For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), growth brings opportunity—and complexity. As operations expand, spending increases across more employees, vendors, subscriptions, cards, and bank accounts, while finance teams rarely grow at the same pace. Recent Mastercard data shows that growing SMBs are focused on four priorities: improving efficiency, adopting digital payments, accessing capital, and strengthening financial controls. Emburse Spend addresses these needs with real-time visibility, configurable controls, and AI-powered automation across the cards, banks, and rewards programs businesses already use.
Following its success in the U.S., Emburse Spend is launching in Australia as the first step in its global expansion. The platform gives finance teams a practical way to manage growth without disrupting existing payment methods—or allowing rapidly growing areas such as AI investment to become a source of uncontrolled spend. This matters because SMBs are adopting AI even faster than many larger organisations, while still needing to operate within defined budgets and cash-flow targets. They need the freedom to invest in innovation without losing financial discipline.
Small businesses power economies around the world, but they operate in an increasingly demanding environment. SMB spending is growing 2.5 times faster than consumer spending, creating an urgent need for better transaction visibility, automation, and ease of use.
In Australia, businesses with fewer than 20 employees account for 98% of the country’s 2.7 million businesses. They employ approximately 5.2 million people—nearly 38% of the private-sector workforce—and contribute $600 billion to Australian GDP. The same dynamic can be seen in the U.S., where 36.2 million small businesses employ 46% of the private-sector workforce, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
As these businesses expand, processes that worked when they were smaller are no longer enough. More employees make purchases; more vendors and subscriptions require oversight; and more cards, payment methods, and approvals create additional financial activity to track. Yet finance and IT teams do not always expand at the same rate. For SMBs operating with lean teams and resources, automation and ease of use are essential to sustaining growth.
Launching in Australia following success in the U.S., with a foundation for global expansion
SMB priorities such as efficiency, payment flexibility, access to capital, and stronger financial control are not limited to one market. That is why Emburse Spend is expanding globally, beginning with Australia as its first market outside the U.S.
The Australian offering includes local billing, tax and card infrastructure, integrations with Australia’s accounting ecosystem, and regional sales and implementation support. It gives growing organisations a proven, modern way to manage spend while supporting the local requirements and financial relationships on which they rely.
For Australian finance teams, the benefits are tangible:
- Less time spent chasing receipts and correcting expense reports
- Earlier visibility into employee and business spending
- Stronger policy controls without forcing employees to change how they pay
- More automation for finance teams operating with limited resources
As Emburse Spend enters additional markets, Emburse will continue helping growing organisations build spend operations that can keep pace with their businesses. Emburse Spend will be available in Australia beginning September 15, 2026, directly through Emburse Sales.
Growing businesses everywhere need technology that saves time
For SMBs, the pressure is operational as well as financial. Mastercard found that 63% of small business owners use technology to save time and increase efficiency. This reflects a practical expectation: businesses do not adopt software simply to add another system; they expect it to reduce friction in the work required to keep operations running.
Expense management is a clear example. When employees must collect receipts, add context and supporting information, answer follow-up questions, and wait for approval, administrative work accumulates quickly. Finance teams then spend valuable time chasing missing documentation, correcting expense details, and reconciling transactions long after the original purchase.
Emburse Spend helps remove that burden. Employees can capture receipts for card and out-of-pocket spending at the moment of purchase. Emburse AI guides them to submit the correct documentation and remain within policy, then extracts expense details, matches receipts to transactions, and automates routine work from submission through reconciliation.
Instead of asking employees and finance teams to reconstruct spending at month-end, Emburse Spend helps them manage it as it happens.
Digital payments, locally and internationally, need digital spend operations
Small businesses are also using technology to modernise the way they pay. Mastercard reports that 43% of SMB owners use technology to enable digital payments.
This shift helps businesses move faster, but it also increases the need for connected spend operations. Finance teams must still understand the purpose of a purchase, apply the appropriate policy, collect supporting documentation, and reconcile the transaction accurately. Without connected workflows, digital payments can still leave finance teams with manual work and delayed information.
Emburse Spend connects the transaction workflow, giving finance teams real-time visibility across their existing cards, banks, and payment rails while providing employees with a simple expense experience. Powered by Emburse AI, the platform screens receipts and invoices as they enter the system, checking for missing information and policy compliance. Automated risk scoring routes high-priority exceptions for review, reducing the need for line-by-line audits and allowing finance teams to focus their attention where human judgement matters most.
Cash flow requires choice and control
Financial flexibility becomes increasingly important as an SMB refines its ideal customer profile, enters new markets, and scales its operations.
The SBO Macroeconomic Sentiment Pulse Study found that 60% of SMB owners have found or are seeking a new business banking partner. Among those looking for a new partner, 64% are considering a new business credit card. These findings show that business owners are actively evaluating the financial relationships and tools that will support their next stage of growth.
Access to capital remains another significant concern. A Treasury landscape and policy report found that 75% of SMB owners are concerned about their ability to obtain the capital needed to operate and grow. Working-capital management—and access to debt or equity financing—remains consistently top of mind.
For founders, entrepreneurs, and finance leaders, timely spend visibility is critical. They need to understand where money is going, identify issues earlier, apply policies consistently, and eliminate administrative work that interferes with informed decision-making.
Better control, however, should not require businesses to replace the cards, banks, or rewards programs they already value. Emburse Spend works across an organisation’s existing financial ecosystem, enabling businesses to modernise spend management while preserving the payment choices and financial relationships that support their cash flow, employees, and vendors.
Stronger controls should not slow people down
As business spending becomes more distributed, governance becomes more important. Mastercard Global Insights and Analytics research found that 79% of SMBs consider effective cybersecurity critical to their operations.
Cybersecurity and expense management are distinct challenges, but they share a common requirement: clear controls and timely visibility into the activity affecting an organisation. For spend management, this means moving controls closer to the moment of purchase. Emburse Spend includes ISO-certified security and advanced cybersecurity protections at no additional charge.
Effective controls should not create unnecessary barriers for employees. They should make it easier to capture the right information, follow policy, and resolve exceptions before they create additional work. That is the role Emburse Spend plays: helping growing organisations put stronger guardrails around spending while keeping the employee experience simple.
Sources: U.S. Small Business Administration, February 2026; SBO Macroeconomic Sentiment Pulse Study; Mastercard proprietary research, November 2024; Treasury Landscape and Policy Recommendations, January 2025; Mastercard Global Insights and Analytics, SME Cybersecurity, March 2025.