How Eventbrite Cut Card Issuance From 3 Weeks to Instant and Saved 100+ Hours a Month
The Challenge
Eventbrite's corporate card programme was built on a patchwork of individual bank-issued cards that created friction at every layer of the finance function. Card issuance took approximately three weeks — requiring manual email or Slack requests, bank portal logins, credit limit reviews, and a three-day bank approval window — with physical cards delivered only to headquarters in San Francisco. A globally distributed workforce of 600+ employees had no virtual card option, forcing teams to share insecure department card details as a workaround for urgent purchases. Expense approval was entirely manual, with employees saving email trails for audit purposes. Finance lacked real-time visibility into credit limits and spend, meaning procurement could not negotiate corporate packages backed by actual spending data. The result was a finance operation generating unnecessary administrative overhead while providing inadequate control and visibility.
The Solution
Ramp replaced the multi-bank card system with a unified corporate card platform providing instant virtual and physical card issuance. Employees request cards directly through the system with built-in approval workflows; virtual cards are approved immediately for urgent needs. Automated approval rules eliminated manual review for low-risk spend: transactions under $25 are auto-approved, while higher purchases route automatically to the relevant manager. Ramp's accounting automation applied transaction coding and matching rules, removing manual categorisation. Real-time spend dashboards gave the procurement team visibility into actual corporate spend, enabling data-backed negotiations for vendor packages and corporate rates.
The Outcome
Ramp eliminated over 100 hours of monthly administrative time across the finance function. Card issuance dropped from a three-week manual process to instant virtual card approval — a 21x speed improvement. Accounting automation achieved 79% zero-touch transaction processing, with the majority of expenses coded, matched, and approved without human intervention. Real-time credit limit visibility removed the need for administrator calls to bank portals. Procurement gained spend data sufficient to negotiate corporate packages with vendors, converting previously invisible expenditure into a negotiation asset.
Strategic Takeaway
Eventbrite's finance problem is common in distributed, fast-moving companies: the tools that worked at a smaller scale become administrative drag as headcount and geographic spread grow. A three-week card issuance process is not a minor inconvenience — it is a structural barrier that forces workarounds (shared department cards) that introduce security risk and audit gaps. The 21x speed improvement in card issuance is striking, but the 79% zero-touch accounting rate is the more strategically significant metric: it represents the proportion of the finance team's repetitive work that no longer requires human attention. For event-driven businesses with variable and geographically distributed spend, real-time visibility is also a procurement lever — something Eventbrite could only use once it had reliable data.
- Card issuance speed is a proxy for finance infrastructure health. A three-week process signals manual bottlenecks that compound across every other finance workflow.
- Zero-touch accounting percentage is the most useful metric for evaluating finance automation: it measures how much of routine processing has been genuinely eliminated, not just accelerated.
- Spend visibility is a procurement asset. Finance teams that lack real-time data across all corporate spend cannot negotiate vendor packages — they are leaving cost reduction on the table.
See how Ramp can help your business address similar challenges.
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