A corporate card is a useful tool for businesses and employees alike. Unlike personal credit cards, corporate cards are issued to a company and often come with benefits such as better rewards and expense tracking. They can also provide employees with the purchasing power they need for business expenses without the hassle of reimbursement paperwork. By using a corporate card, employees can easily make purchases for travel, office supplies, and other company needs, freeing up their time to focus on more important tasks. What about corporate card misuse?
“With travel restricted, T&E payment fraud comes under more scrutiny.”
The title of this posted piece in PaymentsSource may seem to be slightly paradoxical, but the author quickly leads into the specific type of activity being reviewed.
Travel: Corporate Card Misuse?
The subject matter is employee misconduct in using their corporate credit card outside the bounds of corporate policy, or directly misusing for personal expenses, which typically might occur during required travel.
‘While the global coronavirus outbreak may be grounding corporate travel to a near standstill, leading travel companies and fintechs are continuing to hone AI-based payments platforms to reduce the problem of corporate travel fraud.’
The subsequent filing of expense reports for travel reimbursement can lag the actual event(s) by weeks, and often are a paper laden process with manual reviews for compliance. Depending on the size of the company/department, the reviews may only be samples of the whole, leaving gaps of potential misuse that remain uncovered. ‘
Back to the title, the author is supposing that since revenues are going to be down, travel budgets will be more highly scrutinized, and of course there is now a leading generation of tech that can help accomplish such efforts more quickly and effectively.
‘When the University of Portsmouth’s Centre for Counter Fraud Studies surveyed corporate travel fraud two years ago, it found that one in ten U.K. employees admitted to having submitted erroneous expenses claims, with such activity costing U.K. businesses in the region of £2 billion every year…However, many organizations believe that technology could make a significant difference. Last month, travel company TripActions launched its own corporate travel management and payments solution called TripActions Liquid. Companies that sign up to this platform are able to sync their corporate cards with online and mobile platforms which provide visibility into all transactions made on a business trip in real-time.’
Automating Expense Management
We would posture that automating the expense management process does a lot more than reduce ‘padding the report’, since those 90% + of employees who do everything by the book also find manual filing to be incredibly annoying. So, a company can have happier workers if they automate this tedious affair, something that in these times can have a lot of value. Nonetheless, the author’s point is valid, so fiddling employees had better beware.
‘Streamlining corporate travel payments in this manner is developing into a niche but increasingly popular sector of the payments marketplace. Travelport also has a business travel payments platform available in partnership with U.K. fintech Conferma…Conferma predicts that the use of such platforms can minimize fraudulent behaviour because they are more convenient for employees as well as companies, thus encouraging travelers to act more honestly.’
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
