Travel buyers, travel management companies and suppliers now can use virtual Visa commercial cards through the Sabre Virtual Payments platform. Integrating Visa's B2B payments service into Sabre's virtual payment gateway represents" a tremendous opportunity to increase the adoption of B2B virtual payments in the travel industry," said Sabre Travel Network president Wade Jones.
Virtual payments have been making steady inroads into the corporate travel space, as proponents laud the convenience, spending controls and security that virtual cards can bring to bookings and procurement.
In February, Amadeus added Barclaycard's Precisionpay virtual corporate cards to its B2B Wallet virtual card platform, following the platform's 2017 expansion to the U.S. via integration of a U.S. Bank-issued Mastercard. And in early April, American Express struck a deal with procurement platform SAP Ariba, enabling corporate buyers to use their existing Amex corporate cards to generate virtual payments within Ariba.