Interview with Erwan Pertuisel, Le Public Système

What is your company's core business?

Erwan Pertuisel - Le Public Système, which operates in France and abroad, particularly in Asia, has a number of business lines: corporate events, incentives, seminars, business tourism, professional conferences, public and press relations.

For events organised in France or abroad, you use virtual payment. What's in it for you?

E. P. - Since 2010, we have been using virtual payment to settle mainly hotel and catering bills linked to our events business. In practice, for each transaction, we generate a single virtual card, which is activated twice: once when the reservation is made, to pay the deposit, and then a few months later, to pay the balance of the invoice. Thanks to this solution developed by American Express Cartes Corporate, we no longer have to make any transfers, and we can seriously simplify the processing of our invoices. As for the service providers, they have a secure and reassuring means of payment, guaranteeing both the booking of the service and its payment within five days.

What improvements do you think should be made to virtual payments?

E. P. - In 2012, just over two million euros of expenditure is expected to be paid in this way. Of this total, accommodation and catering costs account for almost 80%, with catering alone accounting for the remainder. I would really encourage this method of payment to be extended to other purchasing categories. Ideally, however, we should be able to extend it to other budget items, suppliers such as caterers or decorators, for example.