AirPlus and British Airways last week launched a Visa-branded corporate card that helps companies track air spending and enables travelers to pay for non-air expenses. AirPlus also announced plans to launch "a sister corporate card" in the United States by year-end with a yet-to-be-named airline.
AirPlus is targeting midsize and large corporations and will start with the nearly 400 clients that already use the BA Company Account, a central billing payment process for BA customers, according to AirPlus U.K. managing director Spencer Hanlon.
The BA Company Account program—launched in 2002 amid a legal spat between BA and American Express—enables centrally billed airline payments and, like the AirPlus card, provides buyers with an exclusive option to avoid fees on corporate net fares
(BTN, Oct. 7, 2002). "You cannot buy BA corporate fares with any other lodge card provider, and the corporate card comes in to complement that," Hanlon said. "Customers say that the lodge card has got great functionality, but it has limitations." To overcome the ghost card's limits, the co-branded card—issued by GE Capital—melds the central airline payment process with a card for travelers to take on the road, bringing to AirPlus customers the mobility and features of Visa corporate cards.
BA and AirPlus are hoping they can replicate the success of AirPlus in Germany, where the company boasts a 73 percent marketshare and has issued more than 300,000 cards, according to Hanlon. A subsidiary of Lufthansa, AirPlus has said it is used by 88 percent of Germany's top 100 companies and all of its top 10 banks.
Richard Crum, U.S. division president of AirPlus, said that while Continental is "our primary airline partner" in the United States, AirPlus is "working with a few different prospective partners to launch this year." It is not yet clear which airline, bank issuer or network will be partnering on the card.
Crum said UATP—the network that AirPlus uses to issue its central billing payment option—has relationships to provide such a walking plastic offering with MasterCard and Visa.
"The network level relationship is in place," he told BTN in September while still at the helm of UATP
(BTN, Sept. 22, 2003). "Now it's at the actual issuer level where one UATP issuer and one Visa or MasterCard issuer partner for a combined product offering." Crum last week said that a co-branded card "gives travel managers one relationship for both their air and non-air expenses."
AirPlus also issues walking plastic options with Austrian Airlines and Diners Club in Austria and is planning such offerings in other European markets, including the Netherlands.