Germany-based financial platform Vivid has extended its collaboration with Visa, adding a set of spend management tools directly to its Vivid Business account. The rollout centres on Card-Linked Services, a feature developed with Visa. It shows businesses where their company cards are stored across websites and apps, so they can stop payments before funds leave the account.
The tools are live in more than 20 European countries. They are included in Vivid Business at no additional cost and require no external integration.
Spend management inside the business account
Vivid’s approach is to remove the need for SMEs to pair a bank account with separate providers for cards, subscriptions, or payment approvals. Alongside Card-Linked Services, the company has introduced four further tools. Businesses can set custom card limits and restrict cards by merchant or category. In addition, they can reassign a card to a different employee without cancelling or reissuing it, and define custom roles that determine what each employee can see and do. A fifth tool sets up approval flows for defined payments before they are processed.
All five tools sit within Vivid Business, with no separate app, login, or subscription. The launch moves Vivid further into business spend management, a segment in which many SMEs have combined their banking provider with standalone services.
Visibility before the charge
According to Vivid, existing subscription trackers analyse only payments that have already taken place. Card-Linked Services instead identifies where a card is stored before it is charged. Businesses can view stored card locations across apps and websites, identify recurring subscriptions, block individual merchants, and stop unwanted recurring payments, often described as ‘zombie subscriptions’.
Vivid’s own data shows that 44% of active business cards on its platform are currently stored in a merchant’s checkout and available to be charged, often without the company’s knowledge. The company describes a common scenario, as an employee signs up for a low-cost monthly tool during a free trial and then forgets about it. Nobody cancels the subscription, and charges continue, sometimes for years.
Vivid also cites Zylo’s 2025 SaaS Management Index, which found that 52.7% of purchased software licences go unused each year, including at large companies with dedicated IT teams. Vivid argues that smaller businesses without comparable infrastructure are likely to face a blind spot of similar or greater size. The company describes the cost as twofold. Businesses pay for tools that are no longer used, and finance teams spend time trying to track spending spread across cards, apps, subscriptions, and employees.
Strategic framing from both partners
Alexander Emeshev, Co-Founder of Vivid, described business spending as a major cost item on company balance sheets. The official said the company aims to give founders and finance teams a single place to monitor their money and act on it.
In addition, Laurent Verstraeten, Country Manager of Belgium & Luxembourg at Visa, said the network’s focus is to give small and medium-sized businesses visibility and control over every payment in one place. The official cited the growing spread of spending across cards, apps, and employees as the reason for the partnership.
The collaboration moves card controls from post-transaction review to the point where card credentials are stored with merchants. This gives finance teams an earlier point of intervention in recurring and unmanaged payments.
