Mastercard-issuing banks now have an easier and more affordable way to offer a virtual card solution to their corporate clients, via Conferma Pay. The plug-and-play solution allows banks to white-label and outsource the management and issuance of virtual cards through Conferma and Mastercard, which provide the underlying technology, a network of travel management companies and global distribution systems, customer service, implementation support, account management and sales and marketing training.
Conferma piloted the solution with banks in Japan and the U.K. and now has pushed it to Mastercard issuing banks globally. While banks of all sizes can use Conferma Pay, Conferma CEO Simon Barker sees a big opportunity with midsize banks in the U.S. and Europe that don't have the "seven-figure investment" needed to develop or integrate virtual cards. "A lot of investment is required," he said. "The largest banks have already made the commitment [for virtual card platforms], but the midsize banks find it difficult to get because it's quite a high investment hurdle [to clear] if they were to do it themselves," Barker said. "This gets that tranche of the banking market over the line and allows us to provide a more global footprint."
How It Works
Setup takes each bank four to six weeks; Conferma said other virtual card solutions take several months to integrate. There is no setup fee, but banks must commit to 200,000 transactions a year and pay a per-transaction fee. Once set up, the bank creates a sub-account for each corporation that signs on, as the bank would in any virtual card partnership. That account funds the virtual cards for the corporate client. "The boarding of [corporate] customers should be no different than it is for them today on a traditional card account," Barker said. "They add the card details to [our] portal … and we virtualize it."
Conferma then takes over the sub-account and works with the corporation's existing booking procedure—whether travel management company, GDS or booking tool—to distribute the virtual cards. Conferma feeds the data to the bank's existing Mastercard corporate card platform, and the corporation accesses all the Conferma services and tools, including transmission of authorization forms to participating hotels, Conferma's TripPay app and reconciled transaction data.