The business card from Open will be a first-of-its-kind card specifically designed to help startups qualify based on funding rather than credit history. The card comes with a suite of expense management tools that will help businesses manage their expenses and payouts and can be issued to employees, set limits and comes integrated with Whatsapp for seamless expense filing. The credit card also comes with an innovative reward program that lets startups earn points for their spend which can be redeemed for various software subscriptions, cloud hosting and discounts on co-working spaces.

Apart from the business card, the partnership with Visa will enable Open to enhance the Open API banking suite called Layer through new features like real time payments settlement and refunds. Layer is a programmable bank account for developers to integrate banking into their business and product flows. The current account comes integrated with an advanced developer friendly payment gateway with innovative features like tokenization, real time payment settlements and instant refunds.

Commenting on this partnership Anish Achuthan Co-founder & CEO of Open said “We are excited to partner with Visa in our journey to make business banking simple & easy for millions of small businesses in India. This partnership will enable Open to leverage the leadership & expertise Visa have in the payments space to co-create and innovate new solutions on credit, expense management & payment processing for small businesses.”

T.R. Ramachandran, Group Country Manager India & South Asia Visa said, “The partnership with Open will allow us and our banking partners to empower small businesses by enabling safe, reliable and convenient payment experiences for them. Visa is committed to partnering with and supporting the next generation of payment innovators in the commercial payments space. We believe partnership and collaboration are key to creating new and innovative payment solutions for the thriving Indian SME community."