BMO Debuts Virtual Card Mobile Wallets With Mastercard and Extend

BMO has teamed with Extend and Mastercard to offer clients new virtual card creation capabilities.

The collaboration, announced Monday (Aug. 28), lets BMO (Bank of Montreal) commercial bank customers in the U.S. and Canada create and push virtual cards to employees’ mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, letting them spend anywhere that accepts contactless payments.

“People expect to be able to make payments on the go, even when those payments are for business expenses,” Extend Co-founder and CEO Andrew Jamison said in a news release.

“By enabling virtual cards in mobile wallets, we have traveled the last mile toward widespread adoption. The ability to empower an employee to securely make ad hoc in-store purchases using a virtual card should be the norm, and now it can be.”

According to the release, BMO is the first global Mastercard issuer to offer contactless virtual cards via the bank’s cobranded Extend for BMO app — an expansion of the payments functionality BMO introduced last year.

The companies note that in-store contactless payments give businesses the chance to use virtual cards to manage spending more efficiently and enjoy a streamlined receipt and reconciliation processes. With mobile wallet capabilities, the bank’s corporate clients can extend these benefits to new purchases, like contactless payments made during business travel.

“Enabling virtual cards for use in mobile wallets is the next frontier for the digitization of business payments,” said Marie Elizabeth Aloisi, Mastercard’s executive vice president for U.S. commercial payments/acceptance and healthcare solutions.

PYMNTS spoke with Extend’s Jamison last year about his company’s work with commercial customers, like companies that need to issue cards to employees or contractors. Extend lets those customers issue cards in seconds for things like covering employee travel or making sure a contractor can buy the supplies they need.

“If I hired you as a contractor and you have to pay for some subscriptions, or you need to go and pay for some goods or materials, you’d be able to do it right here, right now, without having to extend a single dollar out of your own pocket and go through a reimbursement process,” Jamison explained.

This simplifies the expense process, while giving customers robust controls, such as limits for an amount or a time period, allowing for even a single transaction. Controls are important, but transparency is just as crucial, Jamison told PYMNTS.

“The reality is, most people can be trusted, but just knowing that there is this oversight and, frankly, transparency, just creates the right environment for people to actually get on and do their jobs,” he said.