The news: American Express launched a new corporate card, per a press release.

The new Corporate Cashback Card includes:

• 1.5% cash back as a monthly statement credit up to $10 million in spending per calendar year, then dropping 1% back after. 
• 3% back in the form of Uber Cash on Business Rides and Uber Eats.
• Unlimited virtual cards with spend controls that corporations can dispense to employees.
• And an annual fee of $2,950.

Amex also released expense management software that automatically captures transaction data and offers personalized price control settings—with AI agent features in the works. Members can manage these expense reports through the Amex Expense app.

How we got here: SMBs and corporations are underpenetrated for cards. Commercial card spending only accounts for 18.6% of total card network transaction volume, per our forecast.

We forecast that US commercial card spending will reach $2.499 trillion this year. 

Issuers and fintechs are racing to create competitive commercial portfolios to capture this volume, with Square, U.S. Bank, and American Express all debuting solutions this year. Capital One’s $5.15 billion acquisition of Brex was also a bid for corporate card loyalty.

With stronger rewards and simplified expense management, Amex stands to pick up a greater share of the commercial card market. We forecast that the issuer will control 16.5% of commercial card network volume this year, well behind Visa’s and Mastercard’s 47.1% and 33.7%, respectively. 

Implications for issuers: Competitive cash back, simplifying reimbursements, and incorporating spending control infrastructure can help issuers snag commercial acquisitions.

Helping corporate finance teams ease payment headaches can win issuers volume:

• Current finance teams spend an average of 15 hours a month rectifying travel related payment data across their systems, per an Amex study. 
• And 75% of companies agree that fragmentation across payment, booking systems, and expense accounts causes inefficiencies. 

Issuers need to advertise how virtual card issuance can help corporations eliminate these pain points and funnel rewards back to the businesses.

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