The end of the shared company card, and the expense claim with it
One card per person, with the limit decided before the card exists, turns company spending from a monthly reconstruction into a record that builds itself.
Two bad options, and most companies use both
When somebody has to buy something on behalf of the company, there are traditionally two ways to do it. They pay with their own money and claim it back, or they use the card that the company shares.
Reimbursement moves the cost onto the employee for a few weeks, which is a poor thing to ask of junior staff in particular, and it produces a claim form that somebody has to check. The shared card avoids that and creates a different problem: a statement full of transactions that belong to nobody in particular, reconstructed at month end by asking around.
Both routes have the same underlying flaw. The record of who spent what is created after the spending, by memory, at a moment when the information has already started to degrade.
The card carries the name, so the transaction does too
Issuing a card to each person who spends changes the order of events. The identity is attached at the moment of payment rather than reconstructed later, and the limit exists before the first transaction rather than being discovered by exceeding it.
With Reibanq business cards, physical cards are issued in the company's name and delivered to the address you choose, and virtual cards are created in the app and usable online immediately. Each card belongs to one person, and each carries the limit set when it was created. Reibanq accounts and cards run on payment services supplied and managed by Orenda FS B.V., and client funds are held separately from Reibanq's own money.
The cost structure is deliberately flat: a physical company card is a one-off EUR 2.00 on the Business plan and free on Young Entrepreneurs, and the fee for every other operation is published on the pricing page rather than quoted on request. There is no separate "expense management module" to buy on top.
Limits before the fact, not approvals after it
There is a meaningful difference between controlling spending and reviewing it. A limit set in advance prevents a transaction that should not happen. An approval workflow reviews a transaction that already has.
- A maximum per card, set on the same screen that creates the card, and adjustable at any time.
- Category restrictions where they make sense, such as a card that only works for travel or subscriptions.
- A freeze that takes one tap in the app, which is faster than establishing whether a card is genuinely lost.
- A notification the moment a card is used, so an unexpected transaction is noticed the same hour rather than the following month.
The freeze deserves particular attention. Most card fraud on a business account is discovered late because nobody was watching the statement, and the window between the first unauthorised transaction and the second is where the loss is decided.
What finance teams ask first
What happens when somebody leaves? The card is frozen or cancelled from the dashboard, without touching the main account or reissuing anything for the rest of the team. This is the single clearest advantage over a shared card, which has to be replaced entirely and re-registered with every subscription it was attached to.
Does a virtual card make sense for a small team? Usually yes, and specifically for recurring online payments. A virtual card dedicated to subscriptions isolates them, makes them countable, and can be cancelled without disturbing anything else.
Does the programme change when the team grows? The mechanics do not. Issuing the eleventh card is the same operation as issuing the second, which is the point of setting limits per card rather than negotiating them per person.
A card programme is not a spending policy
It is worth being clear about what tooling does not solve. Cards with limits make a policy enforceable; they do not write one. A company that has never decided what employees may buy will find that the software asks the question rather than answering it, usually on the day the first card is created.
That is not an argument against the tooling. It is an argument for spending an hour on the policy before spending ten minutes on the cards, because the limits are only as sensible as the thinking behind them.
What finance teams ask before issuing cards
Can I issue a card to every employee who spends?
Yes. Once the account is open you can order physical cards and create virtual cards for each person, and every card is linked to an individual, so transactions carry a name rather than only a number.
How do spending limits work?
You set a limit per card when you create it, and you can restrict a card to a category such as travel or subscriptions. The limit resets monthly and can be changed at any time from the dashboard.
What happens when somebody leaves the company?
You freeze or cancel that person's card from the dashboard. Nothing else on the account is affected, and no other card has to be reissued, which is the main practical difference from a shared card.
What do the cards cost?
A physical company card is a one-off EUR 2.00 on the Business plan and free on Young Entrepreneurs. On card payments outside the EEA the first ten each month are free, and each one after that costs 2.2% of the amount. The full list is on the pricing page.
Put a card where the spending happens
Physical and virtual cards, a limit for each person, and a freeze that takes one tap.