By Andrew Hoag, Founder and CEO of Teampay

Teampay was founded on the idea that there has been a broad market change in the way that companies spend money. More employees are making more purchases from more places than ever before. The shift from top-down to bottom-up spending meant finance teams needed a new way to manage spend that was purpose-built for today’s distributed, employee-driven business.

Teampay set out to create a world where finance teams enable more efficient business with less friction and happier employees. Fast forward a few years, and our mission to modernize how companies manage spending was being realized. Fast forward a bit more, and an unprecedented global pandemic rocked the world.

Previously emerging trends skyrocketed in a new business landscape dominated by remote and distributed teams. With an explosion of new tools needed to adjust to “the new normal,” bottom-up spending soared, nearly all of it online. More employees and contractors across more time zones and geographies were making more business purchases than ever before.

While I was shocked by the events of 2020, I was not surprised by the shifts in business spending which were long overdue. Teampay was designed with digital purchasing experiences in mind from day one. Our software was built to issue corporate cards with controls, empowering employees with an easy-to-use purchasing system, while still giving finance teams total control and real-time visibility over company spend.

Powering purchasing experiences with a digital mindset

The fact is, physical corporate cards weren’t built for the way businesses make purchases today; they are a legacy blunt instrument built for a disconnected era. But just creating and manually managing virtual cards creates more headache than it's worth — a totally new digital approach is warranted.

A digital payments mindset doesn’t mean simply digitizing an existing process. It means providing an end-to-end connected process around spending, however people are paying. That distinction is a core tenet of Teampay’s mission, and our platform offers employees and executives the same streamlined digital experience in both the virtual and physical world.

And we’re not the only ones championing this approach. MasterCard has pioneered digital first technology that takes the physical card experience to the next level. Together, we’ve partnered to bring a first-of-its-kind digital experience to our customers.

Creating the future of corporate cards

Our new executive offering, Catalyst by Teampay, puts this philosophy into action. Offering exclusive benefits and a streamlined digital experience with a slick metal card, Catalyst is the first-ever corporate card of its kind.

In line with Teampay’s original founding vision, Catalyst offers executives a ground-breaking solution for the future of corporate spending. This means a modern, digital payment experience plus the elite benefits that executives have come to expect from a premium card.

The contactless metal card is paired with an iOS app that can be used to generate virtual card numbers for online purchases, see recent transactions, and quickly upload receipts. Executives can enjoy unrestricted spending power and exclusive rewards, both with their elite physical card and online virtual cards.

Innovation in finance operations

Catalyst is a giant step forward in the modernization of finance operations. In this time of great innovation, new technologies emerge regularly to streamline functions such as sales, marketing, and engineering — but finance has been slower to reap the benefits of digital transformation.

To go back to the trends I discussed earlier, the shift to bottom-up spending has caused challenges for finance teams including manual work, lack of visibility, best-guess accounting, willy-nilly spending, and policy misalignment. Catalyst solves these challenges by giving finance teams real-time visibility into executive spend, wherever and whenever it happens.

Tying card numbers to a purchase, not a person, Catalyst provides a fully connected purchasing experience. This eliminates expense reports and best-guess accounting, provides clearer audit trails, and arms finance teams with cleaner, more accurate data.

Catalyst delivers a VIP card experience for executives while eliminating manual overhead for a company’s most expensive employees. This gives finance teams unprecedented visibility and allows them to focus their efforts on adapting their strategy to meet the needs of an ever-changing world.

Enable the purchasing process of tomorrow, today

As we return to work and travel in the upcoming months, Teampay is bringing the corporate purchasing experience into the modern era — not by simply digitizing what exists, but by rethinking the entire process from the ground up. Distributed work demands finance operations that fuel agility and growth, not bureaucracy.

The future of work will require connected online and offline experiences — and that is exactly what Catalyst offers. With this solution, Teampay is continuing to lead the way in the spend management space, delivering groundbreaking innovation for modern finance teams. Catalyst catapults us into the future of purchasing, a future that is digital-driven and more connected than ever before.