BMO partners with Mastercard and Extend

North American banking group BMO has announced the launch of a mobile wallet for virtual cards in partnership with Mastercard and spend management platform Extend.

 

US- and Canada-based BMO Commercial Bank clients are now enabled access to an improved payment management functionality with the introduction of Extend for the BMO app. The app features new functionality that will provide cardholders with the ability to create and push virtual cards to their employees’ mobile wallets, allowing them to spend wherever contactless payments are accepted.

Banking and BMO, Extend, and Mastercard partnership’s effect

The announcement details BMO as being among the first global Mastercard issuers to offer contactless virtual cards through its cobranded Extend for BMO app, marking an expansion of the payment functionality BMO announced in December 2022. With the ability to create, send, and manage virtual cards that permit simplified payments online, in-app, and now in-store, BMO aims to help Corporate Card clients manage travel and business expenses on the move in an increasingly easy manner.

When talking about businesses, in-store contactless payments come as a chance to leverage virtual cards almost anywhere to manage spending more efficiently. BMO clients making use of Extend for BMO to issue virtual cards are also provided with tighter spend controls, together with simplified receipt and reconciliation processes.

Derek Vernon, Head of Treasury and Payment Solutions (TPS) Product Management and Payments Modernization, BMO Commercial Bank said that by providing mobile wallet functionality for physical cards and now virtual cards and contactless payments, BMO is offering Corporate Card clients convenient tools to manage their businesses and progress financially. Per their statement, BMO is helping make banking faster and simpler for its clients by investing in advanced tech and collaborating with companies such as Mastercard to deliver customers the innovative, secure digital payment tools they expect from a digital-first bank.

With mobile wallet capabilities, BMO Corporate Card clients can further the benefits of virtual cards to a host of additional purchases, including contactless payments made during business travel.

Marie Elizabeth Aloisi, Executive Vice President, US Commercial Payments/Acceptance & Healthcare Solutions, Mastercard said that enabling virtual card usage in mobile wallets marks the next step in digitising business payments, and in partnership with BMO and Extend, Mastercard looks to provide a simple, secure, and hassle-free payment experience for commercial banking customers wherever digital payments are accepted.

Extend provides advanced virtual card app capabilities and helps clients deploy virtual cards from their current BMO Corporate Card programme, free of technical integration and in a five-minute timespan. The programme utilises Mastercard’s mobile virtual card solution, which unifies its virtual card and tokenization platforms.

Adding on the news, Extend CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Jamison said that people expect the ability to make payments on the go, even when said payments are for business expenses, and by enabling virtual cards in mobile wallets, the company has made an additional step towards widespread adoption.

BMO seeks to pave the way as a digitally enabled, future-ready bank leveraging the potential of emerging tech for real-time information and processing. Based on the announcement information, the agreement marks an additional milestone in BMO’s Digital First journey and builds on the bank’s recent collaborations with FISPAN and Xero.