If you’re considering Webexpenses, you’re likely also looking at (or at least have heard of) Payhawk. Makes sense: they’re one of our biggest competitors. On the surface, us and Payhawk might look quite similar – but there’s some nuance to consider.
Webexpenses is a dedicated expense management platform with optional Corporate Cards (and unlimited cashback!), while Payhawk is a spend management system built around cards first.
That distinction – expense management vs spend management – is the core of this comparison, and it shapes everything from pricing to day-to-day usability.
We’ll be upfront here: we think we’re the better choice for most UK businesses. But the decision is yours, and the most useful thing we can do is lay out the facts so you can make an informed call.
Webexpenses vs Payhawk: Who we are and who they are
Webexpenses has been in the market since 2000. We’re UK-based, with offices here and in Australia, and we build everything with local tax rules, VAT (or GST, if you’re in Oz) compliance and reporting processes in mind.
Payhawk launched in Bulgaria in 2018 and has grown into one of the more prominent European spend management platforms. They describe themselves as a solution for domestic and international businesses throughout Europe, the US and the UK, combining company cards, reimbursable expenses, accounts payable and accounting integrations into a single product.
That breadth is also where the trade-offs begin. A platform that tries to do everything spreads its focus across more product areas, which shapes the friction you’ll encounter using it day to day.
The fundamental difference
Many people use ‘spend management’ and ‘expense management’ interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing.
- Spend management refers to the broader category of tools that aim to control all business spending: cards, accounts payable, procurement and expenses, typically unified under one platform.
- Expense management refers specifically to capturing, approving, reimbursing and reporting on employee expenses – out-of-pocket spend, mileage, corporate card reconciliation and policy enforcement.
Payhawk is a spend management platform. Webexpenses is an expense management platform that does expenses brilliantly, with Corporate Cards as a free and flexible addition.
If you need every component of spend management unified in one place, Payhawk may appeal. If you need expense management done exceptionally well – with cards as one useful option rather than the centrepiece – we’re the better fit.
What Payhawk offers – and where it creates friction
With Payhawk, the card functionality is not an add-on: it’s central to how the platform works, and much of the spend control and reporting flows through it. So if you like your Barclaycard and want to keep it, Payhawk is probably not the right fit.
They also offer expense reimbursements, accounts payable and accounting integrations.
There are genuine strengths here. Payhawk supports multi-lingual teams, which matters if you operate across European markets. Their two-way integrations with major accounting platforms are legit, and their card management is polished for the right use case.
But the card-centric model creates practical friction worth understanding before you commit.
No bulk submissions on the app
On the mobile app, users can only submit expense items one at a time. Bulk submission is only available through the web portal, not on mobile. For employees who’re on the road and capturing expenses as they go, that is a real limitation.
If someone returns from a business trip and tries to submit a batch of receipts through the app, they are doing it one by one. Your approvers and finance team then receive a stream of individual line items rather than a consolidated claim to review.
Departmental grouping
Payhawk’s card controls are also grouped by department, which means the same spending rules apply to everyone in that group, regardless of their individual role.
That rigidity can frustrate both employees who need exceptions and finance teams trying to accommodate them without bypassing controls entirely.
If you have team members in the same department with genuinely different spending requirements, the platform simply does not accommodate that nuance.
Categorisation and VAT management issue
With Payhawk, default categories are set at the supplier level. But there is no guarantee the right category is always applied, which means users do not take accountability for their own categorisation and the burden falls on finance to check and correct it.
On top of that, VAT is managed entirely by the finance team rather than the submitting user. Given that multiple goods at different VAT rates can be purchased from a single supplier in a single transaction, this creates significant additional work for your finance team on every reconciliation.
Corporate card delay
If you use corporate credit cards alongside Payhawk, integrating those cards comes with a delay in transaction notifications for users. In other words, your team may not be aware of spend in real time.
Cashback: where Webexpenses and Payhawk are worlds apart
One of the clearest and most financially meaningful differences between us is on cashback.
One of the clearest and most financially meaningful differences between us is cashback. We offer up to 0.75% unlimited cashback on every transaction made with your Webexpenses Corporate Card – no thresholds, no category restrictions, no caps. You spend and you earn, every time, with no ceiling.
Payhawk, by contrast, caps cashback earnings at your subscription amount. In practice, this means you will rarely, if ever, come out materially ahead. The cashback is designed to make the software appear to offset its own cost, not to generate genuine additional value for your business.
In other words, the cashback is sized to feel good in a sales pitch and then disappoint in practice once you realise the benefit maxes out at breakeven. The difference at scale is substantial.
The cashback comparison in real numbers
Here’s what it looks like for a business with 100 card users spending £500,000 a month on cards (figures are indicative!):
| Provider | Cashback rate | Potential monthly cashback | Actual monthly cashback | Net profit |
| Webexpenses | 0.75% (uncapped) | £3,750 | £3,750 | £2,250 (this being your cashback minus your subscription fee) |
| Payhawk | 1.5% (capped) | £7,500 | ~£450 (pricing not publicly available) | £0 (breakeven) |
| Pleo Beyond | 0.75% (capped and only available on yearly billing) | £3,750 | £1,945 | £0 (breakeven) |
With us, you can legitimately say the expense management platform makes the business money.
For a company spending £1 million annually through cards, that’s £7,500 back – compounding with every transaction on travel, software subscriptions, supplier payments and day-to-day purchases.
The reason we can offer this is straightforward: we’re a software company, not a card company. Our business model is built on subscription revenue, which means we don’t need to protect interchange earnings by capping what we give back.
The cards extend our expense management platform. They’re not the product we’re monetising.
Pricing
Payhawk’s size focus starts at the upper mid-market. This is worth noting if you are a smaller business. Payhawk is not designed for you, and the pricing reflects that.
Beyond entry level, Payhawk’s pricing is not publicly available, which makes it difficult to forecast total costs as your business grows. What’s clear is that expenses and accounts payable sit at separate tiers from cards. So the headline figure rarely reflects what you’ll actually pay for a comparable setup.
Webexpenses starts from £7.50 per user per month, with all core features included. There are no hidden charges for additional modules, and you only pay for active users in a given month. Not every seat or card, regardless of whether it was used.
On the Scale plan and above, you also get unlimited cashback, so your card spend actively reduces your net cost.
Financial control and audit trails
Naturally, the reason you’re looking for expense management software is visibility and control. It’s the whole point. And that really is our mission: to give you exactly that.
Our platform gives you a complete audit trail across all transaction types. Every claim, every approval, every policy exception is logged and visible before anything reaches your accounting system. This is part of the standard platform, not a premium add-on.
Payhawk’s carbon tracking is only available on card transactions. This limits its usefulness for complete environmental reporting. If your team submits out-of-pocket expenses alongside card spend, your carbon data will have gaps.
Mileage is perhaps the starkest example here: employees claim it as a reimbursement, not a card purchase, so it simply doesn’t exist in card transaction data. Any platform that only tracks card spend will miss it entirely.
Webexpenses covers all expense types in our carbon tracking, giving you a complete and consistent picture for sustainability reporting.
Integrations: control matters as much as connectivity
Payhawk promotes two-way integrations with major accounting platforms as a key feature. These are real integrations. But they’re expensive to build and maintain, and they require ongoing upkeep whenever either system updates. They also hand a degree of control to the integration itself rather than keeping it with you.
We’ve built direct integrations with the most widely used UK finance and ERP systems. So if you’re running Xero, Sage, NetSuite, or similar, you’re covered out of the box.
For anything more specialist or boutique, we’ll work with you to configure a custom export in exactly the format your system needs. This keeps your finance team in control of what data moves and when.
Support and account management
Payhawk offers multi-lingual support, which is useful for European operations. For a UK or Australian based finance team, though, the most important things are accessibility, responsiveness and having someone who understands your context.
At our Scale tier and above, anyone at your company can contact our support team (not just the system administrator). We offer comprehensive, English-speaking support with our teams based in the UK and APAC.
In most instances, if you need support outside normal working hours, you can speak to a real person.
For those rare moments you need help on a Sunday, our AI assistant Wade is available immediately. And as soon as our team is back online, a named in-house person will follow up directly.
Webexpenses vs Payhawk at a glance
| Feature | Webexpenses | Payhawk |
| Starting price | From £7.50/user/month | £149/month (cards only, <50 employees) |
| Market focus | UK and APAC | Europe-wide, US |
| Size focus | Small through enterprise | Upper mid-market and enterprise |
| Support | UK and APAC-based, with 24/7 digital support from our AI assistant. | Varies by plan |
| Account management | Same service level across all tiers. | Varies by tier |
| Feature access | Tiered, with some features like a higher rate of cashback available at our ‘Pro’ tier. | Tiered (expenses and AP cost more) |
| Corporate Cards | Free for all UK users | Core product |
| Cashback | Up to 0.75%, unlimited, no caps | Capped at subscription amount |
| Carbon tracking | All expense types | Cards only |
| Mobile bulk submission | Yes | No |
| VAT management | User-level at the point of submission | Finance team only |
| Audit trail | Full visibility before posting | Group-level controls, less granular |
| Credit card reconciliation | Yes | Pushes own card solution |
| Pay for unused cards | No | Yes |
Choosing the right platform for your team
The differences should be pretty clear by now. Payhawk is a capable spend management platform for European businesses that want cards at the centre of their financial operations.
Webexpenses is a focused, UK-built expense management platform for businesses that want control, flexible tooling, transparent pricing. Plus, a cashback model that generates genuine value rather than simply offsetting your subscription.
Ultimately, the decision rests with you. But we’ll leave you with a few practical questions to consider before making your choice:
- Do you need the full breadth of spend management, or do you need expense management done exceptionally well?
- Would your finance team benefit from bulk claim submission on mobile?
- Is a department-level card control rigid enough for your organisation, or do you need more granular permissions?
- And does unlimited cashback with no ceiling change the ROI calculation for you?
Your answers will point you in the right direction (hint: we reckon the answer is us).
Book a free demo with our team, and we’ll walk you through the platform based on your specific needs.
