Centralising ticketing and hotel expenses, simplifying and securing payments, delegating procurement: whatever the expense, BNP Paribas solutions exist and can be adapted to the way companies operate and are organised.
In order to optimise the management of their travel budgets, companies are increasingly looking to rationalise their costs and control their expenditure. This strong desire has given rise to a number of challenges, including streamlining the booking process, controlling expenditure, analysing data and securing payments. BNP Paribas has developed a wide range of payment solutions to meet all these challenges.
Businesses need secure, single-use payments for distance-selling purchasesThe Virtual Card is the best solution. The Virtual Card is the best solution.
Whether or not a company uses a travel agency to organise its business trips, the Virtual Card is the perfect solution to its needs for customisable, secure payment solutions that can be adapted to the structure of its purchases.
How does the Virtual Card work? Generated on demand, it contains a unique number that can be used for a specific transaction. It features a 16-digit card number, an expiry date and a CVV security code. Its maximum use is predetermined by the company and its use is limited in time. The Virtual Card therefore provides enhanced protection against fraud by setting parameters for the use of each card according to amount, duration, business sector code, etc. BNP Paribas offers this solution in several currencies on the European market in order to avoid exchange costs for companies.
The Virtual Card is also used by travel agencies, whether they are business or leisure oriented, and by hotel reservation platforms. They use it to book and pay for commercial services sold remotely (low-cost airline tickets, hotel reservations, car hire, etc.). As well as making it easier to make purchases when travelling on business, the Virtual Card is aimed at companies that want enhanced data for each card payment. This is because the solution associates additional information with each expense - the traveller's registration number and cost centre, for example - which will be returned with the payment data. This makes it easier to enrich the accounts and trace expenses.
Companies need to control their ticketing expenditure and optimise the management of business travel. BNP Paribas's Carte Voyage (revolving credit card) meets this need.
As part of the rationalisation of their business travel, companies that use a travel agency to book train or plane tickets now have another centralised payment solution at their disposal, offered by BNP Paribas: the Carte Voyage, an embedded card that ensures both payment of tickets and compliance with the company's travel policy. Benefiting from the Visa acceptance network, one of the largest in the world, it also offers lower merchants fees than most competing solutions.
How does the Carte Voyage work? This packaged card, offered by BNP Paribas under the name Carte Voyage, is hosted directly in the reservation tools of the largest business travel agencies in France and Europe. It is also connected to their back office. Each ticket is debited directly from the client company's account. Above all, and this is where the strength of this solution lies, the Carte Voyage provides companies with very precise reporting on all expenditure.
By centralising payments, the Carte Voyage guarantees excellent visibility of a company's business travel budget. This "enriched" reporting includes all the data needed to reconcile the financial transaction, information relating to the traveller's journey - travel segment, class, ancillary costs - and analytical data specific to the company's structure, such as the traveller's cost centre or personnel number.
BNP Paribas provides its customers with detailed statements in a variety of formats for easy integration into expense management software or ERP systems. Purchasing and/or travel management departments also have access to a website with predefined reports and, of course, the option of customising the reporting to suit their requirements.
As a result, corporate travel managers now have a powerful management tool that enables them to monitor expenditure by supplier, by segment, by traveller, by department... in other words, a wealth of data on which they can base their budgetary control. While this reconciled and consolidated view of expenditure enables travel managers to make changes to their travel policies, buyers have greater negotiating leverage with their suppliers.
Businesses have always needed, and will always need, physical cards to enable travellers to pay for all their expenses while on the move, hotels, restaurants, taxis, VTCs and public transport. As such, the Corporate Card accompanies employees on all their travels.
Offered by BNP Paribas for more than 20 years, this card is naturally at the heart of the range. The bank offers a complete range of cards in three different statuses: Classic, Gold and Platinum. These cards come with different levels of insurance and travel assistance to ensure that business travel is carried out with complete peace of mind. Cardholders and managers alike have access to a website where they can track expenses, combined with electronic statements and reporting tools. In addition, a dedicated after-sales service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for cardholders and managers alike.
The Corporate Card offers employees :
- Universal usability thanks to the Visa and Mastercard acceptance networks.
- Real ease of use for both payments and cash withdrawals when travelling abroad. You can also personalise your PIN code and receive SMS alerts.
- Deferred payments giving employees more time to write up their expense claims. This solution offers companies :
- A multi-country offering adapted to the company's structure, enabling it to consolidate all travel expenditure.
- Optimising cash flow via deferred payment.
- Choice of speedEither to the company's account or to the employee's account.
EXCELLENT DATA FOR OPTIMISED MONITORING
In addition to the reporting provided by travel agencies or hotel reservation platforms, centralised payment solutions undoubtedly offer the most advanced data. They enable all the financial data - the amount of the transaction, the date, the name of the merchant - to be combined with data on the travellers - their personnel number, their cost centre - and on the trip - the route, the class of travel, the PNR - in other words, all the information that will have been entered at the time of booking by the travel agency or by the employee himself. The reporting made available by BNP Paribas allows refined monitoring by type of expenditure. For example, a travel manager will be able to identify the top 10 journeys most frequently made by his or her staff, with visibility of the travellers concerned and the budget per airline.
The Corporate Card allows employees to be independent by facilitating their professional expenses. In this context, the acceptability and the extensive BNP Paribas network meet the needs of travellers on planned or emergency trips, in the four corners of the world. This is obviously very important in our field of activity. That's why all our employees have access to the Corporate Card and we regularly promote it to them. Furthermore, when the card is used as the only means of payment, the reliability of the statistical data is all the more relevant and exploitable. The embedded card complements the Corporate Card. We have already reaped the benefits of using it, both in terms of simplifying our relationship with our travel agency and integrating invoice flows into our Travel & Expense and accounting tools.
PAYMENT CENTRALISATION CONTINUES
While the use of corporate cards has been growing steadily for several years, by around 10 % per year, the centralisation of payments is a strong trend. On average, two-thirds of the travel budgets of large companies are spent on cards. At the same time, the virtual card, another centralised payment solution, is growing exponentially year on year.
NEW REGULATIONS
THE MODIFIED CORPORATE CARD MODEL
In April 2015, the European Commission made a clear distinction between the definition of a commercial card, debited to the company's account, and that of a 'consumer' card, debited to the cardholder's account. It has therefore decided to cap the bank's remuneration rate (known as the interchange rate) on card transactions debited to the consumer's account at 0.30 %. This means that corporate cards linked to the traveller's account are now considered as consumer cards, and their rate has therefore been capped at 0.30 % since 9 December 2015, the date on which the new regulations came into force. While maintaining the same level of service to their customers, this change in the way banks are remunerated has led to an overhaul of their business model and a need to reallocate costs for each of the parties involved. Corporate Cards linked to the company's account, Virtual Cards, Procurement Cards and Travel Cards - are not affected by this cap.
