More Savings, More Compliance: Corporate Virtual Cards for Travel Strategy

Medium-to-large enterprises have extensive international influence, which in turn has a significant impact on the travel expenses incurred by executives for collaborative work and closing important deals. This raises several critical questions: How streamlined are cost management systems? And how can the transparency of cash flow be improved to ensure budget allocation is optimized?

As companies rapidly scale their business operations and increase their headcount, the secret to an efficient finance team lies in adopting a solution that can manage travel expenses with ease. The days when inefficient spreadsheets, manual reconciliations, and slow reimbursement processes were sufficient to keep an organization running smoothly are long gone. The more that time, cost, and productivity savings are attempted with these outdated systems, the greater the likelihood that a business will encounter preventable fraud, duplicate expenses, and hard-to-track discrepancies, leading to poorly managed travel expense budgets.

Why You Should Prioritize Streamlining Travel Expenses

Any outflow of funds from a company requires monitoring, but travel expenses are particularly prone to falling through the cracks, causing operational costs to exceed the budget. The pandemic certainly disrupted many travel plans. However, business travel has picked up pace, with global business travel spending projected to grow by nearly 34% to $933 billion by 2024. With this increase in travel, corporate travel managers need to re-examine the efficiency, accuracy, and compliance of their expense management solutions to ensure they align with budgetary and financial accountability goals.

Diligent management of business travel expenses is essential, not just for leadership but for employees as well. The 2024 State of Corporate Travel and Expense Report revealed that 71% of business travelers prefer using a corporate card over a personal card, further boosting employee morale. Meanwhile, 69% of corporate travel managers want employees to use corporate cards for travel expenses. The inconvenience of paying out-of-pocket, applying for reimbursement, and waiting for approval is a significant pain point that must be overcome to simplify the business travel process for company executives.

Why Choose Corporate or Virtual Cards as a Travel Solution?

From improving expense visibility and strengthening financial controls to simplifying the reporting process, using a corporate or virtual travel card—such as the travel cards and payment solutions from MPChat—to eliminate uncertainty in expense management is a powerful advantage. Since they are functionally designed to work exactly like a debit or credit card, just in a digital version, it's no surprise that both business travelers and managers "strongly agree" that they prefer to use corporate cards for expenses. In a recent report, nearly 64% of corporate travel managers stated they are interested in solutions that can better unify travel and in-house corporate spending.

Recent market trends support this demand for corporate or virtual cards, with the market size projected to exceed $9.1 trillion by 2027, up from the current $2.7 trillion—a market growth of 280%. The research also forecasts that the number of global virtual card transactions will surpass 121 billion by 2027, an increase from 28 billion in 2024, representing 340% growth. Similarly, the Virtual Cards: Consumer and Business Adoption, Competitive Analysis & Market Size 2020-2025 report concluded that business-to-business (B2B) virtual cards will contribute approximately 80% of virtual card transaction value over the next five years. Indeed, the entire travel industry agrees that virtual travel cards are the future of hassle-free expense management; 94% of travel agencies, 90% of hotels, and 86% of airlines believe virtual cards will become a critical payment method.

Setting aside industry trends and forecasts, businesses can gain numerous benefits by switching to corporate or virtual travel cards:

• Save time and costs: Designated spending limits and easy expense tracking make travel and expense management a breeze.
• Better fraud prevention: Virtual cards can be issued for specific purposes, amounts, merchants, time periods, and restricted countries.
• Automated transaction reconciliation: Eliminates time-consuming manual reconciliations and investigations into discrepancies.
• Real-time payments: Leads to higher employee satisfaction, as there are no out-of-pocket costs or reimbursement delays.
• Enhanced security: The cards are issued for short periods with pre-set expiration dates. Furthermore, the payment data used for each transaction is different to ensure no breaches occur.

Achieve Effective Cost Management with MPChat's Card Solutions

Regain control of your corporate travel budget. MPChat's virtual card issuing feature helps your business focus on growing revenue by tracking all company-wide travel spending from a single dashboard. MPChat's extensive card network is ready for use worldwide, saving time, providing insights into the best use of funds, and promoting unwavering policy compliance. Both virtual and physical card options offer simple spending limits and built-in security tools, ensuring your travel expense management process is fast, reliable, and results-driven.

Ready to learn how corporate or virtual travel cards can revolutionize your company's travel expense management system? Our team is standing by to help you unlock your full potential.