In the news: Taking the sting out of payment and expense

Ajay Singh, vice president, digital payment and expense product development at BCD Travel, was featured in a Skift article covering payment and expense trends in business travel. He weighed in on how digital payment solutions can boost program efficiency, reduce costs and improve employee satisfaction.

Ajay Singh vice president digital payment expense product development BCD Travel

Skift pointed to virtual cards as an example of a digital solution that integrates payments, expense management and policy. Virtual cards are flexible, can be limited to a certain amount of uses, and have fixed spending amounts. Travel managers can also set rules for how they’re used. Data is tracked in real time, expenses can be pushed right to a finance and expense system, and business travelers have less to do.

READ THE SKIFT ARTICLE

There are technical and practical considerations for making it all work. In Skift‘s example, some automated expense solutions consolidate all travel costs into one payment method with a single payment issuer. That’s not realistic for programs with multiple suppliers and multiple payment partners.

“Expense management is a reactive process,” said Singh. “Plus, there are all these different traveler profiles — VIPs, road warriors, infrequent travelers, even non-employees — who all have different requirements, and that causes a lot of pain for travel managers.”

Companies must assess what will work best for them and their travelers and then work with their travel management company and technology partners to build it. Transforming payment and expense will happen steadily, but perhaps not rapidly.

“The digitization of corporate travel is going to go through a phased transformation that will shape out over the next few years, requiring training and early adopters to come on board,” Singh said. “But there’s a tremendous value proposition that these new solutions are bringing to the industry — merchants, their clients, service providers like us, and the traveler.”

New on bcdtravel.com

Stay in the know,
even on the go

Never want to miss a thing?

We'll get you the latest news, trends, insights and BCD news right in your inbox.