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Comment by jgbond | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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/

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.

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

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