Sharing Credit Cards with Coworkers

Getting a joint credit card account is common for married couples - but you’re not married to your coworkers. Usually married people will eventually combine their finances to some degree, and sharing credit cards to increase their rewards points or cashback is a natural part of that process.

But what about coworkers? Is it ever safe to share credit cards with coworkers? Although many companies will be tempted to share credit card numbers across teams to make small purchases easier, there really is no safe way to share credit cards. 

While sharing credit cards with coworkers safely isn’t really possible, you can share passwords across your team with TeamPassword. 

As your company increases the number of different online services you utilize to compete in the modern ecommerce landscape, it becomes harder for your employees to keep track of all of their login information. This leads to password reuse or weak passwords. 

TeamPassword can increase productivity at the same time as improving your security.

‏‏‎ ‎

Sign up for a 14-day free trial to test TeamPassword with your team members today.

‏‏‎ ‎

What is a joint credit card account?

A joint credit card allows you to share a credit card with another person, usually your spouse or family member. It is very rare to share credit cards with coworkers in this way.

This is different from adding an authorized user to your account because, as joint account holders, both users of the credit card are legally responsible for the combined debt accrued by both users.

Conversely, an authorized user is permitted to make purchases with the card, but they are not responsible for the debt. Only the account owner may be penalized if they fail to repay the debt or miss payments.

‏‏‎ ‎

Should you open a joint credit card account?

Sharing a credit card requires a lot of trust. It also requires a firm understanding of the spending habits of each joint account holder. In the case of sharing credit cards with coworkers, all of these issues are exacerbated.

That’s why at TeamPassword we are inundated with emails from clients asking about how to share credit cards with coworkers using our password manager. 

‏‏‎ ‎‎

The problem with opening a joint credit card account

Here is a composite of several emails we have received recently:

Hi there,

We have recently started using TeamPassword to share login information across our team and it's been great. 

However, we’d also like to be sharing credit cards with coworkers. We are a small business and usually only an account manager needs to have access to the cards, but at times other team members also need to pay for expenses.

We are currently using TeamPassword to share credit card numbers. 

Right now, we have the cardholder name as a username, the credit card number as a password, and use the notes section for the three-digit code on the back, the expiry date, and the billing address.

Is this safe? Is this advisable? Is there a better way of doing this?

Thank you!

Basically, some clients are using their password manager vault to share credit card numbers with coworkers. Let’s answer the questions asked in this email. 

‏‏‎ ‎

Is it safe?

TeamPassword is an incredibly secure system, based around two-factor authentication (2FA) and the latest cryptography best practices. While your credit card is stored in your TeamPassword vault, it is safe.

When you save new passwords, or your credit card number to share with coworkers, the data is hashed, salted, and encrypted locally on your computer before being uploaded to TeamPassword via an encrypted connection. This level of encryption makes it impossible for criminals to intercept your passwords.

‏‏‎ ‎

Sign up today for a free 14-day TeamPassword trial and protect your company's digital assets from cybercriminals.

‏‏‎ ‎

Is it advisable?

While the password is safe in the Internet security sense of the word, we cannot say this is an advisable solution. There are a couple main reasons why we recommend against using a password manager to share credit cards with coworkers. 

First, since your team members are not authorized users on the account, giving them access to your private information is not a good idea. 

It might even void your credit card’s anti-theft/fraud insurance if they find out that the thief got your credit card information from you sharing your credit card information contrary to the terms of service agreement for your card.

Second, as much as we all love our teammates and hope our time together never ends, sadly, employees leave from time to time, and in this case, they could leave after writing your credit card number down. 

With a password, you can easily get TeamPassword to create new passwords for every account after a team member departs. However, this is not so easy or convenient with a credit card number.

‏‏‎ ‎

Is there a better way?

While there might not be a better way to share your credit card number with coworkers, especially when they are not next to you in the office during these COVID-19 times, there are two better ways to deal with this issue. 

Reimbursement

The classic approach to this problem is to have your employees use their own credit cards, send you a copy of the receipt, and then reimburse them. 

Keep in mind that employees will be aggravated if they find themselves jumping through a lot of hoops to be reimbursed, waiting months to be reimbursed, or find reasonable purchases being denied reimbursements. 

Conversely, if you are prompt about reimbursing your team members, the perk of earning air miles or cash back at work might make this their preferred solution.

A special corporate credit card

While corporate credit cards are becoming less common over time, Stripe has recently released The Stripe Corporate Card, a corporate card designed for the modern work experience.

The Stripe Corporate Card is an easy way for everyone in your company to handle expenses. 

While we recommend against using TeamPassword for sharing credit cards with coworkers, our secure password manager is still great at keeping your other information secure online while being accessible to the whole team. 

‎‏‏‎ ‎

Sign up for a 14-day free trial to test TeamPassword with your team members today.