NEW PRODUCTS AND INNOVATIONS
‘Invisible’, ‘virtual’ and ‘mobile’ are the undoubted buzzwords in corporate, and indeed all, payments right now. However, there are plenty of other innovations improving the fundamental requirements of corporate clients, including more self-service, better data and a wider variety of card types. Here is a round-up of the latest products and services unveiled recently by leading issuers and schemes.
• SELF-SERVICE has been a growing trend over the last three to four years, and the latest version of it is online card applications. Traditionally, applications for new cards have to be submitted manually – a long-winded process involving distributing forms to employees and returning them completed to the administrator, who must then counter-sign the forms and post them by recorded delivery to the issuer. Bank of America Merrill Lynch is one issuer to have introduced such a facility. “We launched the Global Account Request capability to enable employees of our clients to request a card online, and for company programme administrators to approve or deny those card requests via a simplified web interface,” says head of EMEA commercial cards, Melissa Gargagliano. “Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.”
• AIRPLUS INTERNATIONAL has also introduced an online card application and approval platform, and the verdict of UK managing director Caroline Haywood is remarkably similar. “It sounds unsexy but we are getting fantastic feedback because it streamlines an inefficient process,” she says. “Employees get a card in their hand much quicker and with a lot less fuss.” Haywood says that in addition to speed, other benefits include greater transparency, security, environmental-friendliness and lower costs.
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• AIRPLUS has also been upgrading the ability of clients to manage cardholder spend online instead of, as used to be the case, having to ask the card company to make the changes. Latest enhancements include allowing administrators to impose different spending limits for each merchant category. For example, they could limit the cardholder to £500 per month on hotels, £200 on restaurants and zero at filling stations. Administrators could also limit the ability of cardholders to make ‘cardholder not present’ payments via the internet, email or telephone.
• CITI is another issuer to have introduced online card maintenance. “We find that once it becomes available, there is a big shift to something like 70 per cent self-service within nine months,” says head of commercial cards EMEA, Steve Robson. Citi has also created more alerts that administrators can send to cardholders, such as warning them they are approaching their credit limit.
• VISA, meanwhile, has made major changes to the way it produces data. It is working with merchants in a more open-sourced environment to integrate its own data with other information that the merchants may wish to add. “All data used to be in a Visa file format,” says Visa Europe senior manager Simon Thompson. “By taking a neutral approach to the transaction, we can get data in faster and for more
types of merchant. It becomes easier to capture their data and append it to the financial transaction.” Examples of this process in action include delivering reporting about Uber car rides and folio data (also known as Level 3 data) from hotels, giving a full line-item breakdown of spend.
• DINERS CLUB INTERNATIONAL has been carrying out similar work to make reporting formats much more adaptable and, therefore, capable of producing enhanced reporting. It has also rolled out new card types, such as a pre-paid card in Asia. “We identified a market need,” says global head of commercial payments, Carlos Pontes. “Asia has a large population of contracted workers. Pre-paid means banks are not running an underwriting risk when issuing cards to them.” Pontes says Diners Club intends to launch the pre-paid card in Europe as well.
• BARCLAYCARD has created an alternative solution to the same challenge, launching what it calls a flexible corporate card for transient workforces. A declining limit is set on the card. “Once you reach that limit, it’s done,” says commercial cards product director Maria Parpou. “It’s like a pre-paid card but on credit. It works very well for projects or a particular event.”
• THE OTHER BIG MOVE by Barclaycard has been to start issuing through Mastercard as well as long-time partner Visa.
“We are moving clients to Mastercard where there is a better fit,” says Parpou, although she is reluctant to detail precisely what that better fit would be.
• AMERICAN EXPRESS GLOBAL CORPORATE PAYMENTS has been upgrading its @Work online card management tool to provide programme administrators with more visibility of the behaviour of what Amex likes to call ‘Cardmembers’. “Administrators can now access more real-time data about Cardmember spend, and check the outstanding balance before committing to large spend items,” says vice-president of UK sales, Alan Gillies. “This helps businesses control spend, avoid late payments and optimise cashflow.” The platform has been adapted to work on tablets and mobile phones as well as personal computers.
• AMEX has also added an expense reporting facility to its corporate card account management tool MYCA (Manage Your Card Account). “It has been designed specifically for our mid-market customers who do not have an expense management solution like Concur,” says Gillies. “The new, free tool enables Cardmembers to build a simple expense report online, using card transactions from their statement, as well as cash transactions. While helping to reduce manual calculations and efforts, the tool also supports a paper- based approval process and can be printed with a signature box.”
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