Combatting corporate credit card fraud

According to a study by Nilsen in 2013, credit card fraud in the U.S. alone rose to a staggering $5.33bn. Globally that figure was estimated to be more than double that amount at $11.27bn.

Recent cyber attacks on U.S. retail chains Target and Neiman Marcus are reported to have netted fraudsters around 110 million sets of customer data, including their credit card numbers. In 2012, about 40 million sets of payment card information were compromised when hackers attacked Adobe's customer databases, many of which belong not to individuals, but to large corporations.

Technological advances are leading to an ever growing global market place, with more and more of us trusting large organisations with our financial information.

However, problems arise for all parties involved once the security of these organisations is breached.

Here at Conferma, we have been working on creating a payment solution that eliminates the risk of large scale fraud, even when hackers are able to steal your corporate credit card information.

So how does our financial technology system work?

We have created a product called Virtual Card Numbers (VCNs), essentially a digital credit card. This means that for every individual purchase undertaken, a unique 16-digit credit card (or 15-digit in the case of American Express), plus three-digit security code, is generated. The VCN can then be accessed via one of Conferma's secure applications on your desktop, mobile or tablet devices.

Each unique VCN is valid for a specified amount of money and for a specified date range. Further controls ensure that a VCN can only be charged by a specified category of merchant. For instance a VCN designated for a hotel transaction can only be charged by a hotel. Only if all these criteria are met is the payment able to be processed.

So, in the event that a merchant from whom you have purchased falls victim to a security breach in the future, a VCN will be useless in the hands of a hacker due to the controls imposed on the VCN.

Our financial technology is available for most major banking and credit card providers, including AirPlus, American Express, Barclaycard, HSBC, MasterCard, U.S. Bank and WEX. And whilst we are best known for our integration of VCNs into the corporate travel sector, we are able to offer a wide range of payment solutions across many industries.

At Conferma, we are committed to eliminating corporate credit card fraud.

A company credit card you can't lose

You know that heart-sinking when you realise you can't find your credit card?

Even worse when it's your company credit card and you are miles away from home and about to pay your hotel bill. You know life is about to get a whole lot more complicated.

Telephone calls to cancel the card and let your company know are difficult to manage, especially if you're in a different time zone. To say nothing of how this loss affects your employer.

As well as dealing with all the practical aspects of your missing credit card, you also have to cope with the extra stress that this creates for the remainder of your business trip. Hardly an ideal set of circumstances if you're about to go into a key meeting with a customer, where you need to be completely focused and at the top of your game.

So wouldn't it be wonderful if your company could give you a credit card that simply couldn't be lost or stolen?

Magical as this sounds, here at Conferma, a FinTech company, we have created such a card, aimed at the corporate travel market.

In partnership with the major banks and credit card schemes we have created Virtual Card Number (VCN) technology, details of which can be stored securely on apps available on your desktop, smart phone or tablet.

Not only does this free up valauable space in your wallet, you will never again experience that sense of dread when you discover your credit card has vanished.

However, the advantages of using VCNs whilst you are working away from home extend far beyond their 'unloseability'. For each individual expense, a unique single-use card number is generated, which can only be used by you to settle a single, pre-authorised expense, eliminating the risk of third party fraud on your card in an instant.

For example, if your company have booked you into a hotel in New York for three nights whilst you attend a conference, a VCN will be generated which is only valid for use by yourself, on those exact dates and at the specified hotel. Should your plans change, the VCN can be updated to reflect these changes via an authorisation process within your company.

So VCNs are easy to use, secure and flexible.

But there is more. The final benefit of using a VCN is that it removes the need to complete a manual expenses sheet. Because each VCN acts as both a unique booking reference and a unique means of identifying a payment, all purchases made using a VCN are posted automatically to your company's purchase ledger and are automatically matched to the booking or purchase data. The quality and amount of data captured on the VCN vastly improves your overview of corporate expenditure, whilst enhancing process efficiencies by streamlining accounts payable processes.

At Conferma, we believe that Virtual Card Numbers are set to revolutionise the life of you, the corporate traveller, leaving you free to get on with doing your job.

Financial Technology UK

A recent article in the Sunday times (1 December 2013) shone a light on the UK Government's desire to grow the Financial Technology industry. When launched in early 2014, FinTech UK will bring together start-ups, small firms and large companies from the financial and technology sectors to share ideas and promote the UK as a centre of excellence.

Following six years of strife in what was one of the star sectors of UK PLC (Banking), it will be interesting to see if FinTech UK can help repair reputations.

Conferma is already at the forefont of FinTech UK innovation and our payments ecosystem is being embraced by world class institutions from San Francisco to Singapore. We are living proof that British finance innovation and technology is highly regarded around the world and we look forward to seeing our sector receiving the help and recognition it deserves.

Combatting Fraud with VCNs

Conferma Virtual Card Numbers (VCNs) provide not only provide better control, process efficiencies and data to corporates, Travel Management Companies and technology partners, but also tanglible benefits to our financial partners - the banks and card schemes. You often hear that VCNs or Single Use Accounts (SUAs) can optimise payment processes thanks to automated reconciliation and tighter controls, however that's only one side of the story.

In travel and expense (T&E), the norm is to lodge a single credit card against a company where the card is passed around the office and used for hundreds, if not thousands of bookings every month. The card numbers is circulated and stored everywhere: websites; faxes; memorised by individuals; they are even on Post-it notes stuck to travel agents' computer screens. Often the card has a high credit limit and can be charged by anyone. Sound susceptible to fraud? That's because it is.

According to the Nilsen Report, card fraud in the US rose last year to a whopping $5.33bn. The US also acccounted for 47% of global card fraud. This is obviously of grave concern to US-based card issuers who are committed to working together to implement EMV (Chip and PIN) in the not too distant future. EMV has been an unboubted success in parts of Europe, where some countries boast a merchant adoption rate of greater than 95%, according to EMVCo. The European Central Bank has seen a reduction in card fraud by 7.6% in the Eurozone, whislt overall card usage continues to climb.

Security and control is integral to reducing card fraud and we fully support the rollout of EMV, ensuring a reduction in the cost of banking. However, the downside is the upfront investment required to implement EMV, which is neither simple nor cheap. Before you even reach market, consider the cost of card issuer scoping, nationwide card rollout schemes, merchant adoption, consumer education and PDQ equipment. There is no quick fix. Moreover, EMV is irrelevant in a Cardholder Not Present (CNP) environment such as e-commerce. In the United Kingdom, 63% of card fraud occcurs in a CNP environment according to Financial Fraud Action (http://www.financialfraudaction.org.uk/Publications/#/20/zoomed)

In B2B spend, VCNs or SUAs are a strong player in the reduction your fraud risk profile and do not require merchants to change their existing e-commerce practices. VCNs are generated for a specific purchase, allowing restrictions to be applied to the VCN such as the total amount, merchant category, validity dates when the card can be billed and the number of times the card can be charged. Access audit logs are also associated with VCNs to provide full transparency of who has spent what. Valid merchants can simply bill VCNs as a cardholder not present transaction using their standard POS terminal.

The reduction in card fraud enabled through the adoption of VCNs isn't simply calculated by the transaction amount. It's calculated through efficiencies gained thanks to fewer calls to the card issuer which saves time and money for both the corporate customer and the card issuer. A UK-based issuer that we work with has estimated their process efficiency to have improved by 90% since operating a virtual travel card program rather than a traditional single card payment.

Next time you think virtual cards, think beyond automated reconciliation and reduction of maverick corporate spend. Conferma's VCNs also provide reduced fraud risk profile and operational efficiencies for major financial institutions. 

Embracing New Technology

You could argue that being averse to change is a stereotypically British trait. There is always going to be reluctance, reticence and even resistance when embracing not only a new supplier but also a change of culture, especially amongst larger organisations, where existing practices are so heavily embedded in that culture.

Well, organisations don’t come much bigger or British than the Government. Yet when HMRC appointed Redfern to manage their UK-based travel with a clear mandate to progress the volume of online bookings from 50% to 95%, here was no better indication of an organisation willing to embrace new technologies to render processes more cost-efficient.

Indeed, with the ink on the contract barely dry, Redfern had already increased the number of online bookings from 50% to 95% within a month, 11 months ahead of schedule. In some departments this figure was over 98%. All equating to an estimated saving of £140,000 per year for HMRC and consequently the taxpayer. Current projections suggest that HMRC will achieve an estimated £3 million in savings across accommodation spend this year, and savings of over £20 million over the length of the four year contract. This is an improvement of 70% compared to previous costs.*

So how exactly did Redfern effect this saving? ‘Integrating technology from multiple suppliers’ was cited as one of, if not the main catalyst. Conferma was one such supplier, providing the comprehensive hotel inventory at Redfern’s disposal in tRIPS via our Booking API, which has been integral to HMRC maximising savings across their accommodation requirements. However it is our Virtual Card Number (VCN) technology, available through our Payment API that has delivered tangible savings for the settlement of hotel transactions.

At Conferma we pride ourselves on being revolutionary. We have set the new standard in payments technology without compromising on the usual benefits that people have come to expect from us, not least the highest standard of payment security.

Our automated solutions mean that the payment process not only becomes touchless for the TMCs but also has minimal impact on their existing workflows and procedures, negating any effect felt by the change of culture I mentioned earlier.

This increased efficiency has allowed Redfern to quadruple their turnover and manage eight times more transactions than others in the sector. Yet the number of staff has only increased twofold to cope with this increased volume.

At Conferma, it’s not the change to working cultures that is revolutionary or radical, it’s the end result. The savings made by the British Government are testament to this. So if you’re hesitating over embracing new payments technology, look no further than the new standard:  Conferma.

*Figures taken from the article How Redfern Travel smashed targets by making online booking simple from Travolution, 17 April 2013

Corporate Travel: 2013 in figures

I would like to begin this blog by wishing all our partners, customers and blog readers a Happy New Year on behalf of everyone at Conferma.

The turn of the year marks an opportunity to reflect on another successful year for Conferma and in particular the trends emerging in corporate travel. 2012 saw us extend our virtual card technology into the US for the first time, and it is a study from the other side of the Atlantic that I’ve chosen to look at, in the form of PhoCusWright’s U.S. Corporate Travel Report.

In 2012 there was over $100bn of corporate travel booked in the US. That’s a mere £62.1bn. Or €76.3bn.

Since gross bookings fell 26% during the recession in 2009, the corporate travel industry has been revitalised; figures have now surpassed pre-recession levels. That’s in stark contrast to other sectors who continue to suffer from the economic downturn. Business travel now represents 33% of the total travel market share, with the remainder accounted for by leisure travel and unmanaged business travel; a ratio that is edging gradually closer to 50:50.

Respondents to the survey cited ‘increased cost savings, enhanced spend under management and increased use of online corporate booking tools’ as their top three strategic priorities for 2013, whilst the top technology priority was the ‘automated capture of travel expense.' At Conferma, our innovative settlement and reconciliation products are fully automated to ensure our TMC and banking partners can reduce their administrative and operational costs significantly. Similarly, our state of the art virtual card technology enhances spend visibility and provides corporate clients greater control of variables such as credit limits, payment card validity dates and even the merchant category code.

The study hints at an ‘online penetration.’ Not something you’d want to Google. No, it refers to the increasing tendency to book travel online. This was one of the few metrics that did not decrease during the recession, instead hovering at around 50%. By 2013, 56% of gross travel bookings are now booked online. Early indications in January suggest Conferma is on course to record unprecedented levels of bookings made via Hotel Booker, our corporate hotel booking tool, whilst our virtual payment solutions are embedded in some of the world’s largest online booking platforms. Our virtual cards cover hotel, air and car rental, which were voted as the three largest areas of corporate travel expense. Indeed, air and hotel bookings account for more than 70% of corporate travel dollars spent.

96% of travel buyers indicated that their companies now use one or more online booking tools. The primary reason? You guessed it; cost. Corporates cited online booking platforms as the least expensive booking method, whilst also ‘facilitating integration with automated expense processing.’

I’ve already mentioned the corporate desire to automate capture and visibility of spend. The report revealed that miscellaneous expense now represents 21% of all corporate travel expense. Hotel extras, meals, excess baggage. In our experience, this significant chunk of ancillary spend is often unaccounted for, ultimately costing money and leaving companies’ spend policies susceptible to employee initiated fraud and misuse. Our fully automated solutions allow travel managers to rein in ‘rogue’ purchases, whilst rendering the data reconciliation process far more time and cost-efficient than chasing invoices from hoteliers and manually collating receipts.  

A quick word on our TMC partners. We continue to value our partnership with some of the industry leaders in travel management, especially in light of the fact that intermediaries now handle more than 75% of all corporate travel bookings. The dominance of intermediaries is particularly pronounced in the online corporate arena, where TMCs rely increasingly on the use of online booking tools and payment methods to further reduce costs.

Your list of New Year’s resolutions may be populated by the usual suspects. However if 2012 is anything to go by, make sure you place automated, virtual card technology for settling and reconciling travel expense at the top of your list.

*All figures from PhoCusWright’s U.S. Corporate Travel Report: Market Size and Technology Trends 

Next Generation Lodge

Lodge or ghost card programs have been synonymous with corporate T and E settlement for over 30 years. With the IATA number serving as a unique identifier for ease of reconciliation, the lodge cards are especially well established and embedded in the settlement of scheduled airline tickets.

However it is a product that has also been static for many years, with limitations that inhibit its use across the full spectrum of corporate travel.

Heavily dependent on exterior data flows, the transportation of files is a process that is highly susceptible to error. It is difficult to standardise file deliveries across geographies as different organisations have different file creation capabilities and processes.

Lodge cards inherently lack rigid controls on manually collating disparate sources of information to produce a reconciled view. Therefore the industry standard matching rates hover around approximately 95-98% accuracy. You may think that this sounds a satisfactory matching rate. However, the outstanding 2-5% of unmatched data is highly costly and inefficient for the corporate. Consequently banks don’t value it and therefore don’t search for innovative resolutions.

Corporate travel settlement is changing. Using a virtual card, with its PAN serving as a unique reference number, guarantees 100% matching rates to eradicate the cost and time lost to the unmatched data that we mentioned earlier. With nearly real time data flows, virtual card data is managed within the booking process in the GDS, and can be processed in monthly or periodic batch processes.

Not reliant on the creation and transmission of exterior data, the systematic reconciliation means human intervention is not required, eradicating the risk of human error involved with lodge cards.

However the virtual card’s most valuable attribute is its applications across all areas of travel spend. Not just air, but also hotels, rail, car hire and all other areas of online spend.

·         Commercial benefit:

o    Applies lodge card controls across areas of incremental spend

o    Enables significant increase in billings without additional operational costs

·         Enhanced security:

o    Order and authorisation data captured prior to secure payment is deployed

o    Creates a secure PCI-DSS compliant Passenger Financial Record (PFR) for each transaction

·         Increased controls:

o    Control of variables such as amount, validity and merchant category

o    Enhances workflow and enables real time refunds and amendments

·         Flexibility:

o    Single process applicable to multiple content sources, not just IATA air

o    Allows secure deployment of CVV2 number

·         Reconciliation:

o    Unique PFR applied to each transaction

o    Need for manual/additional reconciliation process eliminated

 

Why Single Use Accounts are revolutionising Accounts Payable

For businesses seeking to reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies (i.e. all businesses), one of the simplest routes is to move away from cheques and cash towards electronic payments. Progressive organisations attracted by additional rebates have sought to further extend their electronic payments program by using Lodge (ghost) cards and PCards.  For these businesses there is now another tool in the box – Single Use Accounts (SUAs), otherwise known as Virtual Card Accounts.

Single Use Accounts are the latest advancements in payables technology; they enable organisations to migrate traditional Travel and B2B payments, even those to strategic suppliers, onto virtual cards. Using SUAs, organisations get closer to the promised land of accounts payable departments operating as revenue generators, as opposed to cost centres.

While PCards and Lodge cards have driven benefits, they have not been without their challenges. First and foremost is consistency and acceptance, or rather lack thereof. Getting all suppliers to participate in a PCard program or feed aggregated data back to a lodge card has proven difficult. Some suppliers embrace the program. Some don’t. Furthermore, anxieties surrounding spend controls and reconciliation accuracy have resulted in these initiatives not delivering the widespread adoption that all parties had been promised.

Conferma’s SUA solutions have overcome the challenges that have proven intractable for Lodge cards and PCard programs.

Acceptance.  This is one of the real strengths for SUA programmes; essentially there is no change in acceptance processes for suppliers.  For the supplier the SUA is just a credit card number like any other. They treat it as a card holder not present transaction – business as usual! Not to mention ideal for online procurement.

Control. SUA technology allows you to apply controls to the virtual card, including a fixed credit limit, merchant category code restrictions and even the payment card validity dates. In stark contrast to physical Lodge or PCards, SUAs provide complete control over how, where, when and in what quantities your employees are using company expenditure in line with corporate policy.

Flexibility. Despite offering control, SUAs can also provide flexibility through approval processes. SUA numbers are generated ‘on the fly’ and can therefore be tailor made to the required purchase. For example, if an employee wishes to purchase a product that is over their credit limit, yet is deemed to be of benefit to the company, they can request approval from a line manager to exceed their spend limit. The virtual card then captures the reason for approval (or rejection), providing accounts departments with complete visibility of the surplus spend.

Security. Lodge cards and PCards are susceptible to fraudulent transactions through loss or theft, by virtue of their physicality. SUAs, whose unique PANs are applicable to one time only transactions, are virtually (pun not intended) impervious to fraud or employee misuse.

Reconciliation. The Conferma SUA process will not generate the virtual card until the procurement data, in the form of a booking or purchase reference, has been received and quality controlled; therefore reconciliation is entirely automated upfront, as opposed to post transaction like Lodge cards.

Card-holder not present. Controls. Security. Time and cost efficiency. Data accuracy. These are just some of the reasons why paying suppliers with Single Use Accounts is revolutionising the accounts payable process.

60 years of payment evolution

Last month, as a British nation we gathered along the banks of the Thames, at Buckingham Palace or even in our own streets to celebrate the 60 year reign of Her Majesty The Queen. Revelling in Union Jack bunting, the Pageant and Gary Barlow, the furthest thought from our minds was probably how we were spending our money at our respective events. Chip and PINs. ‘Wave-and-Pay’ debit cards. Contactless, smart phone payments. As we paid tribute to the Queen, we also subconsciously saluted the latest developments in payment technology.  However it is the image of Queen Elizabeth herself on traditional bank notes that reminds us of how much payment mechanisms have evolved since her accession to the throne.

Since the Queen became the first monarch to feature on British banknotes in 1960, payments worldwide have changed beyond recognition. Banknotes featuring the wording “I promise to pay the bearer the sum of the note on demand” are still in circulation of course. However, whereas one once sent cash or a cheque in the post for someone’s birthday, a parent will now send money to a child at university using online banking or even a smart phone app, such as Barclays Pingit.

Visa, in collaboration with Samsung, both official London 2012 partners, have pioneered PoS contactless mobile payments, with the launch of payWave. To buy a round of beers at an Olympic venue, users simply hold their phone in front of a contactless reader at the point of purchase. As an added layer of security, transactions over £15 require a passcode.

Merely checking your balance or recent transactions used to involve a trip to the bank to print off a receipt. Now it’s attainable at the touch of a button.

1966 is synonymous with a unique sporting success in this country. However it also marked a first of a different kind – the credit card. By 2008, 30.8 million people in the UK were credit card holders and used them to make 1.9 billion purchases that year. It is amazing to think that the first debit card was introduced as recently as 1987, the year in which construction of the Channel Tunnel began.

In today’s Britain, that payments are contactless, instant and effortless is a given. That’s nothing new or innovative any more. So where are the new trends and evolutions coming from?

In the same way that banks have made payment mechanisms touch-free, the next evolution involves transforming methods from the physical to the virtual domain. Virtual card technology enables closed-loop payments, which in turn offer greater security and control for corporates.

At Conferma, we implement single use virtual cards into procurement processes. Single use payment systems are, by their very nature, scalable and customisable, allowing multiple cards to be used and multiple transactions to be processed. Conferma’s unique accounts ensure that, no matter how great the volume of transactions, the process of reconciling transactions with the procurement order is accurate and efficient.

With the advent of smart phones, tablets and now virtual card technology, as payment technology and innovation accelerates we will only have to wait 60 months for cardless payments, rather than another 60 years.

Payment security. We do the hard work so you don't have to.

It may be a cheesy advertising slogan for a kitchen detergent, however the sentiment remains exactly the same at Conferma. We take payment security extremely seriously so that our partners and customers worry less. But what exactly does ‘payment security’ entail?

PCI and DSS. POS and SSC. PANs and PINs. The PCI, or Payment Card Industry, is filled with acronyms and abbreviations.

The Payment Card Industry is also filled with several DSS, or Data Security Standards, with which all serious participants in the financial service sector must comply. Being PCI Level 1 compliant involves satisfying several stringent system and network security requirements, continuous monitoring and a rigorous security policy.

All sensitive payment card details are encrypted and secured by Conferma to eliminate the handling, processing and storage of credit card data for customers. Essentially, PCI compliance ensures that all Conferma transactions are inherently secure and ensures peace of mind for all our partners and customers.

This week’s news that millions of LinkedIn passwords had been compromised merely serves as a reminder of the importance of security, vigilance and good practice.

Payment security has always been greatly prized and standard practice here at Conferma. It is inherent in everything we do – security training is conducted for all staff and all hardware is encrypted. The highest level of payment security commercially available merely serves as official recognition of our continuous commitment to security for all our virtual payment solutions.

PCI accreditation is also representative of the ROI in terms of the significant time and finance devoted to the project, the single biggest project undertaken at Conferma. OMG, as you might say in an SMS… 

10 reasons why you should embrace new payment technologies

In the previous blog we explored the renaissance of centralised travel settlement. February was dominated by a spate of new payment solutions for the business travel industry. This can only mean one thing: greater emphasis is being placed on more efficient payment mechanisms.

Virtual cards. Single use accounts. One-time-only transactions. Call them what you like, at Conferma, we firmly believe that virtual card technology and electronic invoicing represent the future of business travel settlement. Not only as a billback solution for the hotel industry, but also as a wider payment mechanism for corporate travel. We look at ten reasons why you should embrace virtual card technology.

1.     Volume and Scale: Customisable and scalable, virtual card accounts are capable of handling greater volumes of transactions on a global scale, managing a broad, disaggregated supplier base.

2.     Security: Single use accounts are transaction-specific, virtually (no pun intended) eliminating the fraud risk associated with issuing physical plastic.

3.     Apply controls: Virtual card technology enables corporates to apply controls on accounts such as credit limit, date range and merchant category, ensuring compliance with corporate travel management policies.

4.     Improved supplier relations: Virtual cards guarantee payments, removing credit exposure for suppliers, especially hotels, who typically have to wait 30-60 days to receive payment. Significantly quicker payments also improve TMC-supplier relationships.

5.     Convenience: Single use accounts involve minimal or no change to existing workflows, ensuring ease of adoption by suppliers and their front line staff.

6.     Automated reconciliation: The automated reconciliation process matches transactional data with booking data, providing corporates with a comprehensive view of expenditure.

7.     Efficiency: Electronic invoicing is estimated to be three times more efficient than the billback process, allowing TMCs to redeploy personnel to other areas of the business.

8.     Low cost: Automated processes are not only ecological (reduced paper burden) and less labour-intensive, but also drive greater volumes of bookings at significantly lower operating costs.

9.     Rich data: Virtual cards allow you to append any kind and any amount of data to the financial transactions that they settle, providing you with real value in terms of the reports that you receive on travel expense.

10.  Mobile Solutions: Single use accounts lend themselves perfectly to today’s technological advancements. Armed with just a mobile device and a virtual account number, TMCs and corporate customers alike can book, pay for and settle transactions on the move.

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.  

Conferma releases results of Customer Survey

Conferma has published the results of its recent customer survey.

The survey was distributed via email to all travel agents on Conferma’s emergency contact list. The survey was completed by our database of frontline staff in the corporate hotel booking world.

Following the previous customer survey conducted in March 2011, Conferma set out to gauge customer perception with the performance of the Support service and the online booking tool, Hotel Booker.

Customer perception of Conferma Support was extremely positive, with satisfaction ratings exceeding 95% for availability, resolutions and knowledge. This compared favourably with results from the previous survey, with the number of negative responses reduced in each category. In the remaining category, 94% of respondents indicated that the response time of Support either met or exceeded expectations. Indeed, Support was widely praised, with several positive comments, such as: “Always available when help is needed” and “Always have a quick reply.”

As ever, the aim of a customer survey is to identify any areas for improvement. Negative responses for availability could be attributed to customers contacting Conferma outside of office hours. Conferma is currently dedicated to providing a support service to handle and enquiries from Monday to Friday 8.30am – 6.00pm, excluding public holidays. Service Management are currently investigating the possibility of extending Support’s hours of availability.

Some comments suggested that the communication of resolutions could be improved. Service Management is contemplating implementing a more sophisticated method of recording all internal communications to ensure that communication between Support and Development is monitored regularly and thoroughly.

Finally, some respondents indicated that they had never contacted Conferma Support or were unaware of the email address. Contact details are prominently displayed on www.conferma.com and are present on all promotional literature. However, to raise further awareness, Conferma is currently making a concerted effort to disseminate contact details for Support as widely as possible. Conferma Support can be contacted by email at support@conferma.com or by telephone on +44 (0)844 815 3601.

The results of the survey also reflected extremely favourably upon Hotel Booker. The layout, user-experience and responsiveness were widely lauded, achieving 100% satisfaction ratings, whilst customer satisfaction with the ease of use and reliability exceeded 96%. Praise for Hotel Booker’s layout and user experience was particularly welcome, as it justified the measures taken by the Development Team to improve the booking tool’s performance over the previous 12 months. Positive comments included: “I think Hotel Booker is an excellent tool, very easy to use and straightforward.”

The 100% satisfaction rating for responsiveness was also particularly pleasing as Development has invested significant time and resources implementing the latest .net technology and introduced considerable performance enhancing software, ensuring the infrastructure supporting the v4.3 solution is the best available in the industry. Investment in innovation and the latest technology reflect Conferma’s commitment to provide leading solutions for our technology. This superb feedback unequivocally indicates that this investment was completely justified.

With regard to respondents’ suggested improvements, nearly half of all suggestions called for more search criteria in Hotel Booker. Conferma is looking into incorporating searches according to hotel facilities, landmarks and GDS reference codes into future releases of Hotel Booker. However, these data issues would require significant development and would therefore not be available until the latter half of 2012 at the very earliest.

Other suggestions pertained to group bookings, payment restrictions and improving Agency Admin functionality. Conferma aims to introduce some of these changes for the next release of Hotel Booker (v4.4) in mid-February.

The final question of the survey concerned alternative Self-Booking Tools and returned extremely positive feedback for Conferma, with 30% of respondents revealing that they use Hotel Booker exclusively.

Conferma’s next Customer Satisfaction Survey is scheduled for June 2012. Watch this space for further development!

2012: A big year for UK hotels

On behalf of everyone at Conferma, I would like to begin this blog entry by wishing all our customers and partners a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

As Conferma’s booking volumes increase around the world, 2012 will present particular issues, challenges and opportunities for the T&E sector in the UK. With the advent of London 2012 and Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, London is preparing to welcome athletes, visitors, media, sponsors and dignitaries from across the globe. Therefore, as global focus centres not only on the capital, but also other British cities and regions, 2012 will have considerable implications for the T&E sector.

Given the significance, interest and prestige surrounding London 2012 and the Jubilee celebrations, the temptation for TMCs will be to centre their focus on the capital. However with events for both landmark occasions being staged in venues across the country, TMCs will also need to reinforce their coverage in alternate locations. Olympic event hosts outside the capital include Windsor, Weymouth, Portland, Broxbourne, Benfleet, Wembley, Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester and Newcastle. Moreover, flagship annual events on the British calendar, including the Edinburgh Festival, the British Grand Prix, the Open Championship and the World Travel Market will ensure that the T&E sector cannot afford to take its eye off business as usual amidst the furore of the Games and the Jubilee.

Furthermore, the anticipated influx of international officials and tourists will inevitably result in increased hotel prices. Indeed, rates currently stand at 30% higher than average for June and July. TMCs will be required to demonstrate the capability to process more and larger transactions than ever before. Large visitor numbers and the mayhem that will inevitably ensue, particularly in London, also mean that the importance of forward bookings and planning ahead cannot be overemphasised. This ability to manage large volumes of bookings and transactions will provide agencies the opportunity to demonstrate their value to large corporate companies and become the TMC of choice. Indeed, hoteliers are likely to give priority availability to TMCs with lucrative corporate clients with the highest levels of expenditure, ancillary spend and bookings for meeting space.

This is where TMCs can rely on Conferma’s platform of payment solutions to streamline their business operations. The Conferma Settlement Platform (CSP) offers TMCs an automated solution for the settlement and reconciliation of travel expense that removes manual intervention, reduces processing costs and is PCI-DSS compliant.

Despite high demand for hotel accommodation, hoteliers must guard against hiking their prices too much, so as to avoid the scenarios experienced in Athens (2004) and Vancouver (2010), when extortionate prices deterred visitors and resulted in late availability and unsold rooms. Hotels must also be mindful not to neglect service levels for their all year round business, whilst increasing expenditure to satisfy their increase in new international guests. London hotels in particular still need to cater for demand for annual events such as Royal Ascot, Wimbledon, The Proms, Henley and the Farnborough Airshow, as well as the Paralympic Games in September.

With regard to forward planning, TMCs must strike a fine balance when advising their clients. Advocating early bookings secures availability but at high rates with prohibitive booking conditions. On the other hand, later bookings leave clients vulnerable to a lack of availability, but payment does not have to be made months in advance of the Games. Alternatively, any business-critical staff may need to be accommodated outside of London, for example in Saint Albans, Watford and Reading, due to the impracticalities of commuting or being based in London during the Games.

As hotel availability becomes increasingly sparse, TMCs and corporates alike will have to look harder than usual to locate accommodation throughout the UK during the Games. This search could be made easier by Conferma’s online Self Booking Tool. Hotel Booker offers an inventory of more than 150,000 properties, including direct connections to budget hotel chains Travelodge and Premier Inn, who have both increased their presence in the capital ahead of the Olympics.

Moreover, as prices increase, merely locating accommodation will, in most cases, not suffice. Thanks to Rate Analyser, Conferma’s intelligent hotel price comparison tool, TMCs will be able to offer clients the best value rates available. Rate Analyser also provides TMCs with rate trend data for all hotel bookings and notifies users of any favourable rate changes, allowing time to rebook if appropriate. This could become an increasingly attractive proposition if prices drop to reflect last minute availability in the build-up to London 2012.

2012 holds many challenges in store for the T&E sector. Yet many opportunities also lie in prospect. I would like to conclude this blog by expressing Conferma’s commitment to overcoming these challenges and seizing these opportunities in collaboration with our existing partners, whilst expanding our portfolio to work with new partners.    

    

    

   

Reducing Credit Risk

The eurozone debt crisis. Global recession. Bailout funds. Public sector strikes. Rarely has the economic outlook been so bleak.

Amid the backdrop of a challenging economic and geopolitical environment and the relapse into a second successive recession in as many years, businesses worldwide are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the dangers of credit risk.

Furthermore, with the festive period imminent and the accompanying lull in business, it is inevitable that numerous companies will experience short-term cash flow problems. As a result, payments to suppliers are delayed, who in turn suffer from credit exposure and take longer to pay their own bills. This creates a domino effect that cascades its way throughout supplier and customer networks.

The business travel sector is no different. In fact, credit risk becomes an even greater problem because of the fine margins to which many in the industry work. As recently as last week, Thomas Cook, one of the most iconic British brands in the travel sector, secured a £200m loan to enable it to survive the winter lull in business.

TMCs. OTAs. Hotels. Everyone is vulnerable to credit risk. For instance, hotels typically have to wait 30-60 days to receive payments in traditional billback agreements. Depending on their business model, payments to suppliers are then synchronised accordingly. However, a single default on payments in the supply chain affects everyone.

Therefore, in such challenging economic times, companies that become synonymous with prompt payments become increasingly attractive to do business with. This is where Conferma’s products, based on virtual card technology, offer many benefits for banks, corporates and the business travel community. With the Conferma Settlement Platform (CSP), TMCs can hold the credit on a virtual card account or, better still, have their corporate customers open a virtual card account, thus removing their own credit exposure. Conferma’s automated settlement and reconciliation solutions not only significantly reduce the risk of fraud, but also guarantee immediate payment to the supplier in order to remove any credit exposure.

For TMCs, assigning the credit risk to the corporate customer also opens up further opportunities for your business. Perhaps most importantly, if a client does experience problems, you will only be exposed to the loss of the transaction fee, as opposed to the full amount of the booking. However, you could also charge your transaction fee to the virtual card, ensuring that you receive payments quicker.

As an independent third-party settlement solution, Conferma represents the best option because it currently partners with some of the world’s largest banks. Furthermore, with an extensive network of content providers at our disposal, the Conferma Platform provides a single point of connection to the banking world and the travel community.

In the current economic climate, the Conferma Platform not only guarantees punctual payments to ensure customer satisfaction, but does so securely, efficiently and with reduced processing costs, allowing your business to weather the stormy winter period ahead.

Content is King

Over the past few years we've seen a huge rise in the meta search engines, such as Kayak, SkyScanner, Farecast (now part of Microsoft Bing). These meta search engines crawl the web on your behalf to understand, read and record the information that varied online travel agencies (OTA) are publishing. These services give users the ability to enter search requests and in response receive an abundance of pricing from across the web. In seconds offers from ebookers, Expedia, Opodo and many more are returned. Users simply select the deal that's appealing, click a link and they are instantly transported to the OTA for payment.

Like meta search engines, the business travel community want a single view of inventory at a hotel, across all major booking channels to view the best deal and then book it. For all the power Hoteliers are given for yield and channel management, consumers are trying their best to beat the system for the lowest rate, wherever it is.

In business travel the biggest prize was how many hotels you had in your database, then how many can be booked online and finally how many of those are duplicates... No longer is the case. Content within business travel is about the quality of the product the OTA, GDS, Merchant or Direct Connect is providing. Questions are raised on; how long does it take to book, payment terms, commission, how much back-end resource is required, what key locations are covered for specific suppliers.

Over the past couple of years we have seen growth in the request for consumer OTAs to be included within the Conferma Booking Platform. Many OTAs offer affiliate schemes for agencies to join, with a major benefit of receiving commission from one supplier, the OTA, not through chasing each hotel.

The Conferma Booking Platform connects to all major GDS, multiple Direct Connects, OTAs and Merchants plus support for Offline and Allocation content. Agencies have the power to pick and choose what content they would like made available and hold their own agreements with the Content Providers. The Conferma Booking Platform is built on an architecture that allows us to easily add new content without having to make a single code change to our booking tool (in the majority of cases new providers can be implemented in six weeks).

Trends in the consumer travel sector steer the future of business travel, and at Conferma we’re positioned to react quickly.

Ps. 160'000 unique hotels (130'000 online (and no duplicates))

The importance of choice

The recent news that International Airlines Group (IAG) are in negotiations with Lufthansa to acquire British Midland (BMI) has raised concerns in the aviation community. The acquisition of BMI would see IAG, who already own British Airways and Iberia, increase its share of landing slots at Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport, rise from 45% to 54%.

The Leicestershire based carrier has reported losses of 154m euros (£133m; $213) for the first nine months of 2011, citing rising fuel costs and social unrest in some of its destinations in North Africa and the Middle East as reasons.

Amid growing concerns that IAG are monopolising Heathrow, Virgin Atlantic, who have tabled a rival bid to acquire the loss-making carrier, have described the prospect of an IAG takeover as "disastrous for consumer choice and competition".

Consumer choice is one of the fundamental aspects that Conferma, expert providers of settlement and reconciliation solutions to the Travel and Expenses (T&E) sector, values greatly. Providing access to multiple GDS and non-GDS content providers, Conferma prides itself on its vast and varied suite of content. Our award-winning Conferma Settlement Platform (CSP) can be seamlessly integrated into all systems, therefore we can partner with any card issuing bank or payments provider.

Conferma, who itself has recently expanded its own portfolio to offer payment solutions for low-cost carriers, is proud of its independence. Furthermore, Conferma’s neutrality endears it to an extensive network of travel and banking partners. This neutrality allows Conferma to maximise the number of potential opportunities in the business travel market and encourages competition amongst its partners.

Only time will tell if IAG's acquisition of BMI will deprive Heathrow of healthy competition and consumer choice.

Building A Platform For Commerce

In the early days of CSP, CSP stood for the Conferma Settlement Plan and our customers had only one card partner and one booking tool (ours) to access. Of course, this was only ever going to be beneficial for some customers and so we took a step change in the way we developed CSP. We began to build version 2, the Conferma Settlement Platform. A Platform that would facilitate the same founding features of CSP but on an open network for any booking or desktop tool to connect to any card issuer they want.

The effort the team has put into the platform over the past few years is demonstrating how our open network is coming together. CSP is being used to pay for more travel via more booking channels, where customers are based in more countries with an ever expanding supplier base.

Today, with an ever expanding CSP network you can;

• Use a booking or desktop tool of your choice (XML integration)
• Use Hotel Booker with over 12 content providers
• Use Conferma Low cost air tool
• Use Conferma WebPay to place cards into any website or desktop system
• Use our Batch Interface for bulk card deployments
• Seamlessly access (and switch between) cards from all of our major card issuing banks
• Settlement is being performed in multiple currencies
• Access powerful data hands offs for your system

At the start of the month we implemented our latest card partner, HSBC. The speed and professionalism of the implementation into a major partner, such as HSBC, shows the strength and capability of the team here at Conferma.

The choice of booking tool and card issuer is up to you, as it should be. Like never before we’re making it easier to be part of the network. Contact us for more information.

New Office

You may have noticed a lack of blog posts in the past couple of months, all I can say is it has been very busy here at Conferma! In the coming weeks we have a number of exciting announcements to make which will give you some insight into what we have been up to.

That said, I would like to announce we have successfully moved office! Whilst our previous offices were certainly different from the normal financial services HQ, we had simply grown too big for them. We have now moved into our very own bright building at Cheadle Royal Business Park, which has plenty of space for growth.

Overall the move was stress free with just a few technical hiccups with internet access from our offices and a rather frustrating incoming call issue, let’s just say you had to get your point made in ten minutes...

The move is a step change for Conferma, with a more corporate feel, but we have kept the fun and quirky environment we are known for. A big hit with the staff is the new break area where the full walls are white boards.

The new offices are a recognition to the staff, customers and partners that together we're doing something right. The new offices mark a point in Conferma's history and the continuation of an exciting journey that I hope you will all join us on.

Conferma WebPay: The New Way to Pay

In the corporate world, there is an opportunity to automate low to mid value, high volume transactions with new payment technologies. These traditional transactions represent what is called the ‘middle-ground’ of purchasing and they take a disproportionate amount of resources to process.

Research by *RPMG found the cost of processing paper-based purchase orders averaged $93 (US). However, making the same transaction with a single-use purchasing account cost $22. Further analysis revealed that purchasing cards can:
· reduce typical procurement cycles by approximately 12 days;
· reduce the number of suppliers managed by an average of 16%; and
· result in a reduction or redeployment of staff.
With these results, it is easy to see how new payment technologies are gaining traction in the corporate world.

Conferma’s new payment technology, ‘WebPay’, automates the procure-to-pay process delivering real-time efficiencies to both procurement and accounts payable departments. This solution uses web based technology to introduce single-use credit cards into the purchasing process and capture enhanced levels of data.

Unlike other payment solutions, WebPay is connected to Conferma’s network of financial partners giving its users a choice of card provider. This allows Conferma’s customers to select the best payment partner. With WebPay companies can retain cash longer, pay suppliers earlier, reduce man-power costs, drive compliance and cover new spend categories.

WebPay can purchase anything online from paper to corporate travel all via one platform. Once the system is deployed, it can quickly be extended out into many purchasing categories. This allows companies to centralise their procurement. Many companies are now realising the power of having one platform, one investment, capable of managing this middle-ground of payment. WebPay can use any web-browser to access any website and complete a transaction.

WebPay can standardise reporting data from a multitude of transactions by using the same accounts to purchase a variety of products. Therefore, the data reported back via WebPay is consistent and accurate. This standardised data can be handed-off into other ERP systems to create a powerful management tool capable of tracking payments.

Conferma’s WebPay has a global capability and can be used to purchase goods and services online anywhere in the world. This gives corporate managers the ability to globally synchronise purchasing practises.

This new solution levers all of Conferma’s expertise in the corporate payment sector into a single powerful platform.

*RPMG - 2010 Purchasing Card Benchmark Survey Results - http://www.rpmgresearch.net/.