MOBILE
agreed to by telecom companies, financial institutions and merchants. We will probably see local country programmes emerge at first, before we see any kind of universal offering.”
READY TO LAUNCH Airplus looks poised to be the first into the mobile corporate payments market. After announcing development of a prototype in 2012, which was tested by its own employees, Airplus said in March this year that it will launch pilot schemes for the product in the UK and Germany in the summer. Airplus corporate cardholders will be able store a virtual version of their card on their phone if it is enabled for near field communication (NFC), so instead of handing over a plastic card to complete a payment, cardholders will be able to wave their phones over a reader instead. Using global positioning system (GPS) geo-coding, Airplus will tag the transaction with the location of the payment. “We will list merchants in the proximity of the location, so you can make a 100 per cent identification of the establishment,” says Mario Zorn, the mobile payment product manager for Airplus.
MAJOR BENEFITS Confirmed identification of a location promises to be a major benefit resulting from mobile payment’s ability to add geo-coded data to transaction information. One of the biggest headaches travel managers face is in rationalising hotel spend data, which is often confusing and contradictory: a hotel could be named as the Sheraton Knightsbridge by one source and Starwood London by another, for example. The GPS positioning on the payment should end any ambiguity once and for all. The Sheraton/Starwood
scenario is just one example of In association with
how mobile payment pioneers believe technology will enrich reporting for travel managers far beyond what they have today (see box, overleaf, for more examples). David Harrison, vice-president Visa Commercial, Visa Europe, also thinks mobile payment will make
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
life much easier for corporate travellers. “It will be a richer experience, especially because of the ability to pre-populate expense management systems,” he says. “It is much better than uploading a photographed receipt into the expense tool.”
REDUCING HEADACHES Convenience for travellers will also reduce administrative headaches throughout the organisation, including fewer delinquencies (payment industry-speak for unpaid card bills), according to American Express vice-president UK sales, global corporate payments, Alan Gillies. “It will lead to fewer late payments, because it prompts travellers to process their expenses quicker,” he says. However, for Airplus’s Zorn, the
most significant benefit of mobile payment is the additional control it gives travel managers. “It really helps manage who is doing what,” he says. “Controlling individual spend limits and the categories travellers are allowed to use will all be easier.” As discussed in another article in this supplement (see p12), virtual card numbers are similarly excellent for controlling cardholder spend because they can be tied to a single
transaction. Zorn argues that by bringing the technologies together and storing virtual numbers in a mobile wallet on an employee’s phone, it will be possible to give staff more flexibility while retaining a strong element of control. “For a temporary employee, you could block or unblock use of the card for certain times,” he says. “It gives the travel manager new ways to interact with the traveller and more, higher-quality and faster access to data.”
SECURITY ISSUES Not all card issuers are convinced the time is right for corporate mobile payments. American Express and Barclaycard both say it is not currently a priority for their clients, while, according to Steve Robson, head of commercial cards EMEA for Citi, “at the moment mobile is less about payment and more about delivery of information, such as alerts to cardholders about approaching their spend limit or that payment is due, or allowing them to call up their balance”. Fear of the new is also likely to hold back the spread of corporate mobile payments. One concern is a perception that the technology may be less secure than plastic cards, although experts argue the opposite. They point out that NFC signals are difficult to intercept, and NFC-enabled payments can be confirmed with a PIN number, just as with plastic card payments. Travellers can also detect abnormal use of their cards faster, because they can check transaction information on their phones, and they can make one call to block all card numbers in their mobile wallet.
A QUESTION OF PRIVACY Perhaps more of a challenge will be the privacy issues that arise because of the ability to geo-code payment transactions, enabling employers potentially to follow employees’ movements based on
2013 Buying Business Travel • 21
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