Across the payment industry, providers in recent months have aligned with new partners to extend their traditional functionality and satisfy corporate demand for more transparency. In addition to payment cards and associated data, corporations could find that banking partners offer advanced data management tools, online booking or meeting technology integration.
Visa Inc. this fall announced a new global information and spend management platform to provide corporate customers of issuing banks not only management reporting on card spending, but also expense management across all spending categories. Powered by Spendvision, Visa IntelliLink Spend Management supports integration of non-card spend categories, including mobile phone bills and travel bookings.
MasterCard Worldwide in August announced partnerships with meeting and expense providers and for several years has partnered with TRX Inc. for data management. American Express commercial cards last year announced its partnership with and investment in Concur for expense and previously acquired a procure-to-pay provider.
"Customers are demanding more transparency, particularly in the area of transaction management," according to a KPMG International white paper on the banking industry. Customers "want the ability to track and trace transactions" and drill down to tax details, driving what KPMG called an "unstoppable digital revolution and need for real-time system interfaces."
According to J.P. Morgan Treasury Services, the recession and cost-cutting demands are forcing "financial managers to review their procure-to-pay processes with an eye to effecting immediate improvements."
Immediate ability to "help corporations be more efficient, reduce expenses, get more control, get more information and be more knowledgeable about how they are spending money" is what drove MasterCard Worldwide to strike a new referral agreement with expense vendor CyberShift, according to global commercial products group executive Steve Abrams. The deal allows MasterCard-issuing banks to offer more of an end-to-end solution to customers.[PULL_1]
MasterCard aims to extend the offering even farther via new partnerships with separate meeting technology vendors, eTouches and Worktopia, Abrams said. With Worktopia, MasterCard is integrating features of its inControl authorization technology to allow corporations to more finitely control what can be charged.
MasterCard also is working on plans to allow providers to add enhanced data, such as a meeting folio or attendee list, to the charge data feed, according to MasterCard large and middle-market segments group head Marcie Verdin. "One of the gaps today in reconciling payments and the reason that payments are still manually processed is that meeting planners and accounts payable people don't feel comfortable paying until they've reconciled everything. If we can leverage the capabilities of the meeting software and carry that information with the payment, it eliminates the need to do some of that reconciliation and/or shortens the timeframe to use a card in that environment," Verdin said.
Visa also identified the "clear need to take the next step in spend management," said head of global commercial solutions Darren Parslow. It looked at "information reporting, spend management, expense management, payables and all the other non-card solutions in the marketplace." Rather than build an application, Visa opted to partner with Spendvision.
The single platform, provided in a software-as-a-service model, eventually will replace multiple Visa reporting tools designed to support small, medium and large businesses, as well as government customers, Parslow said. "Allowing our banks to get into true expense management" and providing corporate customers with a solution to pull in "non-card data in a single place for complete management reporting" is the "exciting thing" about the new platform, he said. Previously, banks and card associations have partnered with various expense providers to provide such tools, Parslow added.
Spendvision CEO Robert Kirby said the technology was "rolling out to 130 banks around the world," excluding early adopters SunTrust, Europe's Barclaycard and Australia's NAB. Founded in 2004, Spendvision is based in the United Kingdom and majority-owned by travel management company HRG.
In addition to banks, telecom companies are deploying the technology to their corporate customers to reconcile mobile phone bills.
In a white paper sponsored by Spendvision, IDC Company Financial Insights contended that "the future of commercial banking will be less about transacting; instead, it will be more about interacting with clients and providing them with more information regarding their financial transaction." Amid the financial crisis, "commercial banks are finding creative ways to grow their businesses and serve the needs of their commercial clients."
Echoing this view, Kirby said the technology platform could allow banks "to grow their business and charge for it," instead of give it away as the company did previously.