However, while it would be hard to argue the supplement title wholly breaches the Trade Descriptions Act, it does not tell the whole story. Strictly speaking, it should be labelled a corporate payments supplement. The archetypal image is of a sleek executive handing a rectangular piece of plastic to a bowing and scraping waiter or hotel receptionist, yet physical cards accounted for only 50 per cent of spend in the UK last
20 Buying Business Travel 2012
Virtual virtues T
Are virtual payments the way forward for sophisticated transaction tracking and control? Amon Cohen finds out more
his is the Buying Business T
ravel
corporate cards supplement – or so, at least, it says on the cover.
year by American Express corporate payment customers. So where did the rest of the money go? The answer: virtual payments. At present, the phrase is generally associated with the fast-growing niche of electronically generated 16-digit ‘card’ numbers that are used for one- off payment transactions. These virtual cards are being used particularly to solve the challenge of hotel billback invoices, giving hotels a way to accept payment in lieu of a guest proffering a plastic corporate card. As shall be seen, virtual card numbers have several other applications that are only just beginning to be appreciated.
THE END OF PLASTIC? However, virtual payments are not new – they also have a history. The long-established lodge-card payment method, where a company’s bookings are paid through a single card number ‘lodged’ with a travel management company (TMC), is a non-plastic, virtual payment, too. Virtual payments have a highly promising future as well, thanks to the advent of payment by mobile phone. Depending on how quickly mobile payment catches on, it is even conceivable that physical plastic cards will no longer reside in many business travellers’ wallets or purses within a decade.