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Tuesday, November 5, 2024

How a Money Services Business Pairs Finance and Software to Streamline Corporate Spend Management

Pairing Finance And Software Streamlines Corporate Spend
Mike Senecal

Writer: Mike Senecal

Mike Senecal

Mike Senecal, Staff Writer

Mike Senecal draws on more than 20 years of editorial experience to update CardRates.com readers on industry trends, business news, and best practices in budgeting and credit use. Mike has worked for decades in academic and trade publishing, including roles as managing editor and technical editor at the University of Florida and as contributor to finance industry publications, including Surety Bond Quarterly and Independent Agent, among others. Mike holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of South Carolina, and he enjoys bringing his years of academic and industry expertise online to help consumers of diverse financial backgrounds.

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Lillian Guevara-Castro

Editor: Lillian Guevara-Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro, Senior Editor

Lillian Guevara-Castro brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to the CardRates team. She has worked at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Gwinnett Daily News, Gainesville Sun, and The New York Times, where she covered demographics, consumer issues, and the business and financial sectors. Lillian has a degree in journalism and communications from Georgia State University and brings her fact-checking expertise to ensure Digital Brands content is accurate and engaging.

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Adam West

Reviewer: Adam West

Adam West

Adam West, Managing Editor

Adam has interviewed over 1,000 finance experts since joining the CardRates team in 2016. He spearheads industry news coverage related to helping consumers achieve greater financial literacy and improved credit. He has more than 12 years of storytelling, editing, and design experience in print and online journalism and is most knowledgeable in the areas of credit scores, financial products and services, and the banking industry.

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In a Nutshell: Every financial environment is different. The 2020s rise of Float in Canada brings a more efficient approach to corporate expense management in a market where the big banks never learned to change. Float combines a virtual card platform and tools for reimbursements, direct payouts, expense reporting, mileage, and bill pay — in accounts that pay rewards and a 4% rate with no lock-ins or minimums. Canadian-headquartered businesses in all verticals turn to the platform because holistic spend management through Float saves them time and money and breaks barriers, allowing them to do more for Canadian consumers.

Ever feel stuck in a time warp? We’d say that’s how Rob Khazzam, Ruslan Nikolaev, and Griffin Keglevich must have felt as they strategized in 2020-21 to get their new business up and running.

That’s because they found themselves up against the Canadian banking system.

The three entrepreneurs met over shared experiences of how painful it is to deal with expense reports as big-tech employees at Shopify and Uber.

“It is hard enough to do your job at a fast-paced company, let alone having to spend hours every week submitting receipts and capturing expenses just to get your own money back from the business,” Nikolaev said.

Float logo

The need in the market for a fintech solution that could transcend Canada’s antiquated traditional banking system was stark. Nikolaev left Uber and with Khazzam in 2019 created Float, a corporate credit card platform that taps into virtual card technology to circumvent the ways of the past.

As they worked to bring their product to market in May 2021, they realized more and more why the time was right for their idea.

“First of all, even getting a corporate card in Canada is a hassle — it took us six weeks to get our cards, which was really painful,” Nikolaev said. “We couldn’t buy storage or tools or do anything, really. Plus, you get personally underwritten, which is something we felt needed to change.”

Their bank gave the partners a $2,500 credit limit, though they had $500,000 sitting in accounts. Given their complex finances, they couldn’t find a platform to close their books or issue cards to their team. Platforms didn’t work with the Canadian taxation system or support the French language.

“These were all edge cases that basically made it way more painful to use a product,” Nikolaev said. “That’s why we think building in Canada is an exciting focus for us: We’re giving Canadian corporates true holistic financial services — tools they’ve never had on the financial services side.”

Software Experience Optimizes Access and Control

On the card side, Nikolaev said the software experience built on top of Float cards is significantly more sophisticated than that of corporate cards from banks. Managers can issue virtual or physical cards, transfer virtual cards instantly, and add cards to the Apple Wallet app on command.

They can issue zero-dollar limits to eliminate concerns that employees might start swiping right away. They can set recurring or temporary limits that expire automatically and pre-categorize cards according to teams, departments, tax codes, and other delineators.

Managers can stack multiple temporary limits. For example, an employee might have a $500 limit over the next 14 days to take a client out to dinner and a $2,000 limit to visit HQ next month.

Float products
Float offers pinpoint control over expense management.

“All of that makes our cards really powerful for employees to spend with,” Nikolaev said.

The platform is available entirely on mobile. The Float app allows employees to access their cards and upload their receipts on the go. For added convenience, managers can customize which amounts require receipts, which types of purchases require general ledger codes, and so on.

“Employees basically do all the coding,” Nikolaev said. “As a finance team, you issue the cards, set the limits — or not — and then just review their monthly transactions.”

Float generates additional potential in many ways. It connects a company’s HR systems and can import an entire organizational structure. The system can direct spend requests directly to the relevant manager instead of the finance team.

“We like to say we decentralize spending without giving up control,” Nikolaev said. “You can empower your teams to spend and not get blocked or stuck somewhere filing expense reports. But at the same time, you’re not just giving them a card.”

Seamless Onboarding and Support

Float works with companies of all sizes in all verticals, from nascent ventures with a few employees to enterprise-level players. Many early adopters are tech and business services firms, including IT providers and digital marketing agencies. Float has also seen early success in healthcare, fast-growth VC-backed tech companies, and construction.

“Our vision is to build a product for the entire Canadian economy,” Nikolaev said. “We don’t want to narrow ourselves to be the best corporate card for construction or tech companies. From day one, we’ve thought of ourselves as serving Canada as a whole.”

Onboarding is a single-signup process that takes about 15 minutes. Due diligence on Float’s end requires about a day. Then it’s off to the races: The system is ready to allow managers to spin up virtual charge and credit cards on the fly.

“When you’re using the account for the first time, you can go ahead and top up money to Float and start spending that,” Nikolaev said. “Or, you can apply for a charge card and wait until we underwrite you. Or you can do both.”

Float spending limits
The software allows managers to set granular spending limits.

In-house underwriting requires about a week. Card limits are higher than industry norms. There’s no generic underwriting engine spitting out limits based on bank balances. Instead, Float underwriters perform nuanced assessments that go beyond the technical aspects of creditworthiness to consider a business’s potential.

Automatic top-ups add convenience. For customers with a strong track record of using Float, fast funding improves the average settlement time of three days in the Canadian financial system to a single day.

Two wallets in the Float app — one for U.S. and one for Canadian dollars — allow users to circumvent costly foreign exchange fees by transferring funds judiciously.

Customers rate Float’s in-house support highly. The team prides itself on achieving an average response time of less than a minute and garnering the highest possible scores in customer-rating benchmarks.

“Our surveys tell us that we help our customers close their books eight times faster,” Nikolaev said. “That comes from employees not having to submit expense reports, finance teams not having to close the books at month’s end, and no more of the banking and card management mess you usually have to go through as a finance team.”

Empowering Businesses to Grow Faster in Canada

The result is more modern spend management in Canada that reaches every aspect of doing business in Canada. Nikolaev isn’t kidding when he says Canada has a lot of catching up to do. To help, Float has launched reimbursement and bill pay products that have seen rapid uptake.

“The general dynamic we see is that Canada is at least seven to ten years behind the U.S. in financial technology,” Nikolaev said. “Compared to the improvements that are possible in the more sophisticated markets of the EU and U.S., the step improvement Canadian businesses get from adopting Float is much larger.”

That’s why they’re adopting it. Khazzam and Nikolaev’s vision is for Float to emerge as a chief empowerment agent to help Canadian businesses grow faster. Rewards are crucial in achieving that goal.

Float offers 1% cash back on monthly expenditures exceeding $25,000. Users earn 4% interest on their U.S. and Canadian balances.

Float helps businesses save on tax fees and take advantage of auto-generated savings and perks. For example, we think it’s a unique touch that Float includes a calendar tool to flag duplicate subscription fees businesses may forget about from time to time.

That 4% interest is no joke. Trust us when we say it’s a number that you’re not going to find very often out there in the marketplace, especially so consistently offered across the board.

“Time savings and rewards combine to produce average savings of 7%, with a significant proportion attributed to preventing unwanted spend, ” Nikolaev said. “You’re not just saving because your employees spend less time submitting expense reports but because you’re literally controlling your spend better as a company.”