Reports have shown that the global virtual credit card (VCC) market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 21.50% from 2025 to 2034.

Hence, choosing the best virtual card API provider makes all the difference for businesses in the payment field and beyond. 

In this guide, we’ll be breaking down the best ways to choose a virtual card API provider for your business.

Key Factors to Consider When Choosing a Virtual Card API Provider

1. Established Partnerships with Relevant Parties

To issue virtual cards to businesses, the issuer must have an established relationship with a licensed bank or form an alliance with a processor/institution that already possesses such capabilities. 

It’s also important that the virtual card issuer has an established relationship with payment network providers to ensure a seamless transaction process. 

For example, Miden has direct market affiliations with network rails such as Visa, Verve, and Mastercard. They also have a direct bank partnership with relevant institutions. 

2. Flexible Customization Solutions

Virtual cards can serve multiple purposes - from staff corporate cards to merchant uses and more. As such, it’s important that the provider allows users to customize their cards accordingly. 

A closed-tech system makes it challenging, if not impractical, to develop an offering on the card system. This makes it difficult to innovate and scale across the growing market. 

Ensure to confirm the extent of customization with your chosen provider. Think about your company’s five-year plan before sealing the deal.

Miden is the financial operating system for modern businesses and enterprises.

From card issuing to global payments, pay-ins & pay-outs, plus an AI-driven core banking engine, our composable, API-first infrastructure gives you the tools to launch and scale with confidence.

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3. Proper Licensing & Regulatory Compliance 

Choose a virtual card API provider that is legally compliant with all the relevant financial and data processing rules when it comes to issuing cards to businesses. 

To avoid unwanted circumstances, this is a very important factor to consider. Examples of these licenses include PCI-DSS, NDPR, etc.

4. Funding & Spending Control Options

In this day and age, API card providers should be able to offer spending card control and restrictions for users in order to mitigate fraud and other illegal activities. 

Features like category limits, geofencing, etc., are important in helping businesses manage card usage by employees or customers. 

5. Security Implementation

To choose the right virtual card API provider, confirm that they’ve implemented the necessary security measures to deal with fraud and more. 

For example, Miden offers tokenized cards to securely process transactions with third-party rails such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc. The tokenized cards help to mask cardholders’ details to prevent illegal usage by a third party. 

Read also - Payment Tokenizations: What it is and How it Works

5 Virtual Card Use Cases for Modern Businesses and Enterprises

While it’s important to evaluate providers based on the following criteria above, here are some potential use cases of virtual cards for businesses across the globe:

1. Employee Expense Cards

If you run a corporate company, you can issue a virtual employee card that enables them to pay for services online, buy products, and more. 

With Miden, you can do this while tracking their expenses in real-time, managing spending controls, restricting funding, and more. 

2. Supplier Payment & Vendor Automation

With a virtual card, businesses can pay suppliers and vendors without using the typical wire transfer or paper check methods. 

This allows businesses to check clear audit trails, reduce manual work, and prevent overcharging. 

3. Marketing & Advertising Spend

Virtual cards help the marketing team to juggle multiple ad accounts, tools, or platforms. 

A card allows the team to pay for these ad services, assign a unique card to each campaign, set daily or monthly limits, and pause or cancel cards instantly. 

This prevents overspending and keeps performance-based budgets consistent.

4. Travel & Booking Payments 

For companies in the travel or hospitality industries, you can issue a tailored virtual card to your customers to enable them to pay for flights, hotels, car rentals, etc., conveniently from their home. 

This can also help you issue loyalty points, referral bonuses, incentives, and more. 

5. Subscription & SaaS Management

Virtual cards with spending caps help companies prevent runaway subscription costs. If a tool raises its price or attempts an unauthorized charge, the transaction fails, protecting your budget automatically.

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re in the payments, hospitality, ecommerce, or fintech industry, choosing the right virtual card API provider makes a big difference to your business's success. 

You can operate smarter, faster, and more securely with a functional and scalable virtual card API provider. With the factors listed above, you should be able to make a better choice for your business. 

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