A Look at Barclaycard’s Virtual Card for Coupa’s Business Spend Management Platform

Last year, Coupa unveiled its vision for business spend management (BSM), and it added products throughout the year. One of those was a virtual credit card for  Coupa Pay that has international reach from Barclaycard, a Coupa partner.

Spend Matters UK/Europe recently caught up with Barclaycard to get a look at the offering and find out more about the deal. In an interview, Barclaycard’s Rob Tuckwell walked us through the partnership and talked about how the card works.

Tuckwell, the director of partnerships & B2B at Barclaycard Commercial Payments, said the first thing to know is that this service shouldn’t be confused with p-cards, the physical cards used for procurement purchasing. He said Coupa is using virtual cards that generate a one-time credit card number specific to the purchase order, not a person — allowing greater control and reconciliation benefits.

“This is a much more efficient way of dealing with high-volume, low-value and one-off suppliers,” he said. “It means the supplier can be paid at the point of delivery, which is much earlier in their invoice cycle than traditional payment methods. Suppliers will no longer suffer from late payments or extended payment terms helping them confidently forecast their cash flow.

“It also means suppliers can manage their exposure to bad debt as they are paid by Barclaycard irrespective of the financial strength of their customers. Payment by card reflects the increasing consumerization of B2B payments and where partners like Amazon Business also operate.”

From an international perspective, Barclaycard can help its customers make payments in more than 100 countries and in nine currencies, but it needs to contract with customers through a U.K. entity, which the majority of Coupa customers have. Coupa is a global platform with operations in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Read the full article here: Barclaycard Partnership with Coupa Pay — P2P Becomes P&P. And look for a Spend Matters PRO briefing on Coupa Pay in the coming weeks.