Interview: AirPlus International U.S. CEO Yael Klein

Los Angeles - A few months after her appointment as president and CEO of AirPlus International's U.S. subsidiary and head of its Americas operations, Yael Klein during the Global Business Travel Association's annual convention here late last month spoke with BTN's JoAnn DeLuna about offerings for the midmarket, growth in virtual card payments, competitive differentiation and the impact of executive changes on corporate clients. An edited transcript follows. 

What are your goals and strategies in your new position?

There are strategies, but I'm not ready to present them or talk about them yet. We had 27 percent year-over-year growth, so we're doing very well. Our JPMorgan Chase partnership is on track, and we are exactly where we wanted to be numbers-wise. We have a joint partnership with JPMorgan for the large market, but we sort of neglected the midmarket for a while, so we're refocusing back on that. Globally we have a totally different strategy, so I'm primarily talking about the United States.

Ron DiLeo, then CEO of AirPlus International North America, during last year's GBTA convention told us he anticipated bringing Mobile AIDA to the United States within six months. Where is AirPlus on that?

I believe he was overstepping his boundaries a tad when he said "in the next six months." We're still looking to bring Mobile AIDA to the U.S., but I can't talk about timelines. The virtual card is globally one of our biggest products. We had a year-over-year growth in the virtual card market of about 50 percent to 60 percent, globally, primarily driven from the U.K. and Italy markets. We have a large network of TMC partners in Italy and the majority of our business comes via our TMC partners in Italy. So of course at some point we would like to replicate the success in the U.S., but I can't give you timelines.

AirPlus' Volker Huber at the time pointed to challenges with U.S. regulations as stalling that process. Is that still the challenge?

It's the types of licenses that are required. Financial institutions in Europe are regulated differently than in the United States. So for the {card networks] it's quite hard to put a tag on us because we're not a bank, but there's nothing like the financial institutions that you have in Europe. The process just takes longer to get the correct licenses in place.

With so many virtual card products recently launched, how does AirPlus distinguish itself from the competition?

We have a very long history in travel and travel payment. When we launched our product 10 years ago, we did what we do with all our products and integrated it into all the systems. AIDA or Mobile AIDA is integrated into the back-office systems, into booking engines, global distribution systems, and automatically uploads to the [expense management systems] without the customer realizing what is happening. No one has to self-generate a number and type it into another system. The magic needs to be a non-touch process, and that's what AirPlus is very good at, and that's what makes it very powerful. What we also do with our lodge card is collect the data that [travel managers] need to reconcile. So the cost centers, project codes, division codes—all that kind of stuff gets in in an automatic fashion. Many say that's what they want to do, but very few actually do it.

Some issuers already are visualizing the next generation of virtual cards, with some saying they will go back to plastic cards or be a hybrid product. How do you see the next evolution of virtual cards?

I don't perceive it going back on a plastic card because the beauty of a v-card number is that it changes all the time. I think a mobile virtual card is the next step, but to have the tap-and-go functionality on there probably will be the next logical step.

Will we ever get to a world where there are only virtual cards?

No. One day, maybe? Things take time, especially in travel. The technology has to evolve. Look at chip-and-PIN. We're in the United States, and people haven't adapted.

What are you hearing from your customers? What kinds of solutions do they still need?

I've been with AirPlus for 15 years and have been asking them for 15 years. Typically customers don't really know what they want. You have to find the issues for them, you continuously have to look at the changes within the processes and see how you can optimize it and make their life easier. They always say the same thing: folio data. Then you ask if they're willing to pay for it and they say no. So it's the same old things because we've heard it so many times. It doesn't seem to be a big enough pain point for them to pay for it. So we have to find things that really make their life easier that they didn't find themselves.

AirPlus has had a lot of executive changes lately. What can you say to clients to reassure them that AirPlus is capable of taking care of their needs?

We've been here for the long haul, and for a long time. We just received results of our customer satisfaction survey which we did in May, and the account management and customer service ratings went up compared to last year's results. So, customers, as such, didn't feel that they suffered. I think the issue was that partners felt the lack of stability because a new phase came every now and then. What AirPlus did to change it this time was to bring up someone from AirPlus who's been here for 15 years. I know the company, I could hit the road running, and I'm sure we'll continue to grow and see great things in the future.