Guide to the Divvy card

For business owners and entrepreneurs, there’s nothing funny about fraud. But if your finance team still relies on old-school spreadsheets for expense management, your inefficient system is likely more vulnerable to human error and sham expenditures than you might think.

Many of today’s best business credit cards can help ease the pain of managing expenses thanks to built-in tracking tools, accounting software integrations and spend controls. Here’s what you need to know about the Divvy Business Card, a corporate card that offers all those features and more.

What is the Divvy card?

The Divvy Business Card is a smart corporate credit card that pairs with financial software to fully automate the expense-management process for small- and medium-sized companies. The cloud-based Divvy platform lets business owners and managers monitor company spending in real time via instant notifications for every card swipe, eliminating the need for workers to file expense reports manually — and for finance and HR teams to process them manually, too.

With the Divvy card, companies can create recurring or one-time spending budgets organized by event, team, location, project and vendor. You can also set individual spending limits for every cardholder within each budget category (and adjust them as needed on the go). Plus, you can approve department and employee requests for reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses and mileage.

Unlike some corporate and small business credit cards that charge for each additional cardholder, Divvy provides free physical and virtual cards for all employees. The entire Divvy platform, in fact, is free — the fintech company makes money by taking a cut of interchange fees paid by merchants to cover the cost of processing a Divvy card transaction.

Divvy card benefits

The no-annual-fee Divvy Business Card offers a variety of features to help companies confront many of the more burdensome aspects of financial management, such as monitoring a business’s cash flow and working capital needs, tracking employee expenditures (without relying on cumbersome spreadsheets or sorting through stacks of paper receipts) and preventing overspending.

Here’s what you need to know about some of the Divvy card’s biggest benefits:

Earn rewards for everyday expenses

Like most business credit cards, the Divvy card earns rewards for everyday spending. But unlike most business cards, the rates are determined by your payoff schedule. The more often you pay off your Divvy card balance — such as weekly, semimonthly or monthly — the more rewards you can earn. Here’s what that looks like:

Rewards earned with the Divvy card can be used for statement credits, cash back, gift cards or travel booked directly with Divvy. And thanks to a handy little rewards-estimating tool on Divvy’s website, you can easily see the potential value of your points for each redemption method. Travel seems to be the most lucrative redemption option, with a value of 1 cent per point. Meanwhile, points are worth 0.5 cents each for statement credits, gift cards and cash back.

While you have to select a billing cycle at the time of your Divvy card application, you can change it later. This could potentially allow you to maximize your rewards earnings based on seasonal business slumps or particularly busy travel periods.

Reduce fraud and overspending

In addition to free physical cards, Divvy also offers virtual credit cards for customers. Each virtual card has a unique 16-digit number, which allows you to monitor and track individual cards. You’ll be able to customize monthly spending limits and where the card can be used, along with how long the card stays active. Using a virtual card is recommended when shopping online, when making one-time purchases or managing subscriptions (such as those for software and licenses).

Save time and money

The Divvy card functions more like a charge card than a traditional credit card, meaning you won’t be able to carry a balance on it. You’re required to pay your bill in full, whether you choose a weekly, semimonthly or monthly billing schedule. Although interest charges on a business credit card are tax-deductible, using the Divvy card means you won’t have to pay interest in the first place.

Build business credit

Similar to a high personal credit score, a good business credit score can make it easier to obtain financing with favorable rates and terms. It can also help you negotiate better trade deals with vendors and make your business more attractive to potential investors, if that’s something you’re interested in.

Divvy reports your card balances and payments to the Small Business Financial Exchange (SBFE), a nonprofit trade association in the U.S. that gathers small business payment data and makes the information available to four commercial credit reporting bureaus: Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax, Experian and LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

By making all of your Divvy card payments on time and in full, you can build a positive credit history for your business to better position it for long-term success.

Access to special offers

In addition to ongoing spending rewards, Divvy’s corporate partnerships provide Divvy cardholders with access to a ton of rotating promotional offers. These offers may include dollar or percentage discounts at places like Google Ads, Adobe Creative Cloud, Vistaprint, Carta, BambooHR, Verizon Wireless, Amazon Web Services, FedEx Office and more.

How does the Divvy card compare to other business cards?

Most business credit cards, albeit to varying degrees, offer similar benefits: Access to fast financing in a pinch, reporting tools for easier bookkeeping, purchase rewards, separation of business and personal expenses, a way to build business credit, more control over employee spending and more.

However, the combined features of the Divvy card and the financial software that preceded it create a holistic expense management platform that helps Divvy stand out from the pack. With the Divvy card, you’ll get:

• No annual fee. The Divvy card has no annual fee, whereas many other business and corporate cards do, particularly if they’re travel cards.
• No fees for employee cards. Additional cardholder fees can add up quickly, but the Divvy card provides unlimited physical and virtual cards to all employees for free.
• No personal guarantee. With many business cards, the risk associated with late payments or unpaid balances falls on the individual cardholder. The Divvy card, however, doesn’t require a personal guarantee from the business owner, nor does it conduct a hard credit inquiry.
• Customizable rewards structure. Most business and corporate cards offer rewards on spending, but the Divvy card is unique in that its rewards structure is tied to the payoff cycle selected at the time of your application. This effectively lets you choose your own earning rates.
• Budgeting features. Divvy’s software includes robust budgeting tools. You can create budgets by department, team or project, or assign permissions that let managers approve or deny funding requests instantly via mobile notifications and more.
• Integrated bill pay. Divvy’s optional Bill Pay service means you can take care of bills and invoices within the same software, creating a one-stop shop for accounts payable while still giving you control over when approved payments are actually funded.

Should you get the Divvy card?

Whether or not you should sign up for the Divvy card depends on how much value you’re planning on getting out of the card. Many other business credit cards provide valuable sign-up bonuses, annual statement credits worth hundreds of dollars and premium perks you won’t find on the Divvy card. That’s because Divvy started out as free financial software for businesses, and the Divvy card came later.

As a stand-alone business credit card, it’s fine. But if all you’re looking for is a dedicated business credit card, you can probably find more lucrative rewards and benefits elsewhere.

However, if you’re looking for a more comprehensive way to manage your company’s finances, the Divvy card is worth considering. When you evaluate the Divvy card as part of a holistic platform that enables businesses to control company spend, create and manage budgets, access capital, automate the expense reporting process and more, it becomes a lot easier to see its value.

How to maximize the Divvy card

• Choose the weekly payoff plan. If you’re able to pay off your balance on a weekly basis, you’ll earn 7X points on restaurants, 5X points on hotels, 2X points on recurring software subscriptions and 1.5X points on everything else.
• Redeem points for travel. The most valuable way to redeem your points is for travel through Divvy since you’ll get a value of 1 cent per point.
• Take advantage of virtual cards. There’s no limit to how many virtual cards you can get. Plus, they’re free and you can customize and manage them remotely. You can set up a card for each vendor, set spending limits, monitor transactions in real time and more. Although virtual card benefits are growing in popularity, it’s not something every business card has.
• Use Divvy’s financial management software. The main reason to get the Divvy card is if you already use Divvy’s financial software or you’re looking to streamline your business’s spend and expense management.

The bottom line

For business owners interested in more efficiently monitoring company spending, the Divvy Business Card is a great choice since the card is paired with financial software to fully automate the expense management process. You’ll also have access to a variety of other great benefits, including rewards on spending, free company cards and no annual fee.