Paying out of pocket for travel expenses is a top pain point for business travelers, according to a Payment and Expense survey we conducted this spring. Eliminating travelers’ credit liability for hotel bookings can be a big boost to traveler satisfaction in your program.
Here’s how it works:
- A traveler books a hotel room through the travel program and chooses central payment at point of sale.
- A virtual card is automatically generated from your bank to guarantee the booking.
- The traveler’s booking details are sent by secure email, API or fax to the hotel.
- At check out, the traveler’s approved charges are billed to the virtual card. The traveler is responsible for any miscellaneous charges.
BCD’s virtual payments process makes booking hotels safer
Did you know that every sixth business traveler falls victim to credit card fraud? According to the spring survey, 17% of business travelers have experienced fraud, despite taking measures to stay safe. VPA is a safer way to pay.
VPA generates a new unique card number for each transaction. The cards can be set with credit limits, merchant category controls, and date range restrictions making virtual cards an ideal defense against payment fraud. Plus, charges that might require investigation can be easily flagged for follow-up.
FOCUS ON YOUR TRAVELERS, NOT EXPENSE DETAILS
WITH VIRTUAL PAYMENT AUTOMATION
More benefits…
- Available for all travelers
- Eliminate traveler credit liability
- Specific credit limits and date range restrictions
- Stronger policy compliance
- Rich transaction data
Less hassle…
- Less out-of-policy bookings
- No more manual deployment – agents won’t need to look up and apply new card numbers for each transaction
- Reduce the time spent on manual reconciliation
5 ways virtual payments make business travel easier
- Earlier booking: When travelers use virtual payments to book hotels, they tend to book and in policy, since they aren’t booking on their own online. No more balking at pulling out credit cards to secure bookings. A virtual credit card number is created by the booking process, so it’s a one-click confirmation.
- Lower rates – Virtual payments put clear, anchored parameters around how much travelers can spend on business trips. That often prompts them to choose hotels with less expensive rates.
- Simpler reconciliations – Virtual Payment Automation simplifies and speeds up the travel and expense reconciliation process. Hotel payments can be more easily matched to invoices – replacing time-consuming manual processes with a faster and more accurate digital solution.
- Reduced fraud – VPA shrinks opportunities for bad guys to steal travelers’ personal and financial data. It also mitigates fraud by restricting a virtual credit card by date, maximum spend and qualified merchants. So, even if a fraudster gets hold of a virtual card number, he can’t do much with it.
- Increased online adoption – Virtual Payment Automation is easily integrated into online booking tools.
