Emerging T&E Payment: Virtual Card & Mobile Payment

Corporate cards, ghost or lodge cards, procurement cards—even ACH and checks in certain situations corporations use a diverse collection of payment options to cover travel and entertainment expenses.

The preferred payment option can be influenced by several factors that often include the size of the company, the regulatory environments in the markets where the company does business, whether travelers qualify for credit, the type of travel being planned (e.g. transient or meetings) and the company’s tolerance for risks associated with different forms of payment.

Overall, however, every corporate payment program needs to balance usability concerns with the company’s need for control over how the form of payment is used by travelers, the type of data that can be returned, and the assurance that the payment form is secure against traditional fraudulent use as well as broader hacking schemes that have become a pernicious issue for the payment industry and retailers.

As new forms of T&E payment emerge, they must be evaluated with these needs in mind. This paper, from The BTN Group and CSI, explores these issues as associated with Virtual Cards and Mobile Payment technologies, both of which have drawn significant attention in the managed payment marketplace but are still largely in the learning and research phases for most T&E program managers.

Virtual cards have been in the marketplace for about a decade, but have only garnered attention for managed payment programs in the last five years.