PLAYING IT COOL
W
hen a technology magazine with the stature of Condé Nast’s Wired starts saying that financial technology, or
‘fintech’ as the hipsters call it, is sexy and exciting then you know that something really is happening. Level 39, an enterprise hub for fintech start-ups and innovators, opened up two years ago at the Canary Wharf tower, and it is now jammed with companies that are looking at all parts of the industry, from mobile wallets to digital currency, data analytics to currency exchange. It has the typical cool office that bearded lumbersexuals seem to demand these days.
Companies such as iZettle, Square and
Transferwise rarely seem to be out of the news these days. This is all very well, but is the white-hot pace of technological change coming into the corporate card and expense management sector? It is beginning to do so, believe some.
THE BANK VIEW Steve Robson, head of EMEA wholesale cards product management at Citi, says the corporate market is relatively slow to change, but it is inevitable that the corporate payments arena starts adopting more of the technology that consumers are beginning to love. It does take time. Robson gives the example of working on contact- less technology when it began, almost ten years ago, saying it’s only now getting real penetration. Citi holds regular meetings on how the bank can work with innovative technologies but also to see whether they are at risk of disintermediation in the event that a rival technology or process starts to do well. There are barriers to change in the cor-
porate card sector. The increasingly tough regulatory environment means providers are not able to focus on innovative research
22 BBT CORPORATE CARDS SUPPLEMENT 2015
as much as they would like. For example, the European Union card interchange fee issue has meant companies have had to take their eyes off the ball to some extent, while the introduction of new payment networks and data issues in Russia are also taking up valuable time. Melissa Gargagliano, head of EMEA
commercial cards at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), says: “Innovation can have different connotations, depend- ing on the context. For example, while EMV [Europay, Mastercard and Visa] chip technology has been mainstream in Europe for a number of years, it is only now being rolled out in the US. Emerging economies have been quite innovative in leapfrogging over infrastructure challenges, adopting mobile payments, SMS-based transaction payments and so on more wholeheartedly than advanced economies.” But she believes the commercial card in-
dustry has been quick to react to technological trends and in rolling these out to corporate cardholders. “There has been an emergence of new payment methods – including con- tactless, cybercurrencies, mobile wallets, P2P [peer-to-peer] payments et cetera – however, some of these are still in their initial stages of maturity even in the consumer space.” Robson sees expense management as one of the ripest areas for innovation, and that bulging wallets full of receipts may soon be a thing of the past. “Travellers are still stuck with 19th-century business processes around expenses, but within 18 months this is going to change. If you go and buy a sandwich or pay a taxi fare, you are still putting a card into a terminal, tapping in your PIN and perhaps taking a photo of the receipt. I see a slicker expense management process coming.” Receipt imaging is an example of where technology has not necessarily disrupted
In association with
Payment technology continues apace, but risk-averse corporates are not rushing in
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