3 Benefits of Charging Cloud Services Like AWS to Your Corporate Card

According to one recent report, nearly all companies (99%) now use some form of cloud computing to store, share, and collaborate on important assets, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) leading the market for public cloud vendors. At a time when many teams are fully remote, using the cloud offers both flexibility and scalability as a business expands to new levels of growth.

Cloud spend is the greatest infrastructure cost for most modern companies, exceeding $12 million annually for 36% of enterprises. However, many finance teams pay for these services via ACH, check, or wire, foregoing the major benefits of using a corporate card.

In this post, we explore three ways putting your cloud spend on a corporate card like Rho’s ultimately offers your company greater savings, control, and financial peace of mind.

One of the key perks of putting cloud spend on your corporate card is getting valuable cashback up to 1.75%.

On 30-day terms with the Rho Card*, you can earn 1.50% cashback. You can also flex repayment to 45 or 60 days (monthly statement period + repayment period) to suit your business needs. Most midsize companies using the AWS pay-per-use model spend over $600,000 a year on cloud services, translating to $9,000 in cash back that could be reinvested in growth.

For example, Runway used to cover AWS costs through ACH, missing out on lucrative rewards. “As our costs ramped up, we realized we were leaving a lot of money on the table,” said Kwon. “It’s also not the safest way to move your money, having people take funds directly from your account.”

Now, Runway charges their AWS spend to the Rho Card and earns substantial cash back every month, adding a big boost to their bottom line.

Making payments by ACH, check, or wire can make it hard to monitor and analyze spending, especially with recurring costs like cloud services.

The best corporate cards report expenses in real-time and automatically categorize them by card holder or expense channel.

That means it’s simple to see who’s spending and on what. You can even track high-level patterns to see how your costs have changed across different vendors and time periods or how your cloud services spend fits into your financial picture.

With the Rho Card, all charges appear instantly on an accessible, centralized dashboard, and customized controls ensure no unauthorized purchases are made. Rho makes it easy to create vendor-specific virtual cards, so you can effortlessly keep track of your cloud spending trends. Plus, financial data across your Rho cards connects seamlessly with your banking tools and AP functions, making accounting a breeze.

Many cloud providers accept corporate cards, which means you can avoid the manual work (and the fees) of paying your cloud bill through your AP process. By putting your cloud spend on your corporate card, you can save your finance team valuable time every month.

Of course, not all corporate cards are created equal. If you’re a growing company, you may have a hard time getting a high enough credit limit to cover cloud service costs month over month. That’s because many providers base a business’s credit limit on what’s in your bank account—meaning it could plummet unexpectedly after a large expense.

Video editing platform Runway faced this issue after they raised significant capital in their Series B. “Our limit was tied to our account balance,” said Michelle Kwon, Runway’s head of operations and finance. “So our diminishing venture capital negatively impacted our credit, even as we continued to grow.”

Runway switched to the Rho Card, which offers a holistic underwriting model and higher, stable credit limits that scale with their business and ensure their finance team is never caught short.

Want to learn more about leveraging your AWS or other cloud spend? Reach out to one of our expense management specialists to see what the Rho Card can do for your business.