places at once to keep track of employees’spending.
Volopa’s first-of-its-kind shared company wallet feature solves this problem. Shared wallets are the perfect solution for companies who need to track their spending across multiple end-users.
Load your company wallet in your base currency (your most popular currency used) and employees can spend directly from the company wallet in 14 currencies including, GBP, EUR and USD.
Benefits of the Shared Wallet Balance feature:
Convenience
No need to load each card with funds manually, simply fund your company wallet and when any of your Volopa Prepaid cards are used, the funds are automatically drawn from the company wallet.
Flexibility
Maintaining balances in multiple currencies is a thing of the past. Volopa automatically converts to 14 currencies from the base currency if the balance in the payment currency is insufficient, and funds the transaction in real-time.
Total visibility and control
Admins can apply spend limits on individual employee cards, either through maximum purchase amounts or daily spend limits.
Securing the best exchange rates
Generally speaking, both banks and payments providers charge a margin, typically via a commission or a percentage-spread, for converting currencies from the funding currency (what you send them) to the payment currency (what the recipient receives). Banks are traditionally risk averse to currency movements due to the size of the portfolio of client assets they hold in multiple currencies. Any shock movement within the currency market can amount to significant losses, and in a bid to mitigate this risk, banks tend to apply higher margins.
International payments providers generally take a different approach, utilising live rates which they transact with immediately. Using this methodology, they don’t need to hold on to funds, the risk is less, and margins can therefore be much lower amounting to better exchange rates for their clients.
Payment Speed
Just as a bank cheque takes time to deposit into an account, so does sending money from one country to another. International FX payments can often take days to reach your recipient if sent via your bank. This is because banks often use manual currency conversion processes and tend to send funds via costly legacy banking networks. If you wish to transfer funds quickly, banks may not be your best option.
Specialist payments providers have established “points-of-difference” in the international payments market through innovative solutions to enable same-day international payments using more robust platforms and security systems. Specialist payment providers tend to route international payments via newer alternative payment rails that are quick, low-cost and easy to track, meaning recipients receive their payments in full and on time, while payment initiators can stay up to date with their payment statuses.
Conclusion
Whilst a bank may provide familiarity, specialised payments providers can offer better FX and payments expertise, superior technology and more cost-effective exchange rates. Through the tailoring of solutions and streamlining compliance requirements, services provided are largely more client-centric and focused. This often amounts to lower fees and charges as well as a superior customer experience for their clients.
