Going Fully Digital: Enabling Wallet-Free Payments
In-store and online transactions have been changing fast. Physical cards are slowly becoming obsolete as digital wallets become the preferred mode of payment for both consumers and businesses. One of the standout developments is compatibility with mobile wallets. Business card users can now connect their payment credentials directly to their Apple Pay or Google Pay-enabled devices.
This advancement brings multiple benefits. First, it eliminates the need for physical card distribution, which can be time-consuming and logistically complex—especially for distributed teams or new hires. Once a card is created by an administrator, users can add it to their mobile wallets within seconds and begin transacting immediately.
Second, it aligns with the growing mobile-first work culture. Salespeople on the road, remote team members, and freelancers can make payments on the go, with no delay or dependency on physical materials. The process is intuitive, secure, and accessible through devices already used in daily life.
For finance departments, this reduces support queries, delays in issuing cards, and concerns about lost or misplaced cards. It also ensures that card usage can be tracked in real-time, offering better control and visibility into organizational spending.
Simplifying Payments with Dynamic Payment Links
Getting paid quickly and efficiently is a key concern for any business. Delays in payment collection directly impact cash flow and operational sustainability. To solve this, businesses can now generate customized payment links that allow clients to pay in over 130 currencies while the funds settle in a chosen home currency.
The flexibility of this feature allows businesses to create one-time or reusable links. These can be shared over email, embedded in invoices, or even presented as QR codes. Clients receive a localized payment experience with global support, and businesses benefit from simplified receivables processing.
This feature is especially useful for service businesses, freelancers, and enterprises that sell outside of traditional eCommerce platforms. There’s no need for a full checkout system or integration-heavy payment gateways. Links can be tailored for specific amounts or purposes and are ready to use within seconds.
For finance teams, receiving funds in a preferred currency avoids multiple conversions and the fees typically associated with them. Additionally, payment tracking is straightforward, which helps with faster reconciliation and audit readiness.
Improved Card Issuance for Growing Teams
As organizations scale, their financial structures often struggle to keep up. Growth comes with new hires, departments, and a rising need for decentralized purchasing capabilities. The ability to issue multiple cards to employees while maintaining oversight becomes crucial.
A key improvement allows administrators to issue additional cards without losing control or transparency. Traditionally, systems were designed to track cards, not cardholders. That created a gap when a single employee held multiple cards—each for a specific purpose, such as subscriptions, travel, or project-specific expenses.
The recent update addresses this by reorganizing the view in the transactions table. Now, card usage can be filtered by cardholder or individual card, making it easier to understand who is spending what and where. This clarity simplifies internal reporting and allows for more strategic spending reviews across departments.
This feature is now live for users in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. Other regions can expect access as the rollout continues. For businesses in those geographies, this update reduces administrative workload, improves compliance, and supports more responsible employee spending.
Faster Cardholder Onboarding Experience
Time is a valuable asset, especially when onboarding new employees. For many companies, delays in setting up payment methods hinder productivity, as employees must wait before making authorized purchases or travel bookings.
Previously, requesting a new card required the employee to upload government-issued identification. This added friction to the process and was particularly inconvenient for remote hires, international contractors, or project-based freelancers.
In response to user feedback, the onboarding experience has now been streamlined. Employees no longer need to go through identity verification steps that slowed down card approval. With a simplified workflow, cards can be issued and used more quickly—allowing new team members to become financially active almost immediately.
This improvement is already available in Australia and is expected to expand to additional regions soon. For businesses experiencing rapid hiring or managing large contractor networks, this change significantly reduces the time it takes for new personnel to become operational.
Local NZD Payments Without the Usual Fees
For companies that do business with New Zealand partners, vendors, or branches, sending NZD payments used to involve the cost and delay of SWIFT transfers. These transactions often included a $10 fee and took several days to complete, causing headaches for both sender and recipient.
That’s now a thing of the past. With the introduction of local NZD transfers, businesses can send payments that settle faster and don’t carry the SWIFT fee. It’s like making a domestic transfer, even if the origin is abroad.
This is especially useful for companies based in Australia or Asia-Pacific that operate in the New Zealand market. Whether the payments are for salaries, supplier invoices, or one-time purchases, this enhancement offers major time and cost savings.
Faster settlement also reduces uncertainty. Vendors receive their funds quicker, leading to better business relationships. Internal finance teams can close their books faster, knowing payments have been processed promptly. Overall, this improvement makes New Zealand-based payments more practical and predictable.
Mobile Management of Employee Cards on Android Devices
Mobility is no longer optional in business operations—it’s essential. Finance leaders and operations staff need the ability to take action wherever they are, especially in the current era of remote work, hybrid offices, and global teams.
The latest product update significantly expands mobile management capabilities for Android users. Administrators and team leaders can now search, view, and manage employee cards directly through the mobile app. Whether it’s freezing a card, cancelling it, or adjusting spending limits, all of this can be done in seconds from a smartphone.
This upgrade is especially helpful in urgent situations. For example, if a card is lost or if fraudulent activity is suspected, immediate action can be taken—without needing to wait until the administrator is at a desktop computer. Similarly, if an employee needs a limit increase while traveling, the request can be fulfilled on the go.
By searching for an employee’s name or using the last four digits of a card, actions can be completed quickly and confidently. This ensures security while supporting the need for flexible, real-time financial management.
Aligning Technology with Real-World Business Needs
The October 2021 product updates are more than just incremental improvements. They represent a shift toward intelligent financial operations that match the evolving needs of modern businesses. Whether your company is scaling up, operating globally, or becoming more remote-friendly, these tools are tailored to provide faster service, better visibility, and more convenience.
By focusing on the user experience across mobile devices, card management, and international payments, these features help reduce the administrative load on finance teams while empowering individual employees to act responsibly and independently.
The mobile wallet compatibility, streamlined onboarding, enhanced payment tracking, and local transfer support form a cohesive set of upgrades that align with the direction of business innovation. These improvements build on each other to create a robust system that supports both financial discipline and operational speed.
Building a Smarter, More Responsive Finance Stack
As organizations grow and evolve, the complexity of their financial operations often increases. With more transactions, more team members, and more moving parts, the tools used to manage those financial processes must adapt accordingly. October 2021’s product updates continue this evolution by addressing some of the core challenges finance and operations teams face daily—managing teams at scale, improving mobile access, and ensuring the reliability of scheduled transfers.
We explored how these updates simplify multi-user card management, streamline team onboarding, and resolve key issues related to scheduled payments. It also looks at how teams are now empowered to work more independently without sacrificing control or oversight.
Multi-User Card Visibility: A Necessary Step for Scalable Spending Control
When a company grows, so does the need to delegate purchasing power to departments and individuals. Issuing payment cards to staff has become a common strategy for empowering teams, but managing those cards effectively has been a consistent hurdle. Especially in companies where one employee might have several cards—for subscriptions, travel, or project-specific budgets—tracking individual spending becomes difficult.
Recognizing this challenge, the October release introduced a major improvement to how businesses can view and control spending. Instead of tracking cards alone, finance administrators can now track cardholders as unique entities. This means that even if an employee has three cards, their total expenses can be viewed collectively or broken down by card.
This improvement provides a much-needed layer of transparency. Finance departments no longer have to cross-reference multiple records or manually aggregate data just to understand an employee’s or department’s total spending. Instead, this visibility is now available directly within the transaction dashboard, allowing for more informed financial decisions.
Additionally, this update contributes to faster audits, more accurate budgeting, and better internal accountability. As more businesses embrace decentralized purchasing, having robust controls and real-time visibility becomes essential to maintaining financial discipline without slowing down teams.
Regional Expansion of Enhanced Card Management
The benefits of improved cardholder visibility are already available in several major markets. Specifically, businesses operating in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong now have access to this upgraded transaction interface. By enabling finance teams in these regions to filter expenses by employee or by card, the system helps clarify how budget is being allocated and whether spending limits are being respected.
This feature is particularly useful for companies with regional departments or team structures. A team manager can quickly check their team’s activity without waiting for monthly reports or summaries. Likewise, finance departments can provide region-specific oversight without needing to dig into detailed card logs manually.
For businesses operating in multiple markets, this update is a foundational step toward unified financial management. While the rollout is currently limited to select regions, expansion to other countries is expected in future updates, ensuring global consistency and access.
Streamlining the Cardholder Onboarding Process
One of the most time-consuming processes for finance and operations teams is onboarding new cardholders. In fast-growing organizations, new hires and contractors need access to payment cards quickly, often on their first day. Delays in this process can impact their ability to perform their roles and may create unnecessary reimbursement claims or purchase bottlenecks.
The onboarding experience for employees requesting a card has now been significantly improved. Previously, users were required to provide government-issued identification as part of the verification process. This not only slowed down the workflow but also introduced complications for employees working remotely or based in different legal jurisdictions.
In response to user feedback, the onboarding process has been streamlined. Employees can now request and receive cards through a simplified process that skips the identity document requirement. The result is a more fluid experience for employees and fewer administrative tasks for HR and finance teams.
By reducing the number of steps involved, companies can ensure that new employees receive their cards faster. This supports seamless onboarding and allows individuals to take on responsibilities immediately. It’s a particularly valuable update for startups, distributed teams, and fast-scaling enterprises that can’t afford delays in operational readiness. This simplified onboarding workflow is currently available in Australia, with plans to extend it to other regions as compliance requirements are addressed.
Mobile Management for Android Users: Card Control on the Go
Modern finance operations must support a mobile-first workforce. Whether it’s approving expenses during travel, managing spending limits after hours, or responding quickly to potential fraud, finance professionals need the ability to take action from anywhere.
The October update includes a major enhancement for Android users: administrators and team members can now manage employee cards directly from their mobile devices. This includes viewing active cards, freezing or cancelling them, and adjusting spending limits with just a few taps.
The design of this functionality reflects an understanding of how financial administrators actually work. Instead of navigating through complex menus, users can simply search by employee name or by entering the last four digits of a card. From there, actions can be taken instantly.
This mobile-first approach is especially useful during emergencies or when timing is critical. For example, if a card is suspected of being compromised, the admin doesn’t need to wait until they’re back at a computer to freeze it. Similarly, if an employee’s limit needs to be increased for an urgent purchase, the change can be made on the spot.
More importantly, it gives companies a better way to enforce spending policies in real time, not just during end-of-month reviews. As hybrid and remote work becomes more common, having this level of control in the palm of your hand is no longer a luxury—it’s essential.
Fixing Key Issues: Scheduled Transfers Now Work as Intended
System reliability is just as important as introducing new features. When businesses schedule transfers to be sent at specific times, they expect the system to honor those instructions precisely. Any deviation from that schedule can cause confusion, disrupt cash flow, or even lead to missed payment deadlines.
In previous versions of the platform, some users reported that scheduled transfers were being dispatched immediately instead of waiting for their designated send dates. This issue undermined trust and created additional work for finance teams that rely on automation to run smoothly.
The October release includes a full resolution to this issue. Transfers that are scheduled for a future date will now process exactly when they are supposed to—no sooner, no later. This fix restores confidence in the system’s scheduling capabilities and allows users to fully automate recurring or time-sensitive payments without worry.
This reliability is especially important for recurring vendor payments, payroll transfers, and internal fund allocations. When timing is critical, finance professionals need assurance that scheduled transactions will be executed precisely. With this fix, that level of certainty is now standard.
Practical Benefits for Teams and Operations
While the updates in this release may seem technical on the surface, the operational benefits are substantial. The ability to onboard cardholders faster, manage spending on mobile devices, and rely on scheduled transfers enhances day-to-day workflows for finance teams, HR departments, and operations leads.
The reduced need for manual oversight allows leaders to focus more on strategic initiatives rather than transactional tasks. Meanwhile, employees benefit from faster access to resources, fewer delays, and tools that support their productivity.
In addition to functionality, the improved user experience across desktop and mobile platforms contributes to stronger adoption rates across teams. When employees find it easy to use the tools provided to them, they’re more likely to follow policies, submit expenses on time, and keep financial data accurate.
Aligning Operational Needs with Strategic Objectives
These enhancements also support broader business goals. For example, faster card issuance helps onboard new sales reps who can start client outreach immediately. Better mobile control lets executives manage travel and hospitality budgets on the fly. Reliable scheduled transfers allow procurement teams to set up predictable vendor payments without repetitive manual entry.
All of these improvements help align day-to-day financial operations with long-term strategic objectives. Whether the goal is to scale internationally, improve profitability, or reduce administrative overhead, having the right tools in place makes a measurable difference.
The Evolving Needs of Finance Teams in a Digital World
As businesses navigate an increasingly complex financial landscape, the role of the finance team has expanded far beyond basic bookkeeping. Today, finance leaders are expected to provide real-time insights, drive operational efficiency, and enable teams across the organization to make informed financial decisions.
In this context, the October 2021 release cycle focuses not only on improving current functionality but also lays the groundwork for what’s next. The improvements around team onboarding, cardholder visibility, and payment link generation represent clear steps toward an integrated financial operating system. Looking ahead, the upcoming features aim to close remaining operational gaps, enhance automation, and provide companies with a more unified approach to managing spend and reconciling expenses.
End-to-End Expense Management System
The ability to submit, review, and reconcile expenses in one place has long been a pain point for finance teams. Many companies rely on disconnected tools, manual uploads, and slow approval chains, which result in delayed insights, duplicated data, and compliance risks.
Recognizing this challenge, the upcoming release introduces an integrated expense management system designed to centralize and streamline the full lifecycle of expense processing. The solution includes functionality for employees to submit expenses with receipts attached, for managers and finance teams to review and approve them, and for final reconciliation into accounting software to occur without delay.
This is more than a convenience feature. It represents a structural improvement in how finance teams operate. The current process at many companies involves spreadsheets, shared folders, and manual entry. These tools might have worked at a smaller scale, but they quickly break down when a company grows and the volume of transactions increases.
By bringing all steps into one system—submission, approval, export—the new tool ensures that data stays accurate, audit trails are maintained, and real-time visibility into company spending is always available.
Centralized Controls for Greater Financial Oversight
One of the most requested features by finance teams is centralized policy control—essentially, a way to govern how money flows within the organization without relying on after-the-fact analysis.
The upcoming expense platform will offer policy configuration tools, allowing businesses to set spending limits, approval thresholds, and receipt requirements in advance. These policies can be tailored based on roles, departments, or expense categories. For example, a policy may require receipts for meals above a certain amount, or automatically escalate approvals if an expense exceeds a team’s budget.
These kinds of automated guardrails drastically reduce the need for back-and-forth emails, corrections, and rejections. Instead, they help employees stay compliant from the start and reduce the burden on finance reviewers who would otherwise need to verify submissions manually. For leadership teams, this also introduces more confidence that company spending aligns with internal expectations, regulatory requirements, and budgeting targets.
Automatic Integration with Accounting Software
One of the biggest friction points in modern financial management is the delay between expense approval and its reflection in the company’s accounting system. Delays can lead to errors, misreporting, and compliance risks—especially when closing out monthly or quarterly books.
The upcoming release introduces seamless integration with cloud-based accounting tools. With automatic syncing of expense data and digital receipts, transactions flow directly into the general ledger in near real-time. This makes reconciliation faster, more accurate, and less prone to error.
More importantly, it enables companies to shorten their reporting cycles and deliver accurate data to stakeholders without lag. This is crucial for high-growth businesses where access to current financial data drives decisions around hiring, expansion, investment, and product development.
Automatic syncing also reduces dependency on manual uploads or CSV exports, saving hours of work each month for finance administrators. These time savings add up significantly, allowing teams to focus more on strategic planning and less on administrative upkeep.
Improving Employee Experience Across the Board
While the primary benefits of expense management improvements are often discussed from the finance team’s point of view, it’s equally important to understand the experience for employees who are submitting expenses. A frustrating or confusing process not only slows things down but also discourages employees from engaging with systems properly.
The new interface for expense submission is designed with clarity and ease of use in mind. Users will be able to upload receipts from their desktop or mobile device, assign appropriate categories, and provide brief explanations—all within a few intuitive steps.
Submission processes will be tailored to reduce the time it takes to complete entries, minimize errors, and prevent duplicates. This improves the quality of submitted data, ensures policy compliance, and reduces the number of rejected claims.
Better employee experience also contributes to higher rates of on-time submissions, which in turn helps finance teams close books faster and make budgetary decisions based on current information.
Bringing Real-Time Intelligence into Expense Tracking
The future of expense management is not just about processing claims—it’s about gaining insights. The upcoming system is expected to include real-time analytics dashboards that show spending trends by department, geography, category, and individual employee.
These insights will allow teams to identify areas of overspending, negotiate better vendor deals, and adjust policies based on actual usage rather than assumptions. Having access to such analytics can transform how budget conversations happen within companies. It shifts finance teams from reactive reviewers to strategic advisors.
This level of transparency also allows leadership to hold teams accountable without micromanaging. By using dashboards that track expense trends and policy adherence, managers can identify outliers, adjust team budgets, and offer corrective guidance before small issues become big problems.
Preparing for the Future of Financial Operations
The new features on the horizon are not arriving in a vacuum—they represent a growing trend toward consolidation and automation in financial operations. Businesses that are still using separate systems for expenses, reimbursements, approvals, and accounting are finding that the costs of disconnected data and duplicated workflows are too high. Centralizing these processes into a unified system not only eliminates inefficiencies but also ensures that financial data is more accurate, more timely, and more actionable.
For finance leaders, these tools offer a foundation for building agile, data-driven teams. For CEOs and founders, they provide the transparency needed to make bold decisions without flying blind. And for operations teams, they enable smoother internal workflows with fewer bottlenecks and delays.
Benefits of Reducing Fragmentation Across Financial Systems
Historically, finance teams have relied on a patchwork of tools to manage the full spectrum of operational payments. One app might handle reimbursements, another might manage corporate cards, while yet another tracks approvals and documentation. Each of these systems comes with its own learning curve, maintenance cost, and risk of inconsistency. The shift toward integrated platforms addresses this issue directly. When a single platform manages card creation, expense tracking, approval workflows, and accounting sync, businesses unlock several major advantages.
First, there’s a reduction in total software spend. Consolidating vendors means fewer subscriptions and lower administrative overhead. Second, training and onboarding new team members becomes easier when everything lives in one ecosystem. Third, the potential for human error drops dramatically, especially in areas like duplicate expenses, missing receipts, or incorrect categorization.
Most importantly, integrated systems provide better insight. Decision-makers get a more complete picture of cash flow, spending behavior, and budget adherence. These insights are not just about keeping the books in order—they inform the strategic direction of the business itself.
Enabling Better Decision-Making Across the Organization
When financial processes work smoothly, the ripple effects are felt across every department. Marketing teams can track their campaign budgets with more accuracy. Sales managers can monitor travel expenses without waiting for reports. Operations leads can manage logistics costs without guesswork. And finance teams can provide forecasts that actually reflect current trends—not data that’s weeks out of date.
By implementing tools that are not only powerful but also user-friendly, organizations empower employees at every level to make smarter decisions. The value of this can’t be overstated in fast-growth environments where the margin for error is small and the pace of execution is high.
Through streamlined expense workflows and integrated reporting, finance becomes more than a back-office function. It becomes a driver of clarity, accountability, and strategic momentum across the business.
A Platform That Grows with the Business
One of the consistent themes throughout these updates is scalability. From enabling card issuance at scale, to simplifying onboarding, to preparing for high-volume expense workflows, these features are built for businesses that don’t want to outgrow their systems every time they hit a new growth milestone.
This focus on scalability ensures that tools implemented today will continue to serve the business tomorrow. Whether the goal is regional expansion, hiring a global team, or optimizing unit economics, the upcoming product features are aligned with the realities that modern companies face as they grow.
Conclusion
The October 2021 updates represent more than just incremental improvements—they reflect a deep understanding of the evolving needs of businesses operating in an increasingly digital, fast-paced, and globally connected environment. Across this release cycle, one consistent theme emerges: financial tools must be flexible, scalable, and intuitive enough to support real-time operations without sacrificing control or compliance.
We explored how key updates like mobile wallet compatibility and payment links are transforming the way businesses transact. By enabling tap-to-pay capabilities and simplifying how companies collect payments across borders, these tools not only improve customer experiences but also accelerate cash flow and eliminate unnecessary operational friction.
We focused on improving internal controls and giving finance teams the tools they need to manage spending at scale. From better cardholder visibility to more streamlined onboarding processes and mobile-friendly admin controls, these enhancements reduce manual workloads and create a clearer picture of organizational spend across teams and departments. The fix to scheduled transfers adds an important layer of trust and reliability to automated payment systems, reinforcing the platform’s commitment to consistency and operational excellence.
Finally, highlighted what’s coming next: an end-to-end expense management system designed to bring submission, approval, policy enforcement, and accounting integration under one roof. With real-time analytics, seamless syncing, and customizable policies, this upcoming feature empowers finance teams to operate with strategic precision while giving employees an intuitive and responsive tool to manage their own expenses.
Together, these updates and features point to a broader shift in how companies approach financial operations. They demonstrate the power of integrated systems that reduce fragmentation, increase visibility, and enable smarter decisions at every level of the business. By modernizing how payments are made, received, managed, and reconciled, these tools support growth without complexity—and provide a foundation for companies to scale with confidence.
As businesses look ahead to the next stage of their journey, these advancements offer both the tactical functionality and strategic insight needed to compete in a digital-first world. From startups preparing to enter new markets to enterprise teams optimizing global operations, the innovations launched and previewed in October 2021 are helping to shape the future of business finance.