Rapid Financial Progress Impeded by Expensive Travel Outlays
In the ever-evolving business landscape, corporate travel is set to witness a significant surge, with projections indicating a 6.2% increase by 2025. This resurgence in travel is not just a return to pre-pandemic norms, but a strategic investment that modern CFOs are eager to leverage.
Modernizing travel spend isn't just about fixing a broken process; it's about seizing a competitive advantage. Embedded payments, a game-changing innovation, is leading this transformation.
Jason Lalor, CEO at Conferma, emphasizes the potential of embedded payments to improve travel experiences, potentially driving employee retention and productivity. Those who do not adopt embedded payments risk being left behind by competitors, technology, and their own people.
Travel spend is a high-friction blind spot. Outdated expense processes lead to frustration, inefficiency, and risk, with 83% of employees saying managing travel expenses is a burden. Embedded payments can remove hassle for travellers, reduce risk for the business, and unlock control for finance teams.
Finance leaders who embrace embedded payments now may reduce friction, unlock insight, and transform their organization's travel. CFOs are facing a complex balancing act, including controlling costs, managing inflation, integrating new technologies like AI, and fueling growth. Embedded payments offer several benefits for finance leaders managing corporate travel by simplifying expense tracking, improving control, and enhancing efficiency.
Key benefits include automation and expense visibility, policy enforcement and spend control, multi-currency and global payments efficiency, reduced manual workflows and faster reconciliation, enhanced security and fraud prevention, and value creation and loyalty integration.
Embedded payments integrated into travel management platforms automatically sync corporate card transactions with specific trips, attach receipts, and categorize expenses in real time. This automation reduces manual data entry and the burden of traditional expense reporting.
Finance teams can enforce travel policies, control disbursements, set limits, and restrict spending per region or vendor automatically. Integrated payment systems handle multi-currency transactions seamlessly, improving budgeting and forecasting accuracy.
By linking payments directly with travel bookings and expense reports, embedded payments streamline reconciliation. Finance teams can track all payments per trip, department, or project instantly, reducing the need for manual audits or chasing receipts.
Virtual and hybrid cards offer controlled spending environments, unique card numbers per transaction or vendor, and instant activation/deactivation capabilities. This reduces unauthorized charges and lowers fraud risk in corporate travel payments.
Beyond basic payments, embedded payment platforms enable the embedding of rewards, spend-based incentives, or exclusive travel perks directly linked to spending patterns. This can help finance leaders leverage employee travel spend to enhance traveler experience through loyalty benefits and offer curated VIP experiences.
Embedded payments for corporate travel deliver finance leaders increased control, streamlined operational efficiency, improved policy compliance, enhanced security, and opportunities for value creation through loyalty and rewards programs. This aligns payments directly with travel activity, transforming a traditionally complex and manual process into a smooth, integrated finance workflow.
Embedded payments can shift a company's travel spend management from reporting on past costs to shaping future strategy. The modern CFO is not just a financial gatekeeper but also a growth architect, culture shaper, and technology enabler.
The return-to-office momentum indicates that travel is now considered a business-critical investment. Now is the time for finance leaders to act proactively and lead the change in travel spend management. Embedded payments offer real-time data, automated reconciliation, and visibility for actionable decisions.
PwC and Kayak used blockchain to streamline travel, reducing cost and complexity, and increasing flexibility and flow. In banking alone, 70% of IT budgets are used to maintain legacy infrastructure, leaving little for modernization. Travel is back, and the CFO now has a seat at the table, indicating a significant role in travel decision-making.
Hilton became the first global hotel chain to automate virtual card payments end to end. As we move towards 2025, the future of corporate travel finance is embedded, automated, and integrated, offering a seamless, efficient, and secure travel experience for all.
[1] Conferma, "The Future of Corporate Travel Payments: Embedded Payments and the Transformation of Travel," 2022. [2] ViaCarte, "Programmable Cards: The Future of Corporate Travel Payments," 2023. [3] Hilton, "Hilton Announces End-to-End Automation of Virtual Card Payments," 2024.
- Adopting embedded payments in business travel can provide a competitive edge for finance leaders, enabling them to improve travel experiences, control spend, and streamline operations, as demonstrated by Hilton's automation of virtual card payments end-to-end.
- As the corporate travel industry surges, with embattled CFOs seeking ways to manage costs, integrate new technologies like AI, and drive growth, the implementation of embedded payment systems could offer significant benefits, including automation, expense visibility, multi-currency efficiency, and reduced fraud risk.
