Australian Fintech Archa aims to reinvent the corporate card market with the help of i2c
Archa, an Australia-based fintech, has explored the opportunity of providing a corporate card program for SMBs, and has partnered with i2c to power up the technology behind this product
Origins of innovation
Melbourne fintech, Archa started with the simple idea of remaking the Australian corporate card market by giving small businesses the credit and tools needed to better run their companies, keep track of spending and control cashflow.
It started with a conversation that was repeated at least monthly. Multiple subscription charges, random cafe charges, flight expenses, incidental purchases. Who made these purchases? Who has the receipts? Why are there duplicate charges? After experiencing these problems first-hand, Archa set out to solve the way small businesses manage their spending and expenses, realising the short comings with existing solutions.
As a small business, they saw the challenges and drudgery of managing and reporting expenses, particularly recurring ones like software subscriptions requiring a card on file, which were often paid for using a single company card and were in international currencies, resulting in security concerns and higher costs. They also saw that despite being cashflow rich, banks didn’t want to underwrite corporate credit cards for small businesses like theirs, offering instead friction-filled processes involving personal guarantees, director sign-offs and branch visits.
‘As we dug into the problem further, we quickly realized there wasn’t a clear alternative,’ said CEO, Oliver Kidd. “Out of these problems, Archa and the idea of neo-banking corporate credit was born — a platform that offers small businesses instant credit, better tools and data for everyday operations, and that integrates with existing business practices, without a personal guarantee.”
A more seamless SMB payment experience
Paying for and tracking varying expenses from subscriptions to supplies, meals, travel and incidentals can seem like minor challenges, but for small businesses they often lead to poor choices like sharing a company debit or credit card among individuals and larger headaches when it comes to formal recording and tracking of spending in accounting systems.
For Archa, the solution starts by doing away with the cumbersome application process for a company credit card. Leveraging new data sources to make better credit decisions faster and making the onboarding process seamless, Archa delivers a better customer experience. It uses a tiered pricing model and provides customers the ability to grow their credit lines over time, add new cardholders and set spending limits, offering a compelling option for small businesses who want to save time on financial admin and get rid of employee reimbursements.
It then goes a step further with a number of distinctly convenient in-app features like allowing customers to manage their varying SaaS subscriptions and easily see what they spend with specific merchants, control team member spending instantly capture receipts in-app and integrates directly with popular accounting software providers like Xero and MYOB. Better yet, it provides the added employee perk of spreading the benefits of reward points to everyone in the company.
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