About Spectrum

Overview

The Spectrum Card Processing System offers a vast expanse of business, corporate, purchasing, and fleet card services, including authorization, billing, and reporting, to help companies control business expenses. The Spectrum system supports MasterCard®, Visa®, and private-label accounts. Spectrum gives companies full access to all transaction detail through data feeds and on the printed statements. For individual expenditures, this information provides details such as airline legs of journey, hotel and car rental expense breakdown, quantity, unit cost, and taxes on purchases, and fuel expense detail.

Monitor expenses with the Business Card

The Business Card is designed to help small businesses, sole proprietorships, and professional groups manage travel, office supplies, equipment, and other expenses. Revolving lines of credit help small businesses spread out large expenditures over a period of time. The Business Card uses the same authorization controls and reporting process as the corporate card, giving small business owners the option to closely control and monitor expenses.

Manage purchase transactions with the Purchasing Card

Targeted to medium- to large-sized companies, the Purchasing Card dramatically reduces processing costs associated with the purchase order process. Companies can use the card to buy merchandise and to require employees/cardholders to stay within predetermined spending limits. The system’s authorization process helps control purchasing at the point-of-sale, so companies don’t have to worry about employees spending too much or shopping at inappropriate places.

Track fuel and other vehicle expenses with the Fleet Card

The Fleet Card helps companies manage expenses related to their fleet of vehicles, monitor maintenance and mechanical issues, and thereby operate more productively. A specialized type of Purchasing Card, the Fleet Card facilitates the collection of more data at the point-of-sale when employees buy fuel. It tracks information on odometer reading, driver and vehicle identification, and type and quantity of products purchased. Fleet managers may download this data daily for use in controlling fleet expenses.

Simplify relocation with the Relocation Card

With the Relocation Card, companies can specify the number of months for which the card is valid to coincide with the number of months given for the move. Spending and merchant limits will span the life of the card rather than renewing after each billing cycle. The card does not reissue at expiration time, ensuring that the card is used only for the duration of the relocation.

Use the Prepaid Card for a variety of needs

The Prepaid Card can be used for a gift card, a payroll card, or to issue a secured credit card. The line of credit is determined by the amount of pre-payment and is incremented every time a new payment is made. The Prepaid Card can have all the authorization controls of the Corporate Card, or may be totally unrestricted. Prepaid card transactions are included in all standard reporting.

Reward cardholders with the Loyalty Points Program

The loyalty point program gives companies the ability to set up loyalty transaction programs or promotional event-based programs at the card product level with the ability to override those programs at the account level. Spectrum calculates transaction-based loyalty points daily, based on the effective percentage for that day. The daily effective percentage can be established at the product level, on a table for exceptions to the product, or at the individual account level. Companies may specify which types of transactions qualify for loyalty points. Spectrum also allows the calculation of promotional event-based points for special promotions. Promotional event-based points are established on a table or at the individual account and are calculated monthly on the account’s bill day. Companies may allow cardholders to redeem loyalty points to waive the annual fee on their account, issue a credit to their account, or for awards, such as gift certificates, discount coupons, or rebate checks.

Flexible Billing

Spectrum supports four types of billing accounts:

Individual accounts are issued to the cardholder.
Ghost accounts are issued in the company name and have no plastics issued. Ghost accounts are used for purchasing departments, central travel departments, and other groups who purchase via telephone and Internet where a physical card is not required.
Diversion accounts enable companies to have certain fees, such as annual fees or cash advance fees, charged to a separate account to relieve the cardholder from these charges. The system can also roll standard expense items, such as airline tickets, to a diversion account, thus freeing the individual cardholder’s credit line.
Central bill accounts enable companies to have one account to pay all charges incurred by all the cardholders within the group or company. Companies may elect to have all billing on one central bill account, or can have as many central bill accounts as they need to manage their business.

Spectrum supports enhanced data on statements. Companies may elect to print or suppress Level 2 (sales tax, customer code) and Level 3 (quantity, unit of measure, price per unit, product, discounts, etc.) data on central bill statements for airline, hotel, car rental, purchase, and fleet transactions. Level 2 and Level 3 data are always printed on the individual statements. Spectrum offers flexible billing periods. Invoices are produced daily, weekly on any given day of the week, semi-monthly, or monthly. Invoices and monthly statements are available in paper format, via Electronic Data Interchange, or via the Internet.

Flexible Reporting Options

Spectrum offers four methods of reporting cardholder activity to the companies. The Tracer Reporting System is a desktop PC reporting system. Companies without PCs may request Business Paper Reports, which are printed and mailed. Companies may request a daily Data Delivery File of the cardholder transactions so they can use the data for their own reporting systems. Companies may also obtain their reports via the Internet from our website.

Spectrum offers hierarchical reporting for companies. Through the use of tables, companies may organize their reporting structure to resemble their corporate organizational chart. This feature ensures that managers are able to review only those details for their own area of responsibility, while those who need access may review the activity of the entire company.

Versatile Authorization Controls

Spectrum enables companies to set parameters for each cardholder through flexible authorization controls. The major features of the authorization system are:

Merchant Category Code Group blocking - Companies can restrict purchases to certain merchant types through Merchant Category Code Group blocking. Such blocking prevents inappropriate expenditures as well as concentrating purchases to certain vendors, such as airlines, to help negotiate volume discounts.
Spending limits at the cardholder level – Companies may limit the number of transactions per day, the maximum dollar amount per transactions, and the number of transactions for the billing period in addition to the credit or spending limit for each cardholder.
Spending limits by Merchant Category Group – Companies may limit the number of transactions per day, the maximum dollar amount per transaction, and the dollar amount for the billing period for each merchant category group. These different sets of limits enable companies to differentiate spending limits for one type of purchase from those for another - for example, travel versus fuel purchases.
Numbers of transactions and spending limits for the month can also be established to govern a group of cardholders collectively, helping companies control departmental budgets.
Company credit limits ensure that balances for all of the cardholders in the company together do not exceed the credit limit extended to the company by the bank.
Address Verification Service – helps control fraud by requesting further information from the cardholder at the point-of-sale.
CVC/CVV Verification – helps control fraud by verifying the Card Verification Character or Card Verification Value on the card at the point of sale.
Expiration date checking – helps control fraud by verifying that the expiration date submitted on the incoming transaction matches the expiration date assigned to the card.
Authorization overrides – Banks can override credit or spending limits for certain types of purchases, such as airline tickets, to ensure their cardholders won’t be stranded on the road.
Custom messaging – Banks can specify the type of message (referral or general decline) that will be returned to the merchant for each authorization rule violation.
Multiple levels of authorization—Credit/spending limits can be set at the cardholder, central bill, intermediate authorization level, and company level. During the authorization process, all limits may be checked, or only the cardholder and company limits may be checked, depending on user preference.