Why Archa’s launching a corporate credit card

Archa’s first product in Australia will be a corporate credit card, and here’s why.

In October last year Archa’s team was sitting together trying to solve what - at the time - was probably the most complicated problem facing our business: who had taken the company’s debit card and purchased a trial subscription to a cloud project management tool, were they still using it, and who had the logins to cancel it?

We solved the problem but it was 30 minutes out of our day.

This was a conversation that was repeated at least monthly. Multiple subscriptions, random cafe charges, flight expenses, incidental purchases. It seems so silly when in the background we are trying to build a neobank. In reality though, we’re a startup running on a tight budget, and like any small business we try to stay on top of any money coming and going from our account. I also, personally, had an issue doing pass the parcel with the company’s debit card for staff to use on incidentals. We weren’t in a position where our bank - or any bank - would underwrite us for a low limit credit card even though we were comparatively cash rich (but with no revenue). Even so, giving a personal guarantee over the balance wasn’t appealing to me, and to be completely honest I didn’t have the interest to drag our team down to the branch for ID and approval.

At the time in October we’d been bunkered down for 18 months working away to build a neobank for consumers. We’d grown a waitlist, developed an exciting product, and worked closely with banking partners on the infrastructure we would need to put our product in market. At the same time, we felt like we had identified a much bigger issue, one we were well-poised to solve. A good deal of the functionality, capabilities, and features we had designed and built over the last 18 months would help us solve the corporate credit card problem. So, we’ve decided to prioritise that!

We’re launching a corporate credit card. We’ll underwrite credit for smaller businesses (yes, including startups and existing businesses) with no personal guarantee - we’ve built a new way to manage risk. We’ll help businesses manage general business spend, subscription services, and also help them issue cards to employees. We’ll allow businesses to issue temporary cards with spend restrictions, virtual cards, and physical cards. They’ll be able to look through to department spend, team spend, individual spend, and company spend. Importantly, we’ll provide the data and insights to understand the spend. We’re really excited about what’s coming over the next few years.

We’re solving a real problem for businesses everywhere. Cliche incoming: stay tuned.