So much more than just a prepaid business card

Every business needs to spend money to operate. In the past, that’s been done by employees paying with their own cash and waiting to be reimbursed, or by a small number of credit cards being shared amongst the team. Neither of these methods is very efficient or safe.

Corporate prepaid cards like Pleo are a modern way of managing expenses. Money is transferred from a company account to a centralised fund (or “account”). Cards are then issued to employees, paid for from that central fund – which is topped up by admins as required.

Prepaid business debit cards can be used to purchase goods or pay for services in the same way as a credit card, but you can only make transactions when there is money in your company account. 

With Pleo, employees scan receipts on-the-go using their phone, the system automatically categorises expenses based on previous behaviour and eliminates the need to do manual expense reports. Pleo’s commercial cards are issued by Mastercard, meaning they’re accepted by more than 30 million merchants worldwide.

Everything. If you need to buy it for work, Pleo can help. Plastic Pleo cards can be used for in-store payments, contactless transactions and have a chip and pin facility. 

Meanwhile, Pleo virtual business cards can be used to make online purchases. On top of that, you can use your Pleo card with ApplePay and Google Pay.

With a prepaid card, users can only spend money that’s already in their central fund. If someone tries to go over that prepaid balance, the transaction will be declined.

Credit cards allow users to run up debt, which explains why admins are reluctant to hand them out in the same way as prepaid cards are issued. Financial institutions require credit checks on individuals before issuing credit cards, while prepaid cards don’t require the same level of authorisation.

What a great question. 

If you’re a decision-maker on spending at your company, you can easily book a demo so our Sales team can show you more. 

If you’re not a decision-maker but like what you see from Pleo, ask your finance team to get in touch with us.

With Pleo, that depends a little on your verification status. For example, if you join Pleo but don’t complete the full verification, there’s a maximum of £850 allowed in your total account load. Our Customer Support team will help you to get this set up during onboarding though, so definitely ask them any questions you have about how much to load your account with.

Physical Pleo cards come with a £450 per day withdrawal limit.

Every time you add funds to Pleo, that money comes out of your business bank account. But it doesn’t go directly to us. It goes first to J.P. Morgan, or to Danske Bank for our customers in Denmark and Sweden. This means that neither we – nor anyone else – have direct access to your money. When a transaction is made with a Pleo card and Mastercard looks for the funds to cover it, Pleo takes the money from J.P. Morgan or Danske Bank to pay it.

J.P. Morgan and Danske Bank are both deemed to be Systemically Important Financial Institutions, in the US and Denmark respectively. That means that if something truly catastrophic happened, the central banks in the relevant countries would step in to ensure the survival of those institutions.

Plus, your transactions are handled by a separate licensed entity, Pleo Financial Services, regulated by the FSA in Denmark.

Our pricing aims to be as transparent and straightforward as possible. Apart from the monthly subscription fee for the Pro or Premium plans, there are some costs associated with card usage: FX charges, issuing an extra physical Pleo card (£10), ATM withdrawal fee (£4), customer funds refund (£25). There is also a cost related to reimbursements, with a fee charged of 0.9% of the amount reimbursed. This is capped at £1 per reimbursement. All prices and fees quoted exclude VAT. You can find out more in our terms.