Commercial payment is a pillar of travel procurement and management. Whether using centralized billing accounts, travel and entertainment corporate cards, hotel billback or newer solutions like virtual cards, it’s all about convenience and data.
Virtual cards are still a work in progress, but Riot Games travel wizard Sean Parham isn’t ready to give up on them. He’s now on his second try. The intended benefits — reduced fraud, easier reconciliation and a seamless traveler experience including an easier expense process — are just too tempting. Last year Parham pulled the…
During a crisis, business travelers don’t always check in with their companies when requested to do so. That may result from complacency or ignorance to corporate policies. Perhaps their phones are lost or not working. Travelers might have booked outside designated channels and their employers don’t know where they are — or even where they…
Virtual payment remains a hot topic in managed business travel. The benefits for companies that employ non-cardholding travelers are clear. Not resolved, however, are the headaches associated with faxing card authorizations. Travel managers wonder why the hotel industry can’t get its act together. It’s not as easy as they would hope. Choice Hotels has received praise for one initiative it’s testing,…
It was a long time coming, but standardized, global credit card reporting on ancillary airline spending is finally in place — at least for United Airlines’ corporate accounts using Visa cards. The airline in April began sending data through Visa using defined category formats that identify things like bag fees, upgrades and inflight WiFi. Using…
[UPDATE, Feb 3, 2017: We published new information related to this article here.] Late of Concur, Cindy Allen and Kathy Burns are looking to cash in on growing interest in the benefits of virtual cards. Their newly unveiled firm, PayForTrip, is the first startup from Allen’s Team Catalyst Holdings. Burns is PayForTrip’s chief commercial officer. PayForTrip will…
A liability shift in October will transfer responsibility for covering U.S. card payment fraud to the party with less secure payment technology. Cards with chips are considered safer because they generate a unique code for each transaction, making counterfeiting seemingly impossible. Merchant locations without terminals capable of reading chip cards will be on the hook…
[UPDATE, April 8, 2016: We published new information related to this article here.] Some travel managers and TMCs are fielding questions about when Apple Pay will be available for corporate card users, but don’t trust the website. At press time, Apple showed five institutions as providers of corporate cards supporting Apple Pay. They weren’t exactly commercial payment heavyweights, but it…
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