Our Take
3.9
NerdWallet rating
The bottom line:
Rippling’s corporate card is part of Rippling’s overall software offerings. The card pays as much as 1.75% cash back, but a required subscription eats into its value. If your business doesn’t need Rippling’s full software suite, you’re probably better off with a free corporate card option.
Rippling Corporate Card
Annual fee
Required subscription to Rippling Spend. Pricing starts at $11 per employee per month.
Regular APR
N/A
Intro APR
N/A
Apply now
on Rippling's website
More details from Rippling
- 1.75% cash back: Rippling Corporate Cards offer an industry-leading unlimited 1.75% cash back.
- Total Control. Zero admin work: Rippling allows you to stop out-of-policy spending before it happens, so you can issue cards to employees without having to worry about purchasing things they shouldn’t. Unlike most Corporate Cards, Rippling allows you to build hyper-customizable policies using any HR data in your company. You can create policies based on the typical things – like vendor and dollar amount – as well as data within your org, like location, title, department, level, office location, tenure, and more. If you can think it, you can build it. This way, you don’t have to worry about an employee buying alcohol at a conference or the marketing team spending more than $X per month on AdWords.
- Global-Ready: Corporate Cards work seamlessly across 200+ countries and territories, and expenses are reimbursed quickly in 37+ currencies.
- Automatically Issue, Revoke, and Re-Assign Cards: With Rippling, when you hire an employee in your HRIS, you can automatically issue corporate cards with pre-set limits and policies based on their department, level, location, and more. And when an employee leaves, Rippling automatically disables their card and asks if you’d like to re-assign it to their manager or another employee.
- Unlimited Physical Cards for Every Employee & Unlimited Virtual Cards: Admins can instantly issue physical and virtual cards and employees can even request approval for virtual cards for everything from software subscriptions to digital advertising. And both physical and virtual cards work with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
- Out-of-the-box accounting integrations: Rippling seamlessly categorizes receipts with transactions and syncs spend with Quickbooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct and more.
- Up to 20x higher credit limits than traditional banks.
- Real-Time Spend Dashboards: Rippling allows you to view all of your physical and virtual cards in a single dashboard, and cut the data by any HR data in your company — location, department, team, level, work location, and more. You can even give managers the ability to view their teams' spending, right out of the box based on their role and level.
- All-in-One Spend Management: Corporate Card + Expense Management: The Rippling Corporate Card is integrated into and can be used alongside Rippling’s Expense Management Platform.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Potential for a high rewards rate
- Card-level spending controls
- Supports employee reimbursements in more than 100 countries and receipt collection in multiple languages
- Rippling’s software suite includes HR, payroll and digital security tools
Cons
- Required software subscription
- Rewards rate varies depending on user activity
Full Review
Rippling is a technology company whose primary value proposition is HR software for managing employee onboarding, benefits and payroll. But Rippling has expanded its offerings since its 2016 founding. That includes the 2022 introduction of Rippling Spend — a spend and expense management software tool — with built-in corporate credit cards.
The star rating on this page solely applies to Rippling’s corporate card, but our review talks about the Rippling Spend product suite. It’s hard not to since you need to pay for Rippling Spend to join the card program. That’s unlike other corporate cards with integrated expense management tools.
Rippling Spend subscriptions start at $11 per month per employee. You can add other Rippling software tools for HR, payroll and digital security for additional fees. All pricing is quote-based.
If switching to Rippling allows you to replace multiple tools (and save money), then using it for your corporate card program may make sense. The card does have a lot to offer — there’s a potentially high rewards rate, as well as support for reimbursements and receipt collection in multiple languages and currencies. But there are plenty of free alternatives that offer great value, even with lesser rewards.
This card is best for:
✔️ Established businesses.
✔️ Generous rewards on routine spending.
✔️ Companies operating internationally.
Not a fit? Consider these corporate cards
NerdWallet rating 5.0/5.0 | NerdWallet rating 4.3/5.0 | NerdWallet rating 3.9/5.0 |
Annual fee $0 | Annual fee $0 | Annual fee $0 |
Regular APR N/A | Regular APR N/A | Regular APR N/A |
Intro APR N/A | Intro APR N/A | Intro APR N/A |
Recommended credit score 300850poor - excellent | Recommended credit score 300850poor - excellent | Recommended credit score 300850poor - excellent |
at Brex | at Ramp | at Rippling |
Rippling integrates expense management and corporate cards with HR management tools. Brex, on the other hand, uses banking as its foundational experience, aiming for an all-in-one finance solution. Brex’s rewards program is potentially more lucrative for businesses with travel expenses, too: Users earn points at rates as high as 7X on cabs and rideshares, 4X on travel bookings through its portal and 3X on dining. Beyond that, Brex doesn’t charge a monthly or annual fee. Read NerdWallet’s review of the Brex Card.
If you want a free expense management platform alongside your corporate card program, Ramp might be a good fit. Ramp’s software allows users to issue unlimited virtual cards instantly, limit spending on each of those cards and require expense approvals. Rewards rates start at 1% cash back, but Ramp may offer higher rates to some companies. Ramp doesn’t charge a monthly or annual fee and, with a minimum bank balance of $25,000 to qualify, may be an option for smaller companies. Read NerdWallet’s review of the Ramp Card.
At a glance: Rippling Corporate Card
💳 Card type: Corporate card.
💲 Annual fee:
Required subscription to Rippling Spend. Pricing starts at $11 per employee per month.
💰 Sign-up bonus:
N/A
.🎉 Rewards: Unlimited 1.75% cash back if you spend more than 75% of the expected monthly spend specified on your contract. If you spend less, your rewards rate falls to
1%
.📈 APR: N/A. There is no option to carry a balance.
💷 Foreign transaction fee: None, but currency conversion fees may apply.
See complete terms of service on Rippling’s website.
Benefits and perks
Generous rewards
Rippling’s flat-rate rewards top out at 1.75%, higher than any other corporate card NerdWallet has evaluated. Not everyone earns that rate, though.
To do so, you have to use at least 75% of your expected monthly spend. A Rippling spokesperson says the company sets that amount when you sign your contract. Rippling bases limits on your previous three months of corporate card statements (if you previously had a different corporate card).
In months when you don't meet that threshold, you’ll still get
1%
cash back. Cash back is awarded as points, which you can manually redeem for statement credits or gift cards.In other words: Companies spending more than $1 million annually on their corporate cards should earn five figures in cash back.
International expense management
Rippling’s global spend tools allow users to track spending in multiple currencies, monitor exchange rate fluctuations and customize spend controls for employees in different countries. Using a single software program to manage spending across global teams could help large companies work more efficiently.
Additional software for HR and payroll
Rippling uses people management, rather than banking, as the foundation for its corporate card program. That’s unique.
The company claims its approach results in the better integration of departmental budgets, corporate card issuance, hiring, payroll and more. If your company has hundreds of employees and your HR software suite feels overwhelming, Rippling’s additional software options (Rippling HCM, Payroll and IT) may be able to help simplify things.
You can sign up for Rippling’s HR software without enrolling in Rippling Spend and the corporate card program, though. And if you want to use both HR and spend management tools, you’ll have to pay for both. Pricing is quote-based.
Drawbacks and alternatives
Required software subscription
To use the
Rippling Corporate Card
, you’ll need to pay a monthly subscription fee for Rippling Spend, the associated spend management software tool. That’s different from competitors like Ramp and Rho, which offer free plans. Paying for Rippling might be worth it for some companies. But other businessess — especially smaller ones without dedicated HR and finance teams — may find that the free options work just fine.
Quote-based pricing
Rippling’s pricing is quote-based, which means it can vary for every business. A contract is also required. That’s standard for enterprise-level software, but it requires extra work when you’re evaluating your options — especially when corporate card competitors like Ramp offer free plans without requiring contracts.
Paying per-employee also means your costs may shift as your workforce does. Rippling users on social media have shared stories about pricing changes as their companies grow or shrink. For instance, some note that adding employees increases your bill, but subtracting workers doesn’t reduce it.
NerdWallet reached out to a Rippling spokesperson about how pricing works, and they said that potential customers receive detailed quotes before signing a contract. We’d recommend reading your quote closely and asking a sales rep about any unclear pricing information.
Relatively new corporate card program
Rippling Spend and its corporate card program were only rolled out in 2022. That’s not inherently a bad thing, of course. But in general, software companies tend to launch, change and discontinue offerings much more often than traditional financial institutions do.
For instance, it’s not uncommon for fintechs to explore different partnerships. In fact, Rippling’s corporate card has already had multiple financial partners. Cards are currently issued by Fifth Third Bank and managed by Marqeta. For users onboarded before Feb. 9, 2025, those roles are held by Celtic Bank and Stripe, respectively.
If you’d prefer a corporate card from a longstanding institution, the
U.S. Bank Commercial Rewards Card
may be worth a look. It’s designed for businesses with $10 million or more in revenue, but offers competitive rewards on travel booking and 24/7 phone support. No linked banking
Many competitors in this space offer banking products — like checking, savings and treasury accounts — alongside corporate cards and spend management software. Again, established corporations may not be interested in switching banks (especially if it involves working with a neobank). But startups with smaller teams might find integrated finance, sans HR, to be the more useful solution.
» MORE: Best banks for startups
How we evaluated the Rippling Corporate Card
NerdWallet's business credit card experts compared the
Rippling Corporate Card
to other corporate credit cards, evaluating how the card's rewards, perks, fees and features stack up to its peers. We also asked Rippling questions about spending controls, qualification requirements and customer service. This data, alongside feedback from business owners — solicited directly and gathered via online forums like Reddit — helped inform this review.Apply now
on Rippling's website
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