Our Story

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The inspiration behind our company came from personal experience. At other jobs we saw spending control problems which included theft and misuse, inconvenient expense management processes and inefficient processes for managing checks and payments. This was very disruptive for our employers to deal with and the owners were uneasy about trusting employees. I saw an employee purchase a vacation for his mother, another buy personal clothing and yet another order furniture for their apartment. All on their company credit card. A friend recently told a story of an employee who wrote himself a check from the company's checkbook and cashed it! These stories are common among people who have worked in offices.

When doing our market research, we spoke with many business owners who said they don't issue cards to employees. Many believe that cards are convenient and would issue them to employees if there was a way to limit the risks. To solve this problem, we started PEX Card. Employees of customer companies can now carry a reloadable prepaid Visa® card with no spending ability until the employer funds the employee's card for authorized purchases.

Every employee in our office has a card. Because the service segregates funds between our business account and cards, I know there won't be any surprises. When our marketing director needed to post a press release on the wires, I funded her card with $200; when we need office supplies, I load up our admin's card. It takes less than thirty seconds for me to login, add funds and log out. Because the service summarizes balances for me online at both the card and business level, if anything seems off, I can investigate immediately.

My colleagues and I are prepaid card veterans. We took what we learned from our prepaid card experience, past work experiences and market research and created a product that delivers controlled card spending for SMBs.

Toffer Grant, Founder
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Labels: Accounting, Expense Fraud, Finance Tips, Petty Cash