We’re tak-ing the tiny amount that every other provider tries to convince you is a big deal, and instead giving it to someone to whom it is a big deal. Expensify, a company that manages business expenses, launched a corporate credit card this month with a feature called Karma Points, which supports five charitable causes aimed at fighting climate change, homelessness and hunger, helping formerly incarcerated people reenter society, and helping youth transition out of foster care. Expensify Corporate Card Adds Karma Points Karma Points is an initiative of expense management platform Expensify, which uses Sutton Bank to issue the Expensify Card, a Visa corporate card product. In the search for some other employee-focused perk to offer, we first checked out the competition. Given this, we started looking at the reward programs of personal cards for inspiration. There are countless millions of people crafting these messages, using these tools, and harnessing your incapacitating anger to further their ends. Expensify, the expense management app provider, has launched a corporate card, the Expensify Card, that offers Karma Points aimed at socially conscious cardholders. How is that exciting to anybody? Download. A secure platform for feeding the homeless, funded by my personal credit card, with cards I could give to all the regulars I saw in my neighborhood. Click on the notification to learn more about the specific fund and find more ways to give. Even better, you don’t need to pay extra interest on your personal card to extend a zero-interest loan (aka, “expense report”) to your employer. And there is no business model: you are just giving out money on a few dozen cards to people in your neighborhood? I’ve never seen an ad saying: “Going out of business sale! But what if we instead combined all those millions of fractions of pennies, and put them into the hands of those who need them a whole lot more than we do? How do you deal with PCI compliance, and money laundering, and money transmission licensing, and a million other things? The program is called Karma Points and it is tied to the recently launched Expensify corporate card. Then the economy collapsed, my savings were wiped out, and I lost my job all in quick succession. So I wanted to help, but I wasn’t sure how to do it without doing more harm than good -- and I figured the most obvious place to help was not with cash, but food. We’re taking the tiny amount that every other provider tries to convince you is a big deal, and instead giving it to someone to whom it is a big deal. Expensify will donate 10% of all revenue from the Expensify Card to one of five funds supported by Expensify.org. But again, we need to be realistic about how much all these pennies add up to. And if you weren’t sober, it might be due to someone giving you cash to spend on drugs or alcohol. There are a lot of opinions on this, but I’ve never felt super comfortable giving cash directly -- especially in a city like San Francisco that (at the time) had good facilities for the homeless, but only if you showed up sober. And those two features alone in practice are what people love the most. Expensify is the world's leading application for expense management, receipt scanning, and business travel. So I went back to those banks and they were like “Oh, that sounds safe, boring, and I hate my expense reports too! Expensify is the world’s leading expense management software, enabling employees and accountants to easily track receipts and expense reports in realtime. [Press Release] January 2020: Expensify Launches First Ever Corporate Card Rewards Program That Makes a Difference: Karma Points [Newsletter] January 2020: The Case for Karma Points: The Only Card Reward that Makes a Difference. Don’t have the Expensify Card yet? Here’s how Expensify will route donations to the five Expensify.org funds: MCC (Merchant Category Code) is Hotel -- when paying for your lodging, your offsetting donation goes towards the Homes fund which covers the costs of reuniting a person experiencing homelessness with their family so they have a safe, stable environment to get back on their feet. With every swipe, Expensify will donate 10 percent of Expensify Card revenue to causes aimed at keeping people off the streets, getting hungry kids meals, and fighting … The Expensify Card replaces traditional rewards points with donations to fight homelessness, hunger, and climate change through new charity Expensify.org. Exclusive Perks for Cardholders. 3 months free on Teams product. When my last company got acquired, I was living in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, and passed the same homeless folks on the street every day. That kind of shock will make anyone reevaluate their priorities, and forced me to adopt a attitude of, “Put on your oxygen mask before helping others” -- especially since making a real dent in this problem will require a lot more resources than one guy handing out cards to the people in his neighborhood. No, we’re not launching the original homeless card idea. I’ve spent more than ten not-so-patient years preparing to share this story. Strangers came up and hugged me, talking about how much time they thought I was going to save them. Under the new Karma Points program—automatically applied to all Expensify cards—the company will donate 10 percent of the swipe fee revenue it earns on every purchase to causes including aiding the homeless, underprivileged youth and recently … Earn Karma Points For every trip booked using the Expensify Card, Expensify donates to a relevant cause. As you might know, we launched the Expensify Card a couple months ago, and it’s even better than what I was proclaiming to the world back in 2008. The Expensify Card is our way of helping all companies not just save hours doing expenses, but truly combine forces to save the world, one swipe at a time. MCC is Utilities, Mail, or Services -- when paying for your business services, your offsetting donation goes towards the Reentry fund which reimburses the cost of a journey home for an individual just released from incarceration so they have a fair shot at transitioning back into society. If you enable Expensify push notifications on your phone, you’ll get an update whenever your swipe donates to a new Expensify.org fund. So while the card we launched in October is by far the best in the world for owners, we want it to be the absolute best for employees too. Sign up today to get started with expense reports that don't suck! I just want to give out cards to hungry people on the street.”. Which brings us to today, and why I’m writing this to you now. I went to the banks with this idea and they were like... “Uh, what? Reward cards have done an amazing job convincing people that they mint free money or are some kind of status symbol, but really they are just keycards to casinos that have worse odds than the real thing -- and when gambling for points, you don’t even get free drinks. It’s not quite as splashy as 2 Chainz and Adam Scott in our Super Bowl ad last year. Donations are completely free to the cardholder and route to one of five funds under Expensify.org: Homes, Youth, Reentry, Hunger, or Climate. Because card issuers only keep some of the processing fee, only a … Use Points; Points Summary; Card Rewards and Benefits. You can also support Expensify.org, when shopping on Amazon, by using this link. They’re perhaps an effective way to trick people into making poor life choices, but that’s not what we had in mind as the inspiration for our card. (Not yet, at least…) We’re launching something much, much bigger. Every Expensify Card comes with Karma Points built-in and from your first expense, you’ll start to make a difference. Smart improvements to the workflow keep Expensify intuitive. Introducing Karma Points, the newest Expensify Card initiative that makes an automatic charitable donation with every swipe. Introducing Karma Points, the newest Expensify Card initiative that makes an automatic charitable donation with every swipe. As such, instead of fragmenting our donations and barely creating a dent in a million charities, we decided to concentrate them and thereby create a meaningful dent in fewer places. What is the most boring application of these cards I can imagine as a cover story... aha! Expensify launches Karma Points, the only card reward that makes a difference. But before I do, I need to admit something. We spent a staggering amount of time, money, and creativity to make it real. With each customer purchase, the company will make a donation to any of five charitable funds it has established to reduce homelessness and address other social issues. In short, we’re donating 10% of all revenue (which is way, way more than 1% of profit) from the Expensify Card towards making the world a little better, one swipe at a time. labelCorporate Card Reconciliation. That’s the idea behind the Expensify Card’s reward program, the spirit of which is best captured by this simple name: Karma Points. Which there’s a 99% chance you aren’t, as employees outnumber owners a hundred to one. Expensify's launch of a commercial card reflects growing popularity of the spend tool, no only in the accounts payable department but in the expense management and employee spend arenas. Then we looked into point programs, but wow, the math is pretty brutal. labelUnlimited Receipt Scanning. We are inundated by messages, messengers, and memes calculated to enrage us all, to a point of paralysis. labelAdvanced Tax Tracking. Expense reports! (If you don’t already have yours, request it right now in your Expensify Inbox: it’s completely free for you and all Expensify customers.) To our surprise, we couldn’t find a single company-issued corporate card that offers perks to employees: they're all so focused on offering rewards to business owners for employee spend (which makes sense, as they are the decision-makers), that card issuers ignore the people actually spending the money. And it all would have ended very quickly, had two lucky things not happened: the App Store opened, creating a free channel to distribute this app, and the next iPhone had an auto-focus camera that took crystal clear receipt images on the road. Typically, all you have to do is sign … The accounting functions performed by the user-friendly interface of Expensify come handy for many money management issues. Where does the money go? This is too weird, too risky. Everyone wants to help make the world a better place, but sometimes life gets in the way. And so on. At the end of the day, the margins on these cards are so incredibly thin that revenue from the program is literally measured in pennies on the dollar -- meaning reward programs are fractions of pennies. That’s when Barrett decided to, by his own admission, make the idea a little more “boring.” Instead of prepaid debit cards for homeless people, he pivoted to making prepaid debit cards for employees. Basically, the same exact technology I wanted to build for my platform for feeding the homeless, but wrapped in a fictional startup. Trending. “Card” means the Expensify Prepaid Card issued by Bank through which any Authorized Users can obtain Funds in the Card Account. The key features of Expensify are as follows: labelData Imports/Exports. After you swallow the “hook” of free points to sign up, it’s real hard to make the points you earn later justify all the hidden fees and extra interest payments. Offers enhancements like automated reimbursements and GPS mileage capture. It looks like you're new here. And I was like… “Uh, cool man, maybe someone will do all that, but definitely not me. But I had a huge supply chain of vendors I needed to impress, so I just started saying “yes” to everything everybody asked: “This new iPhone thing, does it support it?”, Even though it doesn’t have an app store yet so it’s impossible, “Yes we totally have an iPhone app.”, Even though the original iPhone’s camera was so bad it made completely illegible receipt images, “Yes, totally we scan receipts.”, I’ve never heard of those letters before, but “Yes we totally do that.”, “Yes, it obviously exports to QuickBooks and… you know, all the others.”. And rather than asking you which fund to support, we’re going to pick one for you based on the type of purchase you make: Expensify.org/hunger - Buy a meal; give a child reliable access to school lunch, Expensify.org/homes - Book a hotel; reunite someone with their family for good, Expensify.org/climate - Book a flight; capture carbon to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, Expensify.org/youth - Buy office supplies; reconnect graduating foster kids and parents, Expensify.org/reentry - Pay your bills; help someone get back on their feet after incarceration. That kicked off a ten year journey to actually make that mythical dream into a practical reality for millions of people around the world. Stop caring so much about the outrageous thing that person you don’t know did in that place you can’t find on a map, and redirect that caring to the people living on the street outside your door, to the kids struggling to get lunch at your kid’s school, and into truly constructive action to solve the sobering problems facing this world. There are countless thousands of engineers who are devoted to perfecting social networks, seemingly designed for little purpose but to reinforce our confirmation biases by scouring the global detritus of amateur tabloids. Everyone wants to help make the world a better place, but sometimes life gets in the way. Sign up today at card.expensify.com. To be clear, those perks are great… if you're the owner. To be clear, the Expensify Card is already pretty rad for employees: thanks to our integrated eReceipt feature, you almost never need to scan receipts for Expensify Card purchases. Expensify cardholders simply make a purchase, and Expensify donates 10% of card revenue to Expensify.org on the cardholder’s behalf. Expensify is a business system used to manage expenses, transactions and money matters through its real-time data and reporting processes. The Expensify Card’s Karma Points program costs you nothing, and is completely automatic. Snap a photo of your receipt using SmartScan and Expensify takes care of the rest. In short, we’re donating 10% of all revenue No problem: enable Personal Offsets and we’ll use the same logic to make a donation for each purchase you track with Expensify, whether for business or pleasure. Turn off the echo chamber online. labelReceipt Integrations. 1% OFF EVERYTHING!”. But what if I made a system that loaded the gift cards on demand for exactly the amount of the purchase, in the few milliseconds while the server is authorizing the transaction? Now you know the secret to Expensify’s origin, how the Expensify Card fulfills our original dream (albeit in a different, better form), and how Expensify.org is a new kind of charity building a global community based on transparent and direct engagement with people in need. For example, you can earn $5,000 in credits from Amazon Web Services or get 50% off Quickbooks for 12 months. labelSpend Control. As an Expensify cardmember, you can redeem perks and discounts from Expensify’s partners. Amazon Smile has donated $156 million to date, which is impressive. The Expensify Card, which is available in the Collect and Control plans, carries no fees, nor does it charge interest, and it has no minimum commitment required. SAN FRANCISCO — Expensify, the world’s most widely-used and fastest-growing expense management platform, today announced a new corporate card initiative, Karma Points, that makes an automatic … But over those years, the initial idea has been nagging at me the whole time. Expensify card - daily settlement through multiple reimbursement accounts Answered Sojourn_1303 27 views 5 comments 0 points Most recent by Sophie_Pinto September 15 Why does Expensify Visa Card … There’s no way I’ll help you. Not an Expensify user yet? And people loved it. I’m sure many, many will disagree, but it seems like the whole points game exploits the same statistical fallacies (and questionable motivations) as casinos: the billboards show ordinary people with fists full of money living lavish lives, but in reality the house always wins. $436 in credits for 12 months. To maximize simplicity and participation in the program (which again is completely free and automatic for you -- like Smile, but without needing to remember to do it), we’ve picked five areas to fund that are organized around keeping people off the streets, getting hungry kids meals, and climate change. And that’s it! So armed with little more than a popular brand for a nonexistent mobile app that did perfect mobile receipt scanning atop a phone with an illegible camera and no app store, I got started. 50% off Select starter package, 10% off Premium package. After some awkward forays bringing people directly into restaurants to get a hot meal, I concluded that it wasn’t very scalable. Better Expense Management: 4 Ways to Help Track Spending More Closely. What if we weren’t trying to fragment millions of pennies between people who are lucky enough to have a credit card, but instead combine them into a central place where they can be collectively spent accomplishing something meaningful? Tl;dr - Starting today, we will donate part of every USD purchase made with your Expensify Card to a purchase-appropriate charitable fund (namely: climate change for travel purchases, homelessness for hotel purchases, hunger for restaurants, etc). I considered gift cards, but it’s a $10 gift card for a $7 value meal; that last $3 is real awkward to use. John Boitnott. Expensify, the expense management platform, announced a new corporate card initiative, Karma Points, that makes an automatic charitable donation every time an Expensify cardholder makes a purchase. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons. We’re taking the tiny amount that every other provider tries to convince you is a big deal, and instead giving it to someone to whom it is a big deal. Everything must go! labelTimesheets. Rewards worth hundreds of billions of dollars go unredeemed every year, and most people with rewards cards spend more in fees and interest than the paltry rewards they earn. Article content. Bill Camarda. It looks like you're new here. Limit it to 1 purchase per day, for at most $10, and restrict it to restaurants that don’t serve alcohol, and voila! As an Expensify cardholder, the Karma Points program costs you nothing and is completely automatic! It’s easy to give up, to accept that They are responsible, and that You are helpless. When someone used the card, the charges would go to Barrett’s personal credit card. Use your Expensify Card to redeem exclusive perks and discounts from our industry-leading partners. Points are like pennies you can only spend on a full moon at an invisible concession stand guarded by pumas. Learn more about the #1 Expense management app here! MCC is Goods or Uncategorized -- when paying for your supplies, your offsetting donation goes towards the Youth fund which sponsors weekly meals for young adults who’ve aged out of the foster system so they can stay connected with their previous foster families. The Expensify Card Replaces Traditional Rewards Points With Donations to Fight Homelessness, Hunger, and Climate Change Through New Charity Expensify.Org Expensify , the world’s most widely-used and fastest-growing expense management platform, announced a new corporate card initiative, Karma Points, that makes an automatic charitable donation every time an Expensify … But those benefits are hard to appreciate before experiencing them, so we wanted something a bit easier to imagine to differentiate the card. Check out Expensify.org for more information about the five funds, volunteer opportunities, and more ways to give! Even though we've been used by over a million businesses, and we process tens of billions of dollars in payments… Expensify was never supposed to exist. 10% off Talent & Advertising product. MCC is Airlines, Commuter, Gas, Rental, or Taxi -- when paying for your trip, your offsetting donation goes towards the Climate fund which supports the purchase and planting of a tree as a first step toward offsetting carbon emissions. The Expensify Card replaces traditional rewards points with donations to fight homelessness, hunger, and climate change through new charity Expensify.org. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons. And when you remove all the marketing spin and statistical subterfuge, splitting something as small as fractions of pennies between a million different cardholders isn’t inspiring, to anyone. Expensify cardholders simply make a purchase, and Expensify donates 10% of card revenue to Expensify.org on the cardholder’s behalf. Still no problem: go to Expensify.org/donate to join as a founding member for only $20/month. Stop being the fuel for their machines. labelPCI Compliant Security. Turn off the talking heads on TV. But we’re just one company. But as this new decade opens upon a series of challenges almost impossibly daunting, it seems clear we need everyone to take a second look at what resources they have at their disposal that could be more constructively applied--the most important of which is time. This is our world after all, and for the foreseeable future, we’ve only got the one. The most common is something like “1% cash back!” Which basically amounts to a 1% discount on everything you buy. labelMulti Level Coding Like before, we looked to others for inspiration -- with Amazon Smile topping the list. Regardless of how you join, once a member you’ll be a part of creating something new and special, and will be the first in line for future events and initiatives that even this overly long newsletter doesn’t have room to discuss. Expensify Card’s Karma Points program costs you nothing, and is completely automatic. But these donations are spread across a million charities, or like $156 per charity. labelInvoice Management. We’re making this possible through our new direct-reimbursement charitable arm, Expensify.org. So, bad news for basically every corporate card holder in the world. I’m out.” Undeterred, I thought Ok, how do I make this sound safe... boring. P.S. At Expensify, we saw an opportunity to transform an expense management platform literally picked because it was the dullest thing in the world, into a globally-distributed platform for locally-applied charity. MCC is Groceries or Meals -- when paying for your meal, your offsetting donation goes towards the Hunger fund which pays off a child’s school lunch debt to ensure they always receive a meal and are never food shamed. You weren't born to do expenses. Explore Your Cards Rewards Program ... Business cards can help manage your business and give you some additional advantages, too. If “points” were instead called “pennies” then nobody would care about them -- even though they aren’t even worth pennies. Not in a position to decide this for your company but you still want to participate? But like all corporate cards, our initial “perks” were focused at business owners -- free AWS credits, discounted Stripe fees, and so on. So for those companies that want to go a step further by offsetting their non-Expensify Card purchases, please enable our Corporate Offset feature, which will automatically make a donation just like we do for our Expensify Card, but for all your approved expenses. labelMulti-Currency. My resolution in 2020 is to turn off that noise, and I’d ask you to do the same. By the time I launched at TechCrunch 50 in 2008, I had a well rehearsed story of a truly magical (albeit completely fictional) expense management system called “Expensify: The Corporate Card for the Masses!”  It went something like this: Expensify is a mobile app linked to a corporate card that provides secure access to company funds within strict spending limits and receipt requirements, combined with a next-day cash reimbursement system, all of which seamlessly exports to QuickBooks and every other accounting package in the world. Banks and investors hated the idea. While this automatic offsetting feature is built into every purchase with the Expensify Card, no company has perfect corporate card compliance. But good news for us that the competition is so easy to beat in this regard! Card may either be a physical card embossed with a 16-digit number or a virtual card represented by a 16-digit account number. The large print giveth, the small print taketh away. David Cardoza 38 views 0 comments 0 points Started by David Cardoza September 17 Expensify Card Expensify Card - Honest Review coltonshaw06 459 views 9 comments 3 points Most recent by Michelle Niemi June 11 Expensify Card $5,000 in AWS credits. How does it work?” I was caught off guard by this totally obvious question, because I actually had no idea about this industry and no real intention of building any of it. Just use the Expensify Card for any business purchase like normal, and you’ll earn Karma Points that we’ll donate on your behalf, along with an instant notification about which cause that purchase supported. Expensify, the world’s most widely-used and fastest-growing expense management platform, today announced a new corporate card initiative, Karma Points, that makes an automatic charitable donation every time an Expensify cardholder makes a purchase. And that is truly what started all of this. The Expensify Card’s Karma Points program costs you nothing, and is completely automatic. 2019 [Newsletter] October 2019: Why We Made the Expensify Card Unlike Any Other But instead of points or miles, the Expensify Card is funneling fees toward dedicated funds for specific causes. Every time an Expensify Card is swiped, the company will donate 10 percent of card … Why I ’ ll help you that makes an automatic charitable donation with every swipe great… if you want give! You now, we ’ re not launching the original homeless card idea to enrage us all, to relevant. Offer, we ’ re donating 10 % of card revenue to Expensify.org on the notification to learn more the. You ’ ll start to make it real you still want to?! Join as a founding member for only $ 20/month bringing people directly into restaurants to get started with reports! Around the world 's leading application for expense management: 4 ways to give Select. Only got the one no way I ’ ve only got the one and. 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