Payhawk Expense Cards Review (2026)

Payhawk Expense Cards at a Glance

Our Verdict

Payhawk deserves consideration when your business has outgrown simpler expense tools. We put it ahead of Moss and Pleo for feature depth, but behind them for ease of setup. That trade-off makes sense for a 100-employee business managing several European entities.

The distinguishing feature is ERP integration. Native two-way sync with NetSuite, SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics means expense data lands in the financial system of record without a finance analyst doing the re-entry.

Configuration is Payhawk’s main drawback. This is not a platform you set up in an afternoon, and the extra work is difficult to justify unless your finance team needs its approval controls, entity management and accounting integrations. A simpler tool will suit businesses without that complexity.

Best For

UK and European businesses with 50 or more employees that run NetSuite, SAP, or Microsoft Dynamics, operate multiple legal entities, or need configurable multi-level approval workflows by amount, category, or entity.

Not Ideal For

Sole traders and smaller businesses are unlikely to need Payhawk. It is also a poor fit for a UK-only team that wants little more than company cards and a Xero export. We recommend starting with Moss or Pleo, which are less elaborate and positioned at a lower price point.

Key Facts

FCA-regulated e-money institution. Founded Sofia, Bulgaria 2018. Visa physical and virtual cards in GBP, EUR, USD and additional currencies.

Native ERP integrations: NetSuite, SAP (S/4HANA), Microsoft Dynamics 365. Xero two-way sync. QuickBooks export. Multi-entity consolidation in a single account. Pricing: subscription platform fee plus per-user; not published publicly.

What Is Payhawk and How Does It Work?

Payhawk was founded in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2018 and now operates across the UK and Europe. It is not a bank: Payhawk is an FCA-regulated e-money institution that issues Visa cards and provides expense management software.

Payhawk sits between your employees and the finance system where their spending is recorded. Staff use Visa cards within the limits you set, while transactions are coded and approved in Payhawk before moving into your accounting or enterprise resource planning system. In our assessment, that connection is the main reason to consider it.

How the Account Works

You fund a Payhawk account by bank transfer from your business current account. That balance is distributed across employee cards according to budgets set at team, project, or individual level. Employee spend draws down in real time against the allocated budget.

Finance admins and approvers see every transaction as it happens. Spend that falls outside policy triggers an approval request before the employee can access the funds, not after month-end.

How Expense Cards Work

Each employee receives a Visa card, physical or virtual, accepted wherever Visa is accepted globally. Physical cards are delivered by post. Virtual cards are provisioned instantly in the dashboard.

Spend limits are enforced when the employee tries to pay. Once a project budget is exhausted, the card declines rather than leaving finance to challenge the purchase afterwards. We rate that preventive control as more useful than a warning that arrives after the money has gone.

Cards are multi-currency. Employees can spend in GBP, EUR, USD, or other supported currencies without a manual conversion request. That matters for teams with regular European travel or cross-border supplier payments.

How Funds, Wallets or Budgets Are Managed

Payhawk supports budget assignment at team level and project level. A sales team travel budget and a marketing event budget can each have their own allocation, approval chain, and reporting view.

For multi-entity businesses, each legal entity operates with its own budget, cards, and approval structure within a single Payhawk account. A group CFO gets consolidated visibility; a subsidiary finance manager sees only their entity’s spend.

You can adjust budgets in the dashboard without raising a support ticket. That is useful when a project overruns or money needs to move between departments before the quarter ends.

Plans, Fees and Pricing

Payhawk does not publish pricing on its website. You will not find a public price list: request a quote from payhawk.com. We have not verified specific per-user fees at publication and do not speculate about figures we cannot confirm.

Monthly Subscription Fees

Your pricing structure combines a platform fee with a per-user component. Enterprise tiers are available on request for larger businesses needing dedicated account management and custom integration support.

At the 50-plus employee scale that Payhawk targets, subscription pricing by active user is standard for the category. The per-user cost is what you’d focus on in any procurement evaluation.

We recommend requesting a quote that separates the platform fee, per-user fee, and any integration or onboarding costs. Your total cost of ownership includes implementation time, which is higher for Payhawk than for mid-market alternatives.

Card Issuing Fees

Physical and virtual cards are included in the subscription. We have not been able to confirm whether replacement card charges apply; verify this with Payhawk during your quote process.

Multi-currency cards are a standard feature, not an add-on. If you need employees to spend in EUR or USD without incurring a per-transaction conversion fee, ask specifically about how currency balances are held and drawn.

Transfer, ATM and FX Fees

Payhawk quotes a 0.3% mark-up on currency exchange, both on bill payments in ten major currencies and on moving money between your own accounts. Holding a euro or dollar balance and spending from it avoids the conversion altogether. What Payhawk does not publish is the plan price: it sells by module and quotes on a call, so the mark-up is the only figure you can compare in advance.

ATM withdrawal support and fees depend on plan tier. We give ATM access little weight in an enterprise expense evaluation, but it still matters if your team regularly needs cash for expense reimbursement.

Which Plan Offers the Best Value

Because Payhawk does not publish a pricing grid, we cannot compare plan tiers for you directly. The relevant question in the quote you request is whether the ERP integration is included in the base platform fee or priced separately as an add-on.

ERP integration should be part of the core Payhawk proposition, not an optional extra. We recommend including any separate integration charge in the main comparison because it is the feature that justifies choosing Payhawk over a simpler expense platform.

Expense Management Features

Team Cards and User Management

Cards are provisioned in the Payhawk dashboard and assigned to employees. Provisioning does not require IT involvement: a finance admin can issue a virtual card and set its limits before an employee’s first day.

Role-based controls give employees, team managers, entity finance managers and group administrators different levels of access. Local managers can approve their own team’s spending while the central finance team keeps oversight. We find this particularly useful when expense decisions are spread across departments or entities.

Spending Limits and Card Controls

Spend limits can be set at card level, employee level, and category level. A sales director can have a higher per-transaction limit than a junior employee, within the same team budget.

Category-level controls work by merchant category code. If your policy prohibits personal purchases on company cards, you can restrict specific categories without limiting the card entirely.

Finance admins can freeze or unfreeze a card from the dashboard without contacting support. When employees are spread across several locations, waiting for a phone call to be answered is an avoidable risk. We consider direct card suspension an essential control for a platform designed for larger teams.

Receipt Capture and Expense Tracking

The Payhawk mobile app captures receipts using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The system reads merchant name, amount, date, and VAT classification from a photograph of the receipt. Employees do not type expense fields manually.

Out-of-pocket expenses, where an employee has paid personally and needs reimbursement, are also handled within Payhawk. We find this important for businesses that mix card spend with employee reimbursements in the same approval workflow.

Approval Workflows

The approval engine is where Payhawk separates itself most clearly from simpler expense tools. Rules can vary by spending threshold, expense category and legal entity, with several approvers involved where the policy requires it. We put more weight on this flexibility than on the card itself.

A practical example: a purchase over £5,000 in any category requires the team manager plus the CFO. A travel booking under £500 requires only the team manager. Marketing spend over £2,000 requires the CMO regardless of amount. All of these can coexist within the same Payhawk account.

Approvers can review the receipt, amount, category and policy status in the app or web dashboard before making a decision. We prefer that audit trail to an email chain with an attached PDF, where the approval and the supporting evidence can easily become separated.

Reporting and Analytics

Real-time spend dashboards show spend by employee, department, entity, and category. For multi-entity businesses, the group view consolidates across all legal entities without requiring a separate reporting tool.

Budget-versus-actual reporting is available for projects and teams. It gives a finance director a running view of what remains rather than leaving the position to be reconstructed at quarter-end. We rate that visibility as particularly useful where several managers control parts of the same departmental budget.

Integrations and Accounting Tools

Accounting Software Integrations

Payhawk integrates with Xero and QuickBooks as well as ERP platforms. The Xero integration is two-way: Payhawk reads the chart of accounts from Xero, employees code transactions to the correct nominal in Payhawk, and coded data syncs back to Xero for reconciliation.

QuickBooks integration supports export. If QuickBooks is your primary accounting system, confirm the direction and frequency of the sync with Payhawk before treating it as equivalent to the Xero integration.

ERP or Finance System Compatibility

Native ERP integration is the core differentiator. Payhawk connects natively to NetSuite, SAP (S/4HANA), and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.

Two-way integration lets expense transactions coded in Payhawk flow into your ERP, reducing manual data entry at month-end. Your finance team still needs to check the records. We see this accounting integration as the main reason to choose Payhawk over a simpler expense card platform.

SAP integration covers S/4HANA. If your business runs a legacy SAP version, confirm compatibility during the evaluation. We cannot verify version-specific coverage at publication.

Exporting Expenses and Reports

For businesses not on a supported ERP or accounting integration, Payhawk supports CSV and PDF export. These are manual processes your finance team uses to import data into whatever system you run.

We recommend Payhawk on the basis of its export capability only if you expect to migrate to a supported ERP within 12 to 18 months. For long-term CSV-only use, a simpler and cheaper platform is a better economic choice.

Cards, Payments and Currencies

Physical and Virtual Cards

Both physical and virtual Visa cards are included in the subscription. Physical cards are delivered by post. Virtual cards are provisioned instantly and usable for online purchases immediately.

Virtual cards are most useful when a new employee needs to spend before their physical card arrives, or when finance wants a separate card for a particular supplier or one-off purchase. We rate those controls as more valuable than issuing extra general-purpose cards.

Supported Currencies

Payhawk issues cards in GBP, EUR, USD, and additional currencies. This is a genuine multi-currency structure: a UK business with a German subsidiary can hold a EUR balance and issue EUR cards to German employees without a GBP conversion on every transaction.

If you pay European payroll or EUR supplier invoices, holding a EUR balance in Payhawk avoids FX markup on every transaction. That saving compounds at scale across 50 or more employees.

Cash Withdrawals and Card Usage Rules

ATM withdrawals are supported. Fee structure depends on plan tier; verify with Payhawk during the quote process. Cards are accepted wherever Visa is accepted globally.

Merchant category restrictions are configurable by policy. If your expense policy prohibits specific categories, those restrictions can be applied at card or employee level without blocking the card entirely.

Who Payhawk Is Best For

Best for Small Businesses

Payhawk is not a small business product. We do not recommend it for businesses under 50 employees. The configuration overhead, the pricing model, and the feature depth all assume a business with a dedicated finance function.

For small businesses that need a company card and basic receipt capture, Pleo or Moss deliver the same core outcome at a lower price and with significantly less setup time. We recommend starting with Pleo or Moss and moving to Payhawk when you outgrow them.

Best for Growing Teams

Payhawk fits businesses in the 80 to 300 employee range that are growing fast enough to need multi-level approval workflows and departmental budget structures, but are not yet at the scale of a full enterprise ERP procurement.

Payhawk starts to make sense when spreadsheets and informal approval emails no longer give your finance director enough control, but a wider enterprise software project would be excessive. We see that gap between basic expense tools and a full corporate system as its most convincing market position.

Best for Multi-Entity or Multi-Currency Spend

Payhawk makes its best case in a group where each legal entity needs its own cards, budgets and approval rules. A UK parent managing German and French subsidiaries can keep those local arrangements separate while finance retains a group-wide view. That is a specific problem rather than feature depth for its own sake.

Multi-entity consolidation means the group CFO sees a single dashboard across all entities. Subsidiary finance managers see only their entity. That access model is difficult to replicate with a single-entity platform at any amount of workarounds.

When to Consider Alternatives

Consider Moss if your business is between 10 and 100 employees, operates a single UK entity, uses Xero, and does not need ERP integration. Moss delivers the same card-plus-expense-control outcome at a lower price point.

Consider Pleo if your team is under 15 people and the priority is simplicity and fast setup rather than configuration depth.

Consider Soldo if multi-entity subsidiary management is the primary requirement but ERP integration is not. A full comparison is at /expense-cards/.

Customer Reviews and Reputation

Public third-party ratingsPayhawk ratings checked 14 September 2026

Trustpilot3.5/5278 reviewsApp Store (UK)4.6/5585 ratingsGoogle Play (UK)4.1/52,890 ratings

Source ratings checked 14 September 2026. Ratings can change and are used as one signal alongside our editorial review.

What Users Like About Payhawk

Payhawk holds a positive Trustpilot rating. Finance leaders in the 100 to 500 employee range cite ERP integration depth and approval workflow configurability as the two features that drove the decision.

Reviews from multi-entity businesses consistently describe the group visibility as a material improvement over managing separate expense tools in each entity. We see phrases like “finally one view of group spend” appear regularly.

Customer support for enterprise customers receives positive mentions. Dedicated account management, available on higher tiers, is cited as meaningful during rollout.

Common Complaints

KYB and entity verification takes longer than many reviewers expect. If your business has multiple directors or cross-border entities, build two to three weeks into the rollout plan before cards are active.

Some reviewers say the pricing process was slow and required several calls before a final quote arrived. We factor that delay into our assessment because it can push a procurement decision beyond the finance meeting meant to approve it.

Mobile app performance receives occasional criticism from high-volume expense users. We have not been able to verify whether this reflects the current app version at publication.

Security, Regulation and Safeguarding

FCA Regulation or Licensing

Payhawk is FCA-authorised as an e-money institution for its UK operations. You can verify the authorisation status on the FCA register. European operations are covered by the appropriate EU licensing arrangements.

E-money institution is not the same as a bank. Payhawk cannot lend, take regulated deposits, or offer overdrafts. If you need a business current account with credit facilities alongside your expense card programme, you will need a separate banking relationship.

Safeguarding and Security Controls

Under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011, Payhawk safeguards customer funds in ring-fenced accounts at authorised credit institutions. Your balance is protected from Payhawk’s own creditors if Payhawk were to fail.

Safeguarding is not the same as Financial Services Compensation Scheme deposit protection. We recommend stating that distinction plainly when briefing a board or audit committee because the legal protection and the route to recovering funds are different.

Role-based access controls are available at entity level for multi-entity accounts. A finance manager in one subsidiary cannot view, approve, or act on spend in another entity without explicit access grant.

Customer Support and Reliability

Enterprise customers receive a dedicated account manager. Standard support is available by email and live chat. Response times and SLAs vary by plan tier; confirm the support model during the quote process.

If your business runs daily card spend across 60 or more employees, ask Payhawk directly about their incident communication process before you roll out cards at scale, not during the first support incident.

Payhawk vs Alternatives

Payhawk vs Moss

The clearest decision point is scale and ERP need. Moss is the right choice for UK businesses with 10 to 100 employees on Xero or QuickBooks that do not need ERP integration. Payhawk is the right step when the business outgrows Moss.

The Moss platform is simpler to set up and cheaper at small user counts. For a 20-person business on Xero, we rate Moss as better value than Payhawk because you are not paying for ERP integration you will not use.

At 80 employees with a German entity and a NetSuite deployment, we recommend Payhawk because Moss no longer fits the finance setup.

Payhawk vs Pleo

Pleo targets businesses under 15 to 20 employees with a simpler interface and lower entry price. It is a different product for a different market segment, not a direct competitor to Payhawk at enterprise scale.

We exclude Pleo as a direct Payhawk alternative when a business needs ERP integration. Pleo does not offer native NetSuite, SAP, or Dynamics connectivity. If ERP sync is a requirement, Pleo is not in scope.

Payhawk vs Soldo

Soldo and Payhawk overlap most directly at the multi-entity mid-market. Both offer subsidiary management and consolidated group reporting. The difference is ERP depth: Payhawk’s native ERP integrations are more extensive than Soldo’s at the time of this review.

If you need entity-level wallet management without an accounting-system connection, both providers belong on the shortlist and the decision comes down to interface and quoted price. We put Payhawk ahead when integration with the wider finance system is the deciding requirement.

Final Verdict: Is Payhawk Worth It?

Payhawk is worth paying for once a UK business passes 50 employees and needs ERP integration, multi-entity consolidation, or configurable multi-level approval workflows. We do not recommend it below that threshold.

Payhawk asks more of your finance team during procurement and setup than a self-serve expense tool. That work is justified when it replaces manual approvals, separate entity reporting and repeated data entry into the finance system. Without those problems to solve, the extra complexity buys very little.

If your business runs on Xero with 10 to 100 employees, start with Moss and revisit when you hit its limits. If you are already running NetSuite or SAP and your expense process still involves spreadsheets and email chains, Payhawk is the right call now.

Frequently Asked Questions