BMO Commercial Bank taps Extend to launch corporate spend management app
BMO Financial Group, the eighth largest bank in North America by assets, is tapping its existing partnership with the virtual card and spend management platform Extend to launch a co-branded app for its commercial banking clients.
BMO taps Extend for corporate app launch
Available in both the US and Canada, the Extend for BMO app will enable clients to offer and manage virtual Mastercard-issued cards within their employees’ mobile wallets.
The offering is compatible with online, in-app and in-store payment gateways, and complete with spend controls and “streamlined” receipt and reconciliation processes, clients are poised to be able to manage their company’s travel and business expenses with greater ease.
With a functionality now spanning multiple payment facets, Derek Vernon, head of treasury and payment solutions (TPS) product management and payments modernisation at BMO Commercial Bank, says the offering is “equipping our corporate card clients with convenient tools to manage their businesses and make financial progress”.
By investing in “sophisticated technology” and leveraging its partnerships with Extend and Mastercard, Vernon adds that the bank is aiming to make “banking faster and simpler for our clients” while delivering “the innovative, secure digital payment tools they have come to expect from a digital-first bank”.
BMO and Extend first came together in December last year to incorporate a new level of payment functionality to the BMO corporate card programme, which itself leverages Mastercard’s mobile virtual card solution.
Following the latest development in the partnership announced this week, Andrew Jamison, the co-founder and CEO and Extend, describes the enabling of virtual cards in mobile wallets as “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.”
“Enabling virtual cards for use in mobile wallets is the next frontier for the digitisation of business payments,” adds Marie Elizabeth Aloisi, EVP US commercial payments/acceptance and healthcare solutions, Mastercard.
