With the largest convention of business travel professionals coming up next week, a lot of talk is centered on the acceptance and benefits of single-use virtual cards.
Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) recently released a whitepaper Buyer and Supplier Outlook on Virtual Payment Solution that dives into the hot topic of virtual card payments within the travel industry.
Virtual payments have emerged as a viable solution for a number of procurement pain points. Despite the benefits, one of the biggest challenges with virtual cards in the recent years is the acceptance. However, virtual card acceptance is rising each year. As cited in the GBTA whitepaper, 53% of travel suppliers accept single-use virtual cards, although only 20% of travel buyers have implemented the solution.
The study revealed the most important issues to travel buyers to be security, control and compliance. This is great news for the virtual card providers like CSI globalVCard. A single use virtual card provides unique benefits that other payment types cannot offer. Since each transaction is assigned a unique number, very specific control parameters can be put into place creating an effective way to keep travelers compliant to corporate policies while improving security and reducing fraud.
The electronic payments space is one to watch. A new era in safe, secure and controlled payments is on the horizon.
