Conferma, a virtual payment provider; and AirPlus, a payment solutions company, announced the expansion of their longstanding partnership to extend virtual card payments into everyday business spend. The arrangement, according to the Europe-based companies, was designed to deal with the fact that most non-travel spend still sits outside corporate card programs due to manual, invoice-led processes.
The partnership, said the announcement, builds on more than a decade of collaboration between the two companies, extending established travel and procurement capabilities further into embedded B2B payment workflows across broader business spend. Virtual cards can now be generated, delivered and reconciled within procurement and ERP workflows, making card payments available as a native option at the point of purchase, according to the announcement.
According to the announcement, AirPlus’s transaction data and reporting capabilities, paired with Conferma’s virtual card technology, creates a “seamless” end-to-end payment experience that eliminates reconciliation complexity and puts businesses firmly in control of their spend.
Conferma now integrates virtual card payments directly into the procurement and ERP systems that AirPlus customers already use on a daily basis — without the need for separate tools and without disrupting workflows, according to the announcement. By integrating payments into existing purchasing and accounts payable processes, said the announcement, “AirPlus is helping to remove one of the biggest barriers to the adoption of card payments.”
“Virtual card adoption has been limited by the need to change established workflows,” said Sonya Geelon, chief commercial officer at Conferma. “By embedding payments directly into procurement and finance systems,” she said, “we’re removing that barrier and enabling organizations to scale adoption without added complexity.”
Michael Thomas, head of global partner sales at AirPlus, said: “Customers want greater control over spend without introducing new processes. Embedding payments into the platforms they already use allows us to extend virtual cards beyond travel and into everyday purchasing.”
