Janet Zablock
Visa this month announced a new Visa Meetings card, offering "a flexible procure-to-pay solution to help companies simplify the process to purchase, pay, reconcile and report on meetings-related expenditures." The product also offers integration with meetings technology provider Arcaneo to "more easily centralize internal processes for purchasing, data tracking, reporting on meetings expenses and managing logistical aspects of planning." Visa expects "shortly" to announce bank issuers for the card, which is available in Canada, the United States, central Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The rest of Europe will follow in the third quarter. It is Visa's first "formal" meetings card, said Visa Commercial vice president Janet Zablock, speaking during an interview with Management.travelhere at the Paragon Business Travel Conference & Expo.
What's the rationale for the product?
It's a hybrid and a natural extension of our corporate and purchasing products to address companies' growing need to look into their meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibition expenses and really gain visibility, get better control and manage those more effectively. Particularly in the United States and Europe, companies have adopted corporate and purchasing cards, implemented policy and controls around that and acknowledge that those are effective practices. Yet, this meetings spend is out there, being invoiced by paper, paid by check--all over the board--and most meetings management is decentralized, with the exception of large expositions. Arcaneo has focused on being the enterprise software that can help a meeting planner or company manage their meetings--everything from budgeting to reconciliation to payment.
Why was this developed now and not earlier?
In the U.S. market, there has been more emphasis on mandating corporate card usagein companies, particularly with the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley. We have been seeing companies really mandate and monitor those programs, and they realized they have no visibility into meetings spend. One of the top concerns of the financial side is they don't have visibility into this spend today. Companies don't really know what they're spending, but it's estimated that companies spend 3 percent of their costs, and it's growing.
What do you mean by hybrid?
It's taking the best of purchasing and being able to provide controls on a card product. Limiting categories of spend so you can give your on-the-ground staff (that only needs to purchase certain things) a card with certain limits--but also recognizing that some of it is more like a traditional T&E card when you're paying the hotel. Meetings has a lot of expenses other than the traditional T&E, like paying the videographer, renting equipment, bringing in flowers. Usually, corporate cards have smaller limits with fewer controls.
Can you further describe the card-level spending limits?
In some cases, where it's centralized, it may make sense that they have one single card, but there may be people on the ground that you might want to have what I call zero limit, and through controls and approval, add to that limit based on the particular meeting or expenses that person is going to hold. They may have a card that isn't always going to have a balance to it, so we can give them that flexibility. Every company does this differently, and it varies from the secretary who books the sales meeting in an offsite hotel that is just meeting space to these bigger conferences and exhibits.
What if a client doesn't want to use Arcaneo?
We would continue to provide the reporting we already provide. We would not have the budgeting and things that are in Arcaneo, but for a midsize company, that may be sufficient.