KeyBank and Qolo Deepen Partnership with Virtual Card Launch

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL – April 28, 2026 – KeyBank, in a significant expansion of its digital offerings for corporate clients, has deepened its multi-year partnership with fintech infrastructure provider Qolo to launch the Key Virtual Card (KeyVC) program. The new offering integrates virtual commercial cards directly into KeyBank’s existing treasury platform, Key Virtual Account Management (KeyVAM), signaling a strategic push to unify and simplify corporate payment ecosystems.

This move goes beyond a typical vendor relationship, building on a collaboration that saw the launch of KeyVAM in 2024 and was solidified by an equity investment from KeyBank into Qolo last year. By embedding Qolo’s technology, KeyBank aims to provide its Middle Market and Institutional Banking clients with a seamless tool to manage spending, enhance security, and streamline cumbersome accounts payable processes.

“Commercial clients are increasingly looking for simpler and more controlled ways to manage payments,” said John Withrow, Head of Commercial Cards at KeyBank, in a statement. “By expanding our partnership with Qolo, we’re making virtual cards easier to use within our existing treasury platforms, helping clients streamline accounts payable, improve visibility, and maintain better control over how and when money is spent.”

A Seamless Shift to Integrated Treasury

The core innovation of KeyVC lies in its integration. For years, corporate treasury departments have grappled with fragmented systems—using one platform for cash management, another for card payments, and often relying on manual processes for reconciliation. This complexity creates operational drag, increases the risk of errors, and obscures a clear, real-time view of company-wide spending.

KeyVC addresses this pain point by allowing clients to create, issue, and manage virtual cards from within the same KeyVAM portal they already use for other treasury functions. This unified environment is designed to eliminate the need to juggle multiple systems. According to Qolo, its behind-the-scenes technology handles the entire lifecycle of the virtual card, including issuing, processing, fraud monitoring, and dispute management.

“Managing commercial payments can be complex, often requiring businesses to juggle multiple systems and reporting processes,” noted Rouzbeh Rotabi, Chief Operating Officer at Qolo. “Working with KeyBank, we’ve built a virtual card solution that feels like a seamless part of the treasury environment - giving finance teams more flexibility, stronger controls, and clearer insight into their spending.” This approach transforms the virtual card from a standalone payment method into an integral component of a modern, digital treasury toolkit.

Fintech as the Foundation for Banking's Evolution

The KeyBank-Qolo partnership exemplifies a critical trend in financial services: incumbent banks are increasingly turning to specialized fintech firms to accelerate innovation and meet evolving customer demands. Rather than undertaking costly and time-consuming overhauls of their legacy core systems, banks are leveraging agile, API-driven platforms like Qolo’s to build and deploy modern financial products.

Qolo’s model is built on providing a unified infrastructure layer that combines card issuing, ledger management, and money movement. This allows banks to essentially plug in new capabilities, a strategy that Qolo has also successfully implemented with other institutions like Huntington Bank. For KeyBank, this means it can offer a state-of-the-art virtual card solution without disrupting its foundational banking infrastructure, delivering value to clients faster.

This collaborative model allows traditional banks to remain competitive against both fintech challengers and other major financial institutions. Competitors like J.P. Morgan and Citi have long offered robust virtual card programs, often through a combination of in-house development and strategic fintech partnerships. KeyBank’s deepened alliance with Qolo is a clear strategic move to enhance its competitive posture in the lucrative commercial payments space, providing a solution that emphasizes deep integration and user experience.

Tapping into a Booming B2B Payments Market

The launch of KeyVC is timed to capitalize on the explosive growth in the virtual card market. Driven by the corporate world’s demand for greater security, efficiency, and control, the adoption of virtual cards for business-to-business (B2B) payments is surging. Recent market analysis from Juniper Research projects that the global value of B2B virtual card payments will skyrocket to $14.6 trillion by 2029, up from an estimated $5.2 trillion in 2025.

Virtual cards offer distinct advantages over traditional payment methods like checks or physical corporate cards. Each virtual card number can be generated for a single transaction or a specific vendor, with preset spending limits, expiration dates, and usage controls. This dramatically reduces the risk of fraud, as the primary account details are never exposed and a compromised number has limited or no value.

Beyond security, these cards are a strategic tool for financial management. They capture rich, transaction-level data that can be used to automate and simplify reconciliation, a traditionally labor-intensive task. Furthermore, by optimizing payment timing, businesses can improve their working capital by extending Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) without negatively impacting supplier relationships. The integration within KeyVAM promises to make these strategic benefits more accessible to KeyBank’s clients, providing them with the data and control needed for more informed financial decision-making.

Navigating the Path to Adoption

While the benefits of integrated virtual cards are compelling, successful adoption hinges on overcoming practical challenges. A primary hurdle for any virtual card program is supplier acceptance. Not all vendors are equipped or willing to process single-use virtual card payments, which can require businesses to manage a parallel supplier enablement effort to encourage adoption.

Furthermore, implementing any new payment process requires effective internal change management. Treasury and finance teams must be trained on the new system, and the benefits must be clearly communicated across the organization to ensure buy-in and proper use. While KeyVC’s integration into an existing platform is designed to lower this barrier, a thoughtful rollout strategy remains crucial for clients to realize the full value of the new tool.

By embedding this functionality directly into its core treasury offering, KeyBank is betting that the convenience and enhanced control will drive strong adoption among its commercial client base, further solidifying its position as a forward-thinking partner in corporate finance.