The benefits of using a warm card for your small business

Spend control is one of the biggest challenges for small businesses. It can be difficult to manage spending when employees have access to your business accounts for things like deposits or travel. It’s such a big challenge that some business owners use personal credit cards for business to protect their business accounts. In doing so, they’re able to easily determine how much money employees spend and where by separating their spending from their employees’.

This challenge becomes even more difficult to handle when you operate a business requiring your employees to access your bank account. Whether employees need to deposit or spend using your corporate account, tracking, managing, and controlling employee use of your account can be difficult.

That’s where the warm card comes in.

What is a warm card?

Warm cards are a particular type of bank card that provides restricted access to your bank accounts. The typical warm card lets the holder deposit money into bank accounts but doesn’t allow for withdrawals.

Financial institutions typically issue warm cards to business owners as a security measure. This makes it possible for your employees to deposit funds without giving them open access to your bank account.

How do warm cards work?

Most warm cards are designed to allow employees to make deposits but limit them from accessing the money you have in your business bank accounts. Once the employees have them, these cards are straightforward to use.

For example, you may run a business that requires your general manager to make after-hours cash and check deposits at an ATM, but you don’t want to give the manager full access to withdraw money.

Instead, you give your general manager a warm card. When it’s time to make a deposit, they can use their warm card at the ATM, just like a debit card, but they’ll only have restricted access. So, when they swipe their warm card in the ATM, the only option will be to make a deposit.

Benefits of warm cards

Warm cards come with two key benefits:

• Fraud protection: Warm cards allow your employees to make deposits into your business accounts but restrict access to spend. This means your employees won’t be able to commit fraud by withdrawing money they shouldn’t or using a business card to make personal purchases.
• Convenience:With these cards, you don’t have to handle all the banking for your business. Your employees can take the deposits off of your shoulders.

How to get a warm card

Warm cards are relatively easy to get your hands on if your financial institution provides them. In most cases, you have three options for requesting a friendly card:

• Go to the bank:If your financial institution offers warm cards, you should be able to go to the bank branch and ask your banker for one. However, don’t expect to get it immediately. It typically takes a few business days for the institution to ship the card to you.
• Over the phone:You can also call your banking institution to request a warm card.
• Mobile banking app:Most financial institutions offer mobile banking apps. Those offering warm cards also make it easy to access these restricted cards on their banking apps.

What if employees need to spend money?

Standard warm cards aren’t always the best options for business owners. In particular, if your business requires multiple spending accounts, most warm cards won’t fit the bill. So, what do you do to make it possible for your employees to spend business funding for business activities while incorporating restrictions to protect your finances?

There are a few options to consider. Find the details of these options below.

Adjust access

Although most warm cards only allow users to make deposits, some financial institutions will enable you to adjust the restrictions of these accounts also to allow users to spend with them. However, this can create some challenges.

In particular, if you open a warm card up to spending, you likely won’t have control over the amount of money your employees spend on the account. This opens the door to fraud.

Another challenge with using a warm card as an employee spending account is that these aren’t credit cards or debit cards. They don’t have a Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or American Express logo on them. Instead, these are simply bank cards connected to your business checking account. As such, most merchants simply don’t have the infrastructure to accept them as a form of payment.

Take advantage of employee spending cards

Another option you can take advantage of is employee spending cards. With Ramp, you can practice employee empowerment by offering your employees spending accounts and protecting your business’s operating budget by limiting the amount of money they can spend on these accounts or who they can spend with.

Temporary spending cards

You also have the option to give your employees temporary spending cards. These are cards that activate on a specific date and are scheduled to expire on the date you choose. Consider working with a company like Ramp to provide temporary spending cards to your team when needed.

Temporary spending cards are a practical option for T&E management. When you schedule an employee for work travels, you can provide them with a temporary spending card that’s active for the entire time they’re gone but expires on the day you expect them to return.

Take part in employee reimbursement programs

You can also take part in expense reimbursement. That means your employee pays up front, and you reimburse them on their paycheck. However, be careful with this option because it could lead to your business expenses causing financial hardships for your employees. At the same time, reimbursement leads to unnecessary paperwork and introduces risk of error - both of which could cut into your business’s bottom line.

How Ramp's automated controls streamline spending

Managing employee spending often feels like walking a tightrope. Give teams too much freedom, and costs spiral out of control. Lock things down too tightly, and you'll hear complaints about slow approvals and blocked purchases that hurt productivity. The real challenge isn't just controlling costs—it's maintaining that control without creating bottlenecks that frustrate employees and slow down business operations.

Ramp's all-in-one finance operations platform solves this balancing act through intelligent spending controls that work in real-time. Instead of relying on manual review processes that create delays, Ramp's platform automatically enforces your spending policies at the point of purchase.

You can set specific limits by category, merchant, or time period for each employee or team. When someone tries to make a purchase, the system instantly checks it against your rules. Approved transactions go through immediately, while anything outside policy gets flagged for review. This means your sales team can still grab last-minute client dinners without waiting for approval emails, but they can't accidentally book first-class flights when economy is your policy.

The platform also eliminates expense report headaches that waste hours of employee time. Ramp automatically captures and categorizes receipts, matches them to transactions, and can even submit expenses for reimbursement without any manual input. Your team spends less time on paperwork and more time on revenue-generating activities.

Meanwhile, you maintain complete visibility into spending patterns through real-time dashboards that highlight unusual activity or policy violations. This combination of automated enforcement and streamlined workflows means you can maintain strict financial controls while actually speeding up day-to-day operations—turning what used to be a source of friction into a competitive advantage.

Take control of your business finances

Warm cards are an excellent option for some businesses, but they're not the perfect option for everyone. If you need more than just basic employee spending access, Ramp offers a comprehensive financial platform built for modern businesses.

Beyond automated spending controls, Ramp integrates seamlessly with your accounting software, provides access to funding through sales-based underwriting, and delivers detailed financial analytics that help you spot trends and opportunities. Whether you're scaling up or optimizing costs, Ramp gives you the tools to manage your finances with confidence.