Diners Debuts Account Maintenance Portal For Corps.

Diners Club International last month launched the Corporate Account Manager online portal, enabling corporate card administrators to cancel cardholders' accounts, change spending limits and apply for new cards online, among other program maintenance functionalities.

While Diners' corporate clients have been capable of accessing such existing online features as spend reports and online statements through Diners Club Global Vision—a reporting platform launched last year—Bob Byrom, Diners Club director of corporate products management, said the newest functionalities will be "phased in during the next few months. The functionality we have now is pretty standard, such as electronic delivery of MIS reports. That's being rolled out to everybody right now across the board. We're also starting with our larger clients and rolling out online card applications and online card approval."

Once the new functionalities are implemented across its member base, Diners will create a single sign-on capability, linking Global Vision and Account Manager into a single platform.

David Weaver, Bechtel Corp. manager of corporate travel, said the company has been using Diners Club Global Vision Online to look at travel spending patterns but has not yet jumped onboard for the newest Corporate Account Manager.

During the past few years, a wave of such tools from bank issuers and card networks have inundated the corporate card market, making real-time account management automation a mark of distinction among vendors.

American Express unveiled its American Express @Work platform in 1999, and its use has grown as Amex continues to add functionality. Amex estimated that more than 63 percent of account management transactions are performed through the tool.

Many Visa and MasterCard issuers also have made a push in online maintenance with a variety of tools. U.S. Bank—Visa's largest corporate bank card issuer—last year launched its own account maintenance tool, AccessOnline, and by year-end 2003 expects the number of customers on the platform to fall between 1,800 and 2,000.

GE Capital—the largest bank card issuer of corporate MasterCard cards—last year made enhancements to its NetService online self-service maintenance tool. "On self-service," said Greg Laufer, GE Capital vice president of marketing and product development, "I would guess 70 percent to 80 percent of our customers have deployed that tool."