Australian Fintech Archa Aims to Reinvent Corporate Card with Help of i2c

Australian based fintech Archa started with the idea of remaking the corporate card market by giving small businesses the credit and tools needed to efficiently run their companies through keeping track of spending and controlling cashflow.

With a plethora of receipts for multiple subscription transactions, random café charges, flight expenses, incidental purchases and more, Archa set out to solve the way small businesses manage their spending and track expenses. As a small business themselves, they identified the challenges and drudgery of managing and reporting expenses – especially recurring ones like software subscriptions requiring a card on file, which are usually paid for using a single company card. These transactions are often made in international currency, resulting in security concerns and higher costs. They also saw that despite being cashflow positive, banks didn‘t want to underwrite corporate credit cards for small businesses like theirs, instead offering complicated processes involving personal guarantees, director signoffs and branch visits.

“As we dug into the problem further, we quickly realized there wasn’t a clear alternative,” said CEO, Oliver Kidd. As a result of these problems, Archa and idea of neo-banking corporate credit was born – a platform that offers small businesses instant credit, better tools and data for everyday operations as well as integration with existing business practices without the need for a personal guarantee.

A more seamless SMB payment experience

Small businesses often deal with a multitude of payments that can become difficult to track and manage. Subscriptions, supplies, meals, travel and incidentals can seem like minor challenges, but they often lead to poor choices like sharing a company debit or credit card among many individuals. By doing so, it leads to larger headaches when it comes to recording and tracking company expenses in accounting systems.

For Archa, the solution started by doing away with the cumbersome application process for a company credit card. By looking at new data sources to make better credit decisions, Archa simplified and sped up the onboarding process, ultimately providing a better customer experience for businesses in need of a corporate card solution. It uses tiered pricing models and provides customers with the ability to grow their credit lines over time, add new cardholders and set spending limits – ultimately offering a compelling alternative for small businesses who want to save time on financial admin and eliminate employee reimbursements.

Taking it a step further, Archa also offers numerous in-app features such as allowing customers to manage their varying SaaS subscriptions by easily seeing what they spend with specific merchants. Businesses can also control team member spending through instantly capturing receipts in-app and can integrate directly with popular accounting software providers such as Xero and MYOB. Better yet, it provides the added employee perk of spreading the benefits of reward points to everyone in the company.

i2c and Archa: Bringing vision to reality

“Building our corporate card platform from scratch, we wanted a modern solution that would meet a number of bespoke needs, without needing to use multiple vendors,” said Kidd. “i2c solved that for us in that we immediately gained a payments partner with deep expertise, existing integrations with Archa’s other key partners, including Mastercard, plus proven speed to market,” he added.

With the help of Silicon Valley-headquartered i2c, Archa was able to deliver the differentiated digital and card-based solution they envisioned via a complete card management, processing and tokenization solution and select APIs which enabled the team to integrate more effectively.

i2c’s technology uses multiple data sources and machine learning to streamline risk assessment while enabling instant lines of credit and cards for employee expense accounts – providing a holistic view of money management across the company. In addition, i2c’s platform delivers key card lifecycle capabilities such as fraud management, chargeback processing and digital wallet capabilities and a self-service admin portal for handling program management functions.

A Winning Partnership

By using the i2c platform, Archa allows its small business customers to set spending limits, rules and notifications filtered by merchants and individual accounts. Through analysis via real-time reporting, businesses can also optimize their cashflow. In addition, company employees can easily set up and manage account features, check balances, make domestic and international purchases in multiple currencies, all while receiving notifications in real-time through the mobile app. They can also upload expense receipts in an instant using e-wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Advanced processors like i2c provide fintechs and FIs alike with a wide range of services, stability and reliability expected from large, established players while also delivering the speed to market, flexibility and APIs of newer challengers. Built on a single global platform with one source code, i2c has the rare ability to serve customers across 216 territories covering all time-zones, languages and currencies. i2c also offers credit, debit, prepaid and installment solutions while being certified with all major card networks.

“Putting the product we conceived in market without compromise has been a challenging process made easier with i2c and its team,” said Kidd.

To read the Archa corporate card case study in its entirety, click here.