Checklist: What to Look For in a Virtual Payments Solution

The travel industry has always been one on the leading edge of customer-focused innovations, but despite this innovative mentality, many of the same organizations within the industry are currently lagging in one aspect, how they pay their suppliers.

The Technological Drive for Improved Payments

In a recent blog on WEX Travel, Building a Business Case for Virtual Payments Technology, we covered some interesting statistics on the state of affairs for the payments industry:

• Travel managers spend 442,000 hours in staff time ($22.7 million) per year to manually reconcile and clean travel data
• 82% of these travel managers have to manage multiple data sources to answer questions from management about travel spending
• 75% of companies in the transportation, leisure and tourism sector are affected by at least one type of fraud

All of this and more point to both the value and rationale behind moving to a more innovative, streamlined, secure and cost effective form of payment by going virtual.

What Companies Hope to Achieve by Improving Payments

Knowing this, however, there are some things to know before looking at virtual payment solutions or changing from one virtual payment solution to another.

When organizations look at improving payments processes, some of the primary objectives include:

• Reducing costs
• Minimizing time spent making a payment to free up time in accounts payable
• Facilitating ease of collaboration
• Accessing enhanced data for reporting, forecasting and budgeting

With all that organizations look to achieve, it pays to find a provider that can ‘check all the boxes,’ meeting or exceeding both the demands and wants of a travel company.

Checking All the Boxes: Virtual Payments Checklist

To address this, we have released a checklist for leadership at travel organizations looking at implementing or changing virtual payments solutions providers. This Buyers Guide to Virtual Payments, shares the key functions that any virtual payment solution should cover, including:

• Ease of implementation and use
• Acceleration of payments
• Improved cash flow
• Enhanced visibility and control
• Simplification and cost reduction in international payments

Download Buyers Guide to Virtual Payments.