Two years after pioneering an automated virtual payments
workflow with Marriott International, Grasp Technologies has significantly
broadened its reach and is branching out into other verticals with its payment
product, executives said.
The project began
with Marriott and corporate client The Walt Disney Co., along with travel
management company Corporate Travel Management, to enable virtual payment
details to be sent to Marriott’s property management system, ensuring front
desk personnel can access that information when a traveler checks in. The
solution pushes the information from the global distribution system to the
hotel’s central reservation system and onward to the PMS, Grasp SVP of product
and innovation Michael Duffy said.
The solution has now expanded to "all our customers,
doing it from all hotels now," which was always the intention, he said.
"We decided when we collaborated with Marriott and
Disney that we were not going to make it proprietary," Duffy said.
"We wanted everyone to benefit from that, to drive further adoption with
the hotels, and it’s been amazing."
There is a little work that needs to be done with each hotel
for the workflow, which is the "repurposing of a legacy workflow"
within the special instructions field, Duffy said. Marriott, for example,
wanted certain formats, and other hotels have wanted their own formats as well.
It also required some training on the hotels' part, "but that's years
behind us, and we're seeing the results," he said.
At the same time, Grasp has been working on expanding
virtual card use beyond the use with hotels, particularly with New Distribution
Capability air bookings and car, Duffy said.
With NDC, the payment workflow is different from a
traditional GDS purchase, because it's an immediate purchase rather than the
multiple stages from the GDS to a queue to the mid-office for applying payment.
Primarily, NDC bookings can work with a "profile workflow," where
virtual cards are pushed into profiles, and travelers or travel arrangers have
them when they are doing their search, according to Duffy.
Grasp recently also has been working on virtual card use for
non-profiled traveler, with Disney also a pioneer in that area, Duffy said. The
solution comes from pushing virtual cards into the profiles of travel
arrangers, so they have a "pool" of cards they can use when searching
for travel within the online booking tool, without the need to go into another
system, he said.
Grasp is fresh into a management change, with veteran
technology and software executive Chris Wilson having
stepped into the CEO role in recent months. Wilson told BTN he's been
"immersing himself in the industry" and is looking to expand to
"new customer types" as well as "re-invest in enterprise,"
exploring new offerings for corporate customers.
"We'll be bringing on some key strategic advisors to us
from the corporate travel world, and we hope to leverage those individuals'
expertise in terms of servicing that market to help guide our roadmap,"
Wilson said.
Meanwhile, Grasp founder Erik Mueller, who stepped down from
the CEO role last year but remains with Grasp at the executive board level,
said he continues to work closely with Grasp, particularly on the marketing and
product level. "Instead of one-on-ones and all the work-y stuff, I get to
go back and do the fun stuff again," Mueller said.