US-based issuers of commercial credit cards have lost profitable business in recent years to companies including Ramp and Brex, providers of high-performing spend management software integrated with corporate T&E, procurement and other payment card products.

Modern spend management specialists emphasize the value of fully automating accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) features over the actual payment, although they make virtual card issuance frictionless. Banks fell behind in part owing to the slow-to-market pace of service upgrades available from third-party processors of credit card account services. The integrations of their value-added features with payment cards involved more friction than businesses wanted to deal with.

Unlike Brex and Ramp, Extend does not sign card issuing partnerships with businesses, but it does provide a spend and expense management platform that banks in the US and Canada can integrate with their commercial card products.

PNC Bank, the ninth largest US issuer of Visa and Mastercard commercial cards, has just signed a deal with Extend. The partnership enables businesses to instantly issue virtual cards to employees, contractors and vendors.

They can also set spending limits that are aligned with budgets and workflows and track transactions in real time with built-in transparency and controls. Apple Pay and Google Pay contactless payments are an option.

Extend provides spend and expense management software support to 10,000 middle market commercial cards issued by American Express, BMO, HSBC, City National and other banks. Extend software can be deployed by commercial card issuer clients of Tsys, FIS or any other processor. Its software can integrate with the top ERP and CRM software systems, including SAP Concur, Oracle NetSuite, QuickBooks and Salesforce, and Extend’s API can be used to build custom integrations with internal software systems.

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