Dash: A company card for every employee | Hacker News Reader

Dash: A company card for every employee

venturebeat.com

56 pointsjustinsb49 comments

In practice it looks like this: Let’s say a photography studio employee is out shopping for props for an upcoming photo shoot, and their card limits them to spending $100. When they get to the register they discover that the actual cost is closer to $110. That employee can shoot a request over to their manager asking for an additional $15, and Dash will send a push notification to that manager. The manager can approve the additional funds right from their phone, or from within Slack (a popular office communication platform).

Holy micromanager.

This could be used to micro-manage, but I think there's nothing stopping you multiplying those numbers by 10x or 100x if that makes more sense.

I think this could be really interesting for peer-provided services like TaskRabbit/Instacart.

We're trying to build a system where companies feel comfortable giving cards out to all of their employees and then adjust the limits upwards as they build trust internally. The ad-hoc requests features from this example might be best for new/temporary employees or large purchases. Over time I'd hope that most employees will actually have a monthly budget and thus a greater degree of autonomy.

You can obviously scale that to enable the amount of micromanaging you desire...

Cool concept, I just feel like I've you could have chosen any other name. There are tons of companies/products called Dash and I don't see how it benefits your product or contributes in any way.

I get it. Dash coveys speed and convenience which is essentially the core value proposition here (vs expensing, handling petty cash etc.)

You also dash out to pick up some stuff for work. Probably the market segment they're shooting for.. The traveling sales big expense folks already have a solution (Amex). This is for the "long tail" of the rest of employees that go buy team lunch, a book, office supplies, etc.

Actually, sales teams are also using this now as a replacement to Amex in certain cases. They love the fact that they do not have to wait days for their expenses to load into a third party expense mgmt solution and they never worry about receipts. They are done in seconds. It's not a solution for everyone, but some use it this way as it removes the time delay and friction which some value more so than other features.

Really? The only one I can think of is the Kardashian boutique (and that was after Googling).

In fact, I would ditch the "Karmic Labs" thing and go all-in on Dash.

* Amazon Dash

* API Browser for OS X (kapeli.com)

* "The easiest way to pay at restaurants and bars" (getda.sh)

* Smart driving app (dashby.com)

* Dash Dashboard (thedash.com)

Was that by memory or Google?

https://kapeli.com/dash

"Dash" in some European countries is/was a washing powder brand.

What's the business model? Probably not interchange, if its debit cards. Debit card interchange got regulated down to practically nothing by the Durbin amendment.

It must have taken a tremendous amount of work to get the payment gateways to work this way. How did you guys do it?

Thanks, @prbuckley, it was a painful two years of working very closely with one of the largest processors in the US, FIS, their core banking software actually powers thousands of banks, so we essentially, built a virtualization layer on top of their older systems. We intend to open these APIs down the road for others to build upon...stay tuned :) (I am a founder here)

We've been experimenting with a service that allows us to issue virtual fixed-limit cards. In other words, when we setup the card we deposit a certain amount into that card. Those funds are taken out of our bank account.

Once that money is used-up the card is no-longer usable and a new one has to be issued. This is a pain.

We've been looking for a solution that would allow us to create and issue virtual check cards linked to a central bank account. In this scenario the cards would still have spending limits but can be refreshed/renewed as needed. An API would be fantastic.

Can your platform do this?

Yes, We built this and much, much more. You can contact us at https:/getdash.io and we can discuss more.

Excellent! Thanks.

I prefer using my own credit card and getting reimbursed since then I get points on my card. (Which I then use to buy things on Amazon that I want without considering my budget.)

Obviously this is part of credit card companies charging fees that hurt small businesses. But as long as the system is that way I'll use it. Retailers don't charge me different fees based on which credit card I use, so I might as well use the one that gives the best rewards.

I would have a problem with this if my company required it. You are on the hook until you get reimbursed. What if something happens to the company? The agreement with the CC is that you are liable, not the company.

I would think that most employees are already in this risk situation. For example, they are spending borrowed $ on living expenses, or know they have bills coming up (mortgage, etc), and they are doing so because of implied confidence that a paycheck will be deposited into their bank account which will allow them to pay those bills on time.

But those are personal expenses, whereas the credit card is business expenses.

If you are spending future money you may want to get your finances in check.

Just going through the statements here that are not correct - to clarify for you, this is a corporate debit program that would not require reimbursement. So you are not liable so long as the company approved you and empowered you to make such a purchase.

That's fine, but rarely offered by employers.

This sounds awesome—I would definitely consider this for our business that requires a lot of loaning out debit cards, remembering who last had one, and bugging people for receipts.

How does this interact with our bank account, and will it work with any account? Does it replay debit purchases 1:1 that we'd see on our bank statement, or are charges bundled somehow?

Our accountants say we should be building business credit and we are considering getting an AMEX card for partially that reason. There's no plan to have any sort of credit involved with Dash, I imagine?

You open a Dash account and link up to three bank accounts. It flows it simply work like a debit purchase. If you need to build credit, you should look at a credit solution, but presumably not every employee gets a credit card or you may not want to do card sharing, for that, Dash is great. We are fortunate enough to have some strong partners in fintech and are exploring credit options, but nothing commercially available at this time. (Disclosure: I am a founder here)

A modern company/corporate card sounds like a terrific idea. I wonder about the debit model both with its lower interchange revenues as well as company preference for post-pay (like Amex corp cards)?

you opted to do all this via debit versus credit? interesting choice, i think i would have gone after credit first, as many places charge fees on debit transactions and also have minimum transaction amounts.

how does KYC play into all of this? how are you preventing your customers from issuing cards in ways that may violate KYC?

This would suck for people who like to use their own cards to build rewards points and then get reimbursed.

That's already an issue for anyone who has a corporate card today. It's much easier for the company to handle expenses via a corporate card bill than someone's personal card, and it's also much easier to avoid abuse.

One EPT (expense pro tip?) -- usually the dining programs associated with airlines work by registering existing cards with your account (and thus FF#). You can register corporate cards under your name so that if you dine at participating restaurants you earn anywhere from 1-to-10 miles per dollar.

Depends. Many employers allow their employees to accrue Amex points off corporate cards. Paid for most of a vacation with those a few jobs ago.

@saryant see new evolutions in merchant rewards such as http://www.paymentsleader.com/pointopia-rewards/.... these concepts will still evolve off of this new technology..

Yep - I work at a large consulting company, and everyone has their own Amex. It's a corporate issued Amex, but it's your name on the card and you're responsible for paying it off. The benefit is, you get a listing of transactions in our expense software, and I can link specific transactions to specific clients or jobs. Then the reimbursed expense shows up in your bank account. Or, I can mark them as personal and pay for them myself.

I used to work for one of the big consulting firms. We were required to use a corporate Amex but our expense software wasn't integrated, so we still had to copy over every single transaction manually.

At least they let us keep the points.

I would think that's a feature for the company, not a bug, since the company should receive those reward points.

Probably true, but it's pretty nice being able to accumulate hotel points/airline miles/car rental credits/etc while on the company dime.

We actually use the interchange revenue that would be going towards rewards points to pay for the costs of building/running the product. There may be enough left over to do a rewards program in the future, but for now the product is the points. :)

Really, off of debit transactions? I thought interchange is only 0.05% + $0.21, which doesn't seem like enough to power rewards ever. These days I thought it's only credit cards that can support rewards (closer to 2% interchange).

It's issued under a Durbin exempt, commercial, prepaid BIN.

Interesting! But wait a second... how does this work with prepaid cards? Do companies need to preload funds onto the cards before employees can spend them?

E.g for an employee to spend up to $5,000 on a trip, would the company have to preload $5K onto the card? Or alternatively would employees have to get approval for each expense in advance of spending it?

I believe the company sets up a balance with Dash and all the debit cards tap that balance. So it's pre-funded but not per card.

I'm a founder at KarmicLabs. I used to expense stuff on my personal card at a previous company, but I don't think the points made up for the times I lost receipts or didn't bother to expense small stuff. YMMV.

Actually, it's still entirely possible jgbond with apps that are being developed in the eco-system. Apps like Pointopia would still allow for exchanges and use of points...as the company would establish (I am a founder here and we have thought about this topic a bit and do consider this aspect)...http://www.paymentsleader.com/pointopia-rewards/

That's a company decision and many/most prefer/require employees to use company cards.

In the UK Barclaycard do something similar, though it's definitely not as slick and uses virtual credit cards:

http://www.barclaycard.co.uk/business/making-payments/busine...

Debit cards attached to my actual cash bank account? Handed out to employees? Can't use it for car rentals or hotel rooms? Nah. Hook it up to a points credit card and I'm in.

What makes you think you cannot use it for car rentals or rooms??? That's not factually correct at all. Nothing to prevent points here as well.

Many car rental companies and some hotels used to require credit cards (vs debit cards) but they are getting better. Hotels are still problematic because they frequently place very large holds on your balance which is more disruptive to debit users than credit users.

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