The Renaissance of Centralised Travel Settlement

You are sending an employee on business travel. You want to monitor closely where, how and in what quantities they are spending company money.

Does your company issue employees with individual corporate cards? Or maybe your TMC manages the payments for you. You may even reimburse your employees after they have paid for travel expense themselves. All methods have their pros and cons. None offer a stand-out solution.

Since the advent of individual travel card programs, central travel (lodge) accounts appeared to have become more and more redundant. Corporates entrusted employees with corporate travel cards, armed with enhanced spend controls, greater visibility of spend and a reduced administrative paper burden.
However, there are numerous impracticalities of issuing plastic. Say, for instance, you have temporary contract workers. Or permanent staff who travel infrequently. Essentially every piece of plastic you issue is opening your company up to greater administration costs and risk.

Yet, the consequences of not using a card product render them almost indispensable. Monitoring ancillary spend becomes a nightmare, whilst the paper trail involved in billback is highly susceptible to human error and dramatically reduces efficiency when it comes to the administration and invoicing process.

At Conferma, we believe in the development of single use accounts incorporating state of the art virtual card technology. Our Conferma Settlement Platform (CSP) creates a virtual card at the time of booking, which is automatically communicated to the travel supplier to guarantee a reservation.

An increasingly unstable market has seen certain TMCs experience cash flow problems in recent weeks, subsequently putting a strain on relationships with suppliers. Central virtual card accounts ensure faster payments to remove any credit exposure and enhance supplier relations for TMCs.

Working with our international network of major banking and distribution partners, Conferma provides access to a truly global and centralised settlement platform that slots seamlessly into a TMC’s existing infrastructure, to deliver a highly efficient and cost-effective solution not only for international TMCs but also for corporates abroad who manage travel in-house.

So much for the death of centralised travel settlements.