Why should you pick a Karbon alternative?
Businesses are always scouting for better tools and solutions to give them greater spending visibility and control over their expenses. This is where corporate credit cards come into play. In today’s business landscape, corporate credit cards integrated with spend management software have equipped organizations to perform this efficiently.
Karbon’s corporate credit card, coupled with expense management, helps some of the leading businesses in the country to take complete control over their finances and growth. However, what works for one organization need not be beneficial for others. It’s best to compare all the Karbon alternatives available out there and then pick the one that best suits your company.
Also, Read: 5 Best SAP Concur Alternatives
Top Karbon alternatives for corporate cards – A comparative table
| Name | Joining fee | Card fee | Forex Mark-up | Third party integration |
| Zero | Zero | Lowest 1%+ GST | Yes | |
| Joining fee applicable | NA | 1.5%+ GST | Limited | |
| Set up fee applicable | NA | NA | Limited | |
| Zero | Zero | 3.5%+tax | NA | |
| Zero | Zero | 3.5% | Yes | |
| NA | $50 to $800/month | 1.6%+ GST | Limited |
5 Best Karbon alternatives and competitors
1. Happay EPIC
Company profile and card overview
Happay was founded in 2012 with one single goal: paying anyone you want anytime you want. With that as the goal, the first consumer product was the Happay mobile app. Happay’s mobile wallet allows you to pay just about anyone, anywhere, with their mobile number.
Cut to the present, today, Happay is India’s most trusted travel, expense, and payment solution. With over 6500+ customers in over 40 verticals, Happay is the market leader in expense management and payment solutions.
Happay EPIC is India’s leading mobile-first, automated, and integrated corporate credit card. It is a new-age, all-in-one solution for corporates. EPIC offers businesses an unsecured credit line and is the only full-stack business spending management platform. EPIC brings all employees, cards, and purchase transactions on one platform. You get centralized visibility and control over spending anytime, across all devices.
What’s more, EPIC is a premium corporate credit card that offers collateral-free credit, enterprise-grade controls, and a lucrative reward program.
Features and benefits
- Up to 45-day credit period
- Collateral-free cards
- Available on the go with Android and iOS
- Seamless recurring payments
- Virtual cards with merchant locking
- Zero forex markup
- Zero card fees
- No personal guarantee
- Toggle ON/OFF
- Robust spend controls
- Real-time spend visibility
- Two-factor authentication
- No joining, annual, and card fee
- Direct cashback rewards
- Third-party integrations with Quickbooks, Tally, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and iON
2. Volopay
Company profile and card overview
Founded in 2019, Volopay is a financial management platform built for growing and modern businesses. Volopay’s corporate card is specifically designed for startups and modern businesses in India.
Volopay is a spend management platform that helps you save money with corporate cards, money transfers, expense reimbursements, and automated accounting.
Thanks to Volopay, you can now bid goodbye to painful administration work and poor visibility. Volopay is your single solution for business payments. Volopay corporate card helps you take care of several different types of payments including SaaS subscriptions, petty cash disbursements, corporate travel payments, employee reimbursements, vendor payments, etc.
Volopay features and benefits
- Quick onboarding
- Smart corporate cards
- Spending limits
- Burner cards
- Intuitive mobile application
- Flexible credit cycles
- Define approval workflows
- ERP integration
- Block or freeze an employee card in a single click
Future read: 5 Best Volopay Alternatives for Corporate Card
3. Enkash Corporate Card
Company profile and card overview
Enkash was founded in 2017 to revolutionize the commercial payments space. Enkash helps organizations have a frictionless payment experience by simplifying and digitizing the whole process.
Enkash corporate cards offer a flexible billing cycle which makes card payment easier. What’s more, Enkash allows you to create, manage, track, and block corporate credit cards easily on its intuitive platform.
Enkash features and benefits
- Multiple card offerings
- Flexible billing cycle
- A user-friendly DIY platform
- Restrict card usage easily
- Predefined card limits
- Simplifies and speeds up the reconciliation process
- Collateral-free cards
- Automated expense filing
- Select vendors to whom payments can be made
- Enable specific purpose-based spending
Suggested Read: 5 Best Kodo Alternatives and Competitors
4. SBI Corporate Credit Card
Company profile and card overview
SBI offers corporate credit cards that suit the complex needs of businesses. The SBI corporate credit cards are offered in different categories.
Here are the SBI corporate card options:
- SBI signature corporate card
- SBI platinum corporate card
SBI’s signature corporate card is accepted at over 38 million outlets across the globe, including 3 million outlets in India. What’s more, it is widely known for its highest international authorization approval rate.
SBI corporate credit card features and benefits:
- Category control
- Spend control
- 24/7 service
- Complimentary airport lounge access
- Complimentary priority pass program
- Chip and pin security to keep your transactions safe
- Emergency cash disbursement
- Spend analysis
- Smart expense management
Also, Read: 5 Best RazorpayX Corporate Card Alternatives
5. ICICI Corporate Credit Card
Company profile and card overview
ICICI corporate card program ( for T&E) offers you an end-to-end solution. The ICICI corporate credit cards hugely help with your company’s financial needs and simultaneously cater to your employees’ requirements when they are out on a corporate trip. What’s more, the corporate card lets you track and regulate your employees’ travel and other expenses.
Following are the corporate cards offered by the ICICI bank:
- ICICI Platinum Corporate Card
- ICICI Corporate Gold Card
ICICI corporate credit card features and benefits:
- Interest-free credit for up to 50 days
- Online reporting tools
- Spend visibility
- Dedicated relationship manager
- Integration to ERP/general ledger systems
- Two billing dates to choose from
- Cash rebate program
Suggested Read: Solving Top 5 Branch Petty Cash Problems with Happay
How to choose the best Karbon alternative?
Do you want to know the parameters you must consider to pick the best Karbon alternative? Never pick a Karbon alternative before thoroughly evaluating the pros and cons that come with it.
Here are some of the features that a good spend management solution must have:
1. Centralized expense reporting
Linking your business credit card to an expense management dashboard is the right way to monitor your expenses without any hassle. With a centralized expense management dashboard, you can easily monitor various employee spending, SaaS subscriptions, digital marketing spending, etc. Therefore, always choose a Karbon alternative card that comes with this feature.
2. Higher credit limit
The credit limit is one important aspect that separates corporate credit cards from personal and business credit cards. Corporate credit cards often offer a higher credit limit, thus offering businesses higher purchasing power and cash flow. That’s why while picking a corporate credit card, ensure it provides a higher credit limit and comes with the option to increase the limit upon request.
3. Virtual cards
The introduction of virtual cards has revolutionized the corporate card industry. Using virtual cards, you can reduce or completely eliminate card fraud. Also, single-use burner cards provide greater data protection. Another important aspect of virtual cards is their vendor-specific merchant locking and blocking features. Look for a business credit card with a virtual card option for no additional fees.
4. Multiple integrations
Choose a corporate credit card that seamlessly integrates into accounting and finance software. It should also have the ability to detect and flag inflated expense claims or policy violations by integrating corporate cards with an ERP system. This can offer you better accuracy and easy reconciliation and helps you be audit-ready.
5. Efficient customer support
Ensure the Karbon competitor you choose offers 24/7 live support. Pick a corporate card that offers the best email, phone, or chat support anytime, any day.
Karbon corporate card overview
Karbon corporate card can free you from the clutches of never-ending paperwork. Karbon corporate card enables real-time spend monitoring and tracking. It comes with the feature to filter transactions by merchant, type, or data.
What’s more, the Karbon dashboard provides real-time visibility to the admin and finance teams, the CFOs, and the management, which can be efficiently used to control spending in your organization. Also, the dashboard offers detailed insights into company and employee spending.
Karbon reviews and pricing
Karbon corporate cards do not come with a mobile application, which may be considered a disadvantage. Corporate cards like Happay EPIC come with a mobile application that offers you real-time visibility and greater spend control.
Finally, the Karbon pricing aspect is another point to consider. The Karbon corporate credit card has a relatively high forex markup of 1.5%+GST.
Why is Happay EPIC a good alternative to Karbon Corporate Card?
Happay EPIC comes with no joining and annual fee and provides a lower forex markup and a higher credit limit than Karbon. Unlike a few other corporate card providers who offer complex reward points, Happay EPIC always keeps it simple and direct by offering cashback offers based on spending.
Happay EPIC is an enterprise-grade payment solution that offers excellent spend control and enhanced security with 256-bit SSL encryption.
With the EPIC corporate card, you can now control your spending with preset restrictions on limits, whitelisted vendors, geography, and time validity.
Unlike banks, Happay EPIC gives you corporate credit cards without collaterals at zero founder’s liability. Finally, it has one of the lowest forex markups in the market.
FAQs
Here’s a list of corporate credit cards that are similar to Karbon in terms of functionality and offers:
1. Happay EPIC card
2. Volopay corporate card
3. Razorpay X corporate credit cards
4. Kodo corporate credit cards
5. Enkash corporate card
Karbon corporate cards make money through Merchant Discount Rates (MDR). This means Karbon makes money every time the merchants transact using the card. In simple words, every time the card gets swiped, Karbon gets the money.
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