Amex Offers Buyers Car Rental Line-Item Detail

American Express has introduced transactional corporate card data for car rental transactions, which it claims will give clients in North America and Europe more comprehensive information on and control over their expenditures.

Andrew Buckley, European vice president for marketing, said Amex now breaks down components of transactional expenses from many major rental car providers. In addition to the base rental fee, Amex can break out charges for fuel, insurance, penalties and such miscellaneous items as hire of satellite navigation equipment or vehicle delivery and collection from the client's premises. Non-financial folio data include class of car and the number of rental days.

Buckley said the enhanced data would allow travel managers to check whether travelers have made unauthorized upgrades when collecting their vehicles and whether they are amassing an unwarranted number of penalty charges, such as fines for parking or nonpayment of congestion charges in London and several Scandinavian cities.

Amex initially responded to a U.S.-based client's request for detailed data from Hertz, Europcar and the German market leader Sixt, and subsequently National and Avis. Now folio data from Europcar and Sixt are available free to any client that requests the information from Amex. The card company also has the ability to provide data from other rental providers but the client will first need to ask the rental provider.