MOBILE
Going mobile
Will the
smartphone replace plastic? Amon Cohen investigates the potential of mobile payments in corporate travel
A
recent photo feature in the The Guardian’s Weekend supplement showed how familiar household items have
evolved in their appearance over each decade of the past century. In the case of the alarm clock, recorded music (vinyl, cassettes and so on) and the telephone, the designs mutated through all sorts of variations until, finally, in 2010, all three disappeared to be replaced by a single object: a smartphone. The question is, by 2020, will the corporate card have vanished into exactly the same device as well? These are early days, but logic would dictate the answer is: yes.
20 • Buying Business Travel 2013
While there is nothing a plastic card can do that a ‘card’ stored on a mobile phone can’t, there is plenty a mobile card can do that a card cannot. “Paying for a hotel stay, a meal
or a train journey by waving a cell phone over an electronic reader is now a reality,” says a white paper from Airplus International and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE), entitled Mobile Payment – How It Will Transform Corporate Travel and Expense Management. “This breakthrough opens up many new possibilities for improving corporate travel: more convenience and smarter purchasing choices for travellers;
increased data visibility, process efficiencies and programme control for travel managers. A mobile device offers smarter payment than a plastic card because it is essentially a mini-computer equipped with: a display, a keypad, the ability to send and receive information, the ability to locate itself, and the ability to ‘talk’ to other functions such as an expense management app or a mobile trip itinerary.” However, Diners Club executive
vice-president Tom Edgerton points out that a widespread move to mobile is not a simple or speedy process. Mobile will only become a standard method of payment, he says, “when global standards emerge and can be
In association with
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