Payhawk Extends Mastercard Reach in North American Market

Payhawk, the spend management platform that operates across Europe and North America, has announced an integration with Mastercard to provide real-time transaction visibility for North American corporate customers.

The integration enables businesses in the United States and Canada to maintain their existing banking relationships while accessing Payhawk's spend management tools through their Mastercard corporate and business cards.

Company trajectory

Payhawk, founded in Sofia in 2018, expanded rapidly through successive funding rounds, including a Series B of US$112m in 2021 and a Series C of US$100m in 2022, which brought its valuation to US$1bn. The company launched its North American operations in 2022, marking its expansion beyond its European base.

The platform evolved from providing expense management tools to offering a comprehensive suite of financial services, including invoice processing, corporate cards and reimbursements. This Mastercard integration represents its latest expansion in the North American market.

Technical implementation

The new integration provides customers with automated receipt collection and instant expense submission capabilities, features that traditionally require manual processing by finance teams.

Financial controllers gain access to merchant-level monitoring capabilities and can implement category-specific spending policies. 

This marks a progression from traditional corporate card management systems which typically offer limited real-time control mechanisms.

Data synchronisation

Transaction data synchronises directly with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, automating the categorisation and coding processes that finance teams typically handle during month-end closing procedures.

The integration covers corporate and business cards issued by Mastercard partner banks across North America. 

The system operates through Mastercard's application programming interface (API), which enables secure data transmission between the card network and Payhawk's platform.

Hristo Borisov, CEO of Payhawk, says: “With this new integration, any US or Canadian business using eligible Mastercard corporate and business cards can gain real-time visibility into their finances within Payhawk's unified spend management platform. 

“Combining expense, budget, and payments tools with enhanced controls and security, and native integrations, Payhawk simplifies and automates finance operations and offers an unparalleled user experience so our customers can fully automate their expenses and reconciliation without having to change their core banking cards.”

Exploring real-time transaction controls

Real-time transaction controls enable finance teams to monitor and regulate company spending as it occurs, rather than reviewing expenses after transactions are complete.

These systems operate at the point of purchase, checking each transaction against predefined rules before approval. Controls can include merchant category restrictions, spending limits, time-based constraints and geographical parameters.

For example, a company might set rules allowing marketing staff to spend up to US$1,000 per transaction on advertising platforms while blocking purchases from non-business retailers. The system can automatically decline transactions that breach these parameters.

Modern platforms like Payhawk combine these controls with automated receipt capture and expense categorisation. When an employee makes a purchase, the transaction data feeds directly into the company's financial systems, triggering automated receipt requests and updating spending records.

Integration with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems enables automatic reconciliation, reducing manual data entry and potential errors. Finance teams can adjust controls in real-time through web dashboards, responding to business needs without card reissuance.

This differs from traditional corporate card programmes, which typically offer basic spending limits but require manual review of transactions and often detect policy breaches only after spending occurs.

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