As the payment industry goes through a transformation, we are seeing tremendous growth for card-not-present transactions; in July 2022, nearly 50 percent of the transactions Galileo processed were card-not-present. This growth comes with its own set of challenges, as unauthorized transactions for card-not-present transactions typically are almost double that of card present transactions.

Rather than going through the lengthy and often frustrating process of resolving fraud-related disputes after the fact, our clients are now looking for solutions that help stop these fraudulent transactions before they even happen. Having product level controls for velocity features like amount and frequency have become basic features that clients expect to set during onboarding. These are important safeguards that can mitigate fraud and/or help business clients better manage and track corporate spending.

However, our clients are breaking the mold and are major innovators in many segments, and to support their unique needs, product level controls are no longer sufficient. Customization to support each individual cardholder's needs has become the highest priority. But in today’s environment, where deliveries are getting faster and corporations are getting smarter about managing expenses, it is not enough to just offer these granular-level controls; it is also critical to enable them to be set and managed in real-time, on clients’ own terms.

Account-Level Controls: Customization Advantages

Account-level controls (ALCs) offer a host of advantages for payment card providers, including the ability to expend fewer resources on creating and maintaining multiple products, easy creation of multiple tiers within the same product and the ability to set temporary limits for one-time authorization capabilities.

One of the top reasons for failure of a new market challenger is poor management of funds. For organizations seeking an efficient way to offer flexibility and customization capabilities to meet end-users’ needs while streamlining expenditures, ALCs are a powerful tool, notes Pallavi Khanna, Senior Product Manager for Galileo.

“Clients don’t want to create more products; they want to create controls that align with each user's needs,” says Pallavi. “Every user has a different role to play in the organization and they may need different frequency controls, merchant type restrictions or total spend limits. Not having these guardrails can be an expense management nightmare.”

Meeting the Needs of B2B Businesses

Pallavi cites the use-case of food and package delivery services as an example of a situation where the flexibility and real-time capabilities of ALCs can be leveraged to improve the payments process.

“If you have a delivery service, your drivers pick up the items that your end-users have ordered. To streamline spending, you want to provide corporate cards to your drivers, but want to avoid overspending or unauthorized expenditure,” she notes. “ALCs can provide that assurance by restricting use of the card to only the relevant merchants for a limited time period and a specific spend amount. And it is all in real time with you in the driver’s seat!”

Along with direct savings stemming from spending controls, ALCs also offer businesses valuable time efficiencies by optimizing a host of spending-related tasks, such as reporting.

“The whole process can be streamlined. Employees and contract workers do not have to spend money out of pocket or submit expense reports, and managers do not have to determine whether expenses are legitimate or not,” Pallavi further explains.

Other ALC-based capabilities can be used to temporarily increase spending limits when a cardholder is traveling or tighten limits when there are indications of fraud — without having to cancel the card — and then restore the default limits if the usage is confirmed to be legitimate.

Healthcare is another example of a use-case where granular controls can help tailor a single product for a range of users. “Healthcare companies are now offering cards with restrictions as to what medication their end users can buy, and where,” noted Pallavi. “These companies are looking beyond medicine and are now focusing on the general well being of the individual. Be it yoga classes or meditation music, they are offering benefits with ALCs set specifically to the card holder’s needs. ”

ALC capabilities can be used for even finer-tuned control mechanisms, Pallavi noted. “For example, parents can create limits as to how much cash their kids take out of the ATM, or how many times, restrict the MCCs (merchant category codes) so that a child cannot buy an airline ticket on their own, or restrict their buying power to only a few stores.”

“Overall, clients increasingly want more ways of controlling the usage on their accounts, and they want to be able to do so with flexibility and in real time, as easily as possible,” says Pallavi. “We’ve heard what they have to say and are providing them with tools to serve those needs. We are innovating at high speeds to support the growth of our clients.”