Spend
Spend straight from your balance
Physical and virtual Visa cards that spend money you already hold, anywhere Visa is accepted. No credit facility, no borrowing, and every transaction visible as it happens.
The missing piece of most business accounts
Plenty of providers will hold your money. Fewer let you spend it without moving it somewhere else first. That gap costs you a transfer, a conversion and a day every time someone needs to pay for something.
A debit card on the account closes the loop: sales settle in, balances sit safeguarded with licensed institutions, and the card spends straight from those balances. Take payments, hold money, move it, spend it: one relationship covers the whole cycle.
What you get
Physical and virtual
Physical cards for the wallet, virtual cards issued in moments for online spend, subscriptions and one-off purchases.
Spend what you hold
Cards draw on the balances sitting in your account, not a float you top up separately. Where you are spending a currency you already hold, that avoids converting twice; your specialist confirms which currencies your programme can spend on-card before you commit.
Prepaid, never credit
There is no facility, no interest and no borrowing on the balance sheet. Your exposure is whatever is in the account, which is also why a company with no credit history is not disadvantaged here.
Controls on the card
Limits, instant freezing and transaction-level visibility, so spend appears as it happens rather than on a statement that arrives after the month closes.
Debit, prepaid or credit: which this actually is
Most business cards fall into one of three groups, and the labels get used loosely enough that it is worth being plain. A credit card spends the issuer’s money and bills you later. A debit card spends your own money, held in an account. A prepaid business card spends your own money too, from a balance loaded in advance.
These cards are the second and third of those at the same time, and never the first. They spend from the balance already in your business account, which means there is no facility to apply for, no interest, nothing to service and nothing added to the balance sheet. The most you can lose to a compromised card is what was in the account, minus whatever limit you set on it.
The trade-off is real and worth stating: no credit means no float. A card on your own balance will not carry you through a gap between paying suppliers and getting paid, which is the one job a company credit card genuinely does. If that gap is your problem, a card is the wrong tool and pay by invoice or treasury and payouts is a better place to start.
The longer comparison, including what you give up in each direction and what happens on the credit-card side that people do not expect, is in business credit card vs prepaid expense card.
How you get them
Open your account
Business accounts open in 48 hours with a complete application. Cards ride on the account, so the account comes first.
Choose your cards
Physical, virtual or both, per person or per purpose, with limits agreed up front. The issuing institution is named before you commit.
Spend from day one
Virtual cards are ready in moments; physical cards follow. Every transaction lands in reporting the moment it happens.
Issuing cards to a team rather than spending at company level? That is a different job, and expense cards covers it: a card per person or per vendor, each with its own limit and merchant categories, and reporting built for reconciling many of them at once.
Related: Business accounts & IBANs · Expense cards for teams · Currency exchange
Frequently asked questions
The cards spend directly from your business account balances rather than from a separate float you have to top up. Money arrives from sales, sits in the account, and the card draws on it. Which currencies are available to spend on-card is confirmed for your programme during onboarding, before you commit, because it depends on the issuing institution you are matched with.
Licensed card-programme institutions working with the group, under their own licences and card-scheme memberships. The issuer is named during onboarding, before you commit, like every other institution in the network.
Both words describe it, and the distinction people usually care about is the third one it is not: credit. The card spends from money already sitting in your business account, so there is no facility to arrange, no credit application, no interest and no borrowing on the company balance sheet. Technically these are e-money cards drawing on a safeguarded balance rather than a bank current account, which is the same arrangement described on our safeguarding page.
Yes, and once you are issuing several the page you want is expense cards, which covers per-person limits, merchant-category controls and reporting built for reconciling many cards at once. Company-level spending from the account itself is what this page describes.
Freeze it instantly and issue a replacement; virtual cards can be cancelled and reissued in moments. Controls are per card, so one card’s problem never becomes the account’s problem.
Not for a credit facility, because there is not one. The institution still runs its own onboarding checks on the business and the people behind it, but you are not being assessed for borrowing and there is nothing to service, so a company with no credit history is not disadvantaged the way it would be applying for a business credit card.
Check if we can help
Tell us what you need. You’ll deal with one team, with the group’s licensed institutions behind it, and get a straight answer either way.