Challenge

Emburse launched in 2015 to give companies more control and flexibility in corporate card programs. Since then, the company has grown to offer a unified platform spanning expense management, travel, accounts payable, payments, and more. Today, Emburse processes about $180 billion annually across expenses and invoices. The platform supports 12 million users working at 20,000 companies in 180+ countries.

As demand grew, particularly among small and medium-sized businesses, Emburse saw an opportunity to deliver stronger, more granular spending controls. Traditional corporate cards often limited businesses' visibility into employee purchases and made it difficult to proactively enforce spending policies.

"Over the years, the trend has really shifted from purely doing reactive expenses to wanting up-front control," said Kalie Phillips, vice president of product management at Emburse. Emburse also wanted to offer companies more ways to optimise spend, such as offering cards to a wider range of employees.

Emburse initially launched with a different card issuing provider, but over time sought a new partner that could better support its global scale and growth plans. The team also wanted capabilities that would help differentiate its product, such as virtual cards and faster onboarding.

Solution

In 2018, Emburse migrated to Stripe Issuing, which enables companies to issue and manage physical and virtual cards.

Today, Issuing supports Emburse's program in 22 countries where it operates – the US, the UK and 20 additional countries across the European Union – and provides 99.999% uptime.

"Because we operate on such a large global scale, it was really important to have a partner who was resilient and could handle the kind of transaction volumes we were looking for," said Phillips.

Emburse integrated Issuing into its expense management platform to provide a white-labelled corporate card experience. Emburse also worked with Stripe's in-house design team to create a custom, white-labelled card. Stripe handled manufacturing, testing and distribution of physical cards, while Emburse used the Issuing Dashboard to generate virtual cards that could be used immediately.

To give customers control over spend, Emburse implemented dynamic controls through Stripe's APIs. Emburse also chose Stripe program management to offload Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) requirements to Stripe's Compliance team.

With Emburse cards powered by Stripe, organisations can set budgets that match how teams spend, including daily, weekly, monthly or one-time limits. Businesses can also implement merchant category code (MCC) restrictions to prevent users from violating corporate spend policies. For example, a business could create an allowlist that restricts purchasing for fleet cards to fuel and auto expenses only. Stripe's flexible pricing options also expanded Emburse's opportunity to earn interchange revenue.

In 2026, Emburse migrated to Mastercard's small business card to provide additional benefits for businesses and card users. Emburse worked closely with Stripe's product team to make the card available through Issuing.

Results

Emburse creates 1.6 million cards with Stripe Issuing

Since launching with Stripe in 2018, Emburse has issued more than 1.6 million virtual and physical cards. Supported by Stripe's extensive API documentation, the migration to Stripe was straightforward.

"With that customisability and that level of granular restriction, we saw immediate traction in the marketplace," said Phillips.

Emburse sees global growth and simplified management with Stripe's widespread availability

When Issuing becomes available in a new region, Emburse can offer card issuing to its customers in that market without having to onboard and manage a new issuer. For example, when Issuing launches in Canada in 2026, Emburse will be among the first organisations to offer Stripe-powered cards to Canadian businesses.

"We've always been a global organisation, and with Issuing available in various regions, Stripe has really reinforced that," said Phillips.

Issuing expands potential use cases for spend management

With Stripe's granular controls, Emburse can support use cases and benefits that go beyond handing employees physical credit cards. For example, companies can issue virtual cards with a monthly, weekly or daily dollar limit for employees to purchase lunch or coffee, or implement a large monthly budget on a shared virtual card for the accounts payable team.

"Instead of people passing the physical card around and creating a lot of risk, they can just have one centralised card," said Phillips.

Emburse enhances the value proposition for customers

Emburse customers and card users gain access to Mastercard small business card benefits, such as vendor discounts, insurance products and identity theft protection services. Stripe also helps Emburse offer a more compelling financial value proposition to customers. With Stripe's flexible pricing options, Emburse can increase the revenue it captures from interchange and return it to customers in the form of rebates.

Taken together, these features enable Emburse to stay at the forefront of expense management. "Just having an embedded corporate card solution is table stakes at this point," Phillips said. "Stripe allows us to provide a solution that offers a huge amount of customer value."

New card users onboarded 80% faster than with legacy providers

Stripe's integrated KYC and KYB checks reduced manual workload for Emburse's risk management team and accelerated onboarding. New card users can be approved in as little as one day, significantly faster than the one to two weeks often required by legacy card issuers.

Once approved, Emburse can easily get cards to new users: Stripe handles the logistics of printing and distributing physical cards, and virtual cards can be issued in a few clicks through the Emburse Cards Dashboard.

Emburse and Stripe forge a strong, long-standing partnership focused on innovation

Throughout Emburse's partnership with Stripe, the company has worked closely with Stripe product leadership to make feature requests and provide feedback on the product roadmap.

"Every time Stripe innovates, we can offer that to our customers, which has been really helpful," said Phillips. "Since 2018, we've seen the same partnership, the same pace of innovation and the same willingness to take our feedback and roll that into the roadmap. That's why we've been so happy to work with Stripe in the past and why we'll continue to work with Stripe in the future."