Kayak for Business announced a strategic partnership with Mesh Payments, a corporate card and expense platform. The partnership, said the announcement, brings together two companies doing what each does best: Kayak for Business for travel planning, bookings and trip management; Mesh Payments for global cards, spend controls and expense management, all in one “intuitive experience for the traveler and one source of truth for finance.”

Business travel often runs on three systems, according to the announcement: one to book, one to pay, one to expense. They usually meet only after the money is spent. By then, said the announcement, finance is reconstructing trips that already happened, and travelers are filing reports for trips their company approved weeks earlier. Policy questions get answered too late to change the outcome.

“Booking a business trip should be as easy as booking a personal one and visible to finance from the moment it starts,” said Eva Fouquet, senior vice president of Kayak for Business. With Mesh Payments, she said, “the booking, the card and the expense all sit around a single trip.” Travelers, said Fouquet, “book with a tool they already know, and finance sees travel spend as it happens instead of figuring it out weeks later.”

Together, said the announcement, the two platforms are designed to support the full trip. Travelers can search, book and manage travel on Kayak for Business, choosing from a broad inventory sourced from direct supplier connections, NDC, GDS and other sources all within “the familiar, traveler-first experience Kayak is known for,” according to the announcement. Payment runs on Mesh Payments virtual cards, issued locally in more than 40 countries, or on the company’s existing corporate card program, with policy applied at the moment of purchase rather than at the end of the month. Every transaction is coded and matched to the trip and the traveler, and reconciled automatically.

Both sides, said the announcement, apply AI “where it earns its place.” Kayak for Business takes a hybrid approach, integrating AI alongside traditional search so travelers can choose how much AI to use. They can build policy-aware, bookable trips from natural-language requests and manage trip changes through conversational AI, with human support one step away when needed. Mesh Payments’ AI, said the announcement, understands what each transaction was for, so the expense is done before anyone thinks to file it.

These are the results of the partnership, according to the announcement:

• For the business traveler, the result is one booking experience that shows all available options, fares and extras, the way consumer travel works. A card is issued for the trip, carrying its budget and policy, so meals, ground transport and everything else on the road go on the company card. Receipts are matched and expenses submitted automatically with no expense report to file. 
• For finance, the result is real-time visibility into travel spend as it happens, based on actual card transactions rather than booking estimates. On-trip spend is scoped to the trip before it starts, with a card issued per trip rather than an open limit reconciled afterwards. Unique, controllable payment credentials replace shared, static ones, limiting the impact of any single compromise. The solution works with the company’s existing card program or with Mesh-issued cards, so there is no need to switch banks or reissue anything.

Oded Zehavi, CEO of Mesh Payments, said, “Booking tells you what a trip is supposed to cost; payment tells you what it actually costs.” Kayak for Business, he said, “built the booking experience business travelers actually want to use.” Mesh Payments, said Zehavi, “puts a card behind every trip with the budget and the policy already on it, so finance sees the real number as the trip happens rather than weeks later.”

The partnership will be introduced to corporate travel and finance leaders at Business Travel Show America, Oct. 14 and 15 at the Javits Center in New York. The integrated offering is scheduled to be available by December 2026. Companies can request more information by visiting kayak.com/business/blog/mesh-partnership.