Corporate card management: 2026 best practices to optimize cash flow

Best practices for corporate card management

Managing cash flow while navigating leaps in growth is vital for venture-backed companies. As a new year gets rolling, I recommend that companies focus on increasing spend control and flexibility with some corporate card best practices. Specifically, you want to optimize card controls and utilization, gain agility with dynamic payment terms, and leverage card data for smart decisions. For commercial card management, these are powerful levers to improve corporate cash management strategies in the year ahead.

Revise controls to optimize commercial card management

To support this year’s growth, Q1 is a critical time to review and strengthen how you’re managing company card use. The goal is to gain precise control over who can spend, how much, and have real-time visibility into every card transaction. It helps you improve cash flow, reduce unnecessary spend, and position your card program to deliver the most value.

As a corporate card best practice, I advise clients to focus on the following usage factors:

• Eligibility. Does your cardholder criteria reflect your current and anticipated growth? A good rule of thumb is to look at how roles, spend volumes, and departmental growth needs may be changing. Then provide cards to enable spend where it’s needed most.
• Utilization. As teams grow, spending responsibilities tend to shift. Q1 is a good time to identify inactive cards that may need to be revoked. If you have employees who are frequently using personal cards and getting reimbursed, issue corporate cards to help ensure your finance team has real-time visibility and control over that spend.
• Spend limits. To optimize cash management, consider switching from plastic to secure virtual cards where you can limit budgets, expense categories, approved vendors, timeframe and more. You can issue cards instantly and make changes on the fly. It replaces the set-and-forget mode of company cards, so you can adjust limits based on your cash position and forecasts.

Leverage dynamic payment terms as a corporate card best practice

One of the most effective corporate card strategies is to tap the advantages of flexible payment terms.

For your supply chain, using your company card can make it easier to pay early to benefit from vendor discounts. It helps you retain cash for immediate needs, and avoid the time, cost and hassle of dealing with paper checks. An added win is that your business earns cash back rewards or revenue share on that card spend, which can give a lift to your cash flow.

Need help convincing suppliers to accept cards? Check out 3 ways to get to ‘yes’.

For paying your corporate card, having extended float is key. With SVB, for example, card clients have up to 55 days (instead of the usual 30) to pay the balance. That added window means you could have almost an extra month of runway, and it can help lower your monthly burn rate.

Improve cash management with card data strategies

Another best practice for corporate card program management is to leverage spending analytics to make better financial decisions. That’s why SVB card programs are integrated with our AI-powered spend management platform. It enables clients to access real-time, data-rich insights to track spending patterns, top spend categories and vendors, utilization rate, and other KPIs that matter to scaling companies.

And with easy API integration, you can connect your card program to your ERP or accounting system. The platform then seamlessly streams card data to the integrated system for faster, more accurate reconciliation, giving you seamless visibility into your cash position at any time.

Insights on spending trends can also inform decisions about scaling your card program’s credit limit. Having scalable credit provides greater agility to meet evolving business needs without dipping into interest-earning liquidity accounts.

Ready to power up for 2026? Learn how SVB commercial cards give you robust capabilities to meet needs faster and optimize cash flow management.

Frequently asked questions

What are corporate card best practices for setting spending limits?

Implement role-based spending limits tied to job functions, budget, expense categories, and timeframe. Issue virtual cards for maximum flexibility for setting custom controls. You can fine-tune limits per card, maintain real-time oversight, and modify or revoke cards instantly based on cash forecasting, seasonal spending, and urgent needs.

How can we make better financial decisions with card payment data?

Centralizing spend on a single corporate card gives you accurate, data-rich insights such as vendor-level spend patterns, category trends, employee expense behavior and more. With insights from card data, you can negotiate better supplier terms, identify cost-saving opportunities, and improve forecasting and resource allocation.

How do we optimize commercial card limits to manage liquidity?

Use commercial card data to track your utilization, spending patterns, and seasonal needs. Look for opportunities to adjust employee card limits to avoid unnecessary spend. And use insights to determine how you might scale your card program’s credit limit to give you more flexibility, while preserving liquidity. 

What corporate card strategies can help us get higher vendor rebates?

Consolidating payables on a single commercial card can drive up spend volumes for specific vendors so your business can access higher rebate tiers, if available. Tiered rebate incentives are agreements where suppliers offer customers increasing rebates based on certain spend thresholds. Companies can negotiate rebates with their top suppliers, such as 1% on first $500K spent, 1.5% on next $500K, 2% above $1M, etc. 

What commercial card metrics should CFOs track?

Corporate card management should include metrics that help you optimize the program to return more value back to the business. KPIs should include Card Penetration Rate, which looks at total cardholders vs. eligible employees to see if the right people have cards; Utilization Rate to track usage of active cards; and Spend Under Management to identify how much of your total company spend is flowing through your corporate card program.