The spend management company Cardlay is to integrate its payment cloud solution into the expense management service of SAP Concur, enabling businesses that engage with its portfolio to benefit from an integrated, carbon-neutral and secure virtual card offering without changing their current bank relationship.
Cardlay’s payment cloud supports the real-time issuing of corporate virtual cards, and its integration with Concur Expense and banks is built on advanced APIs in the core of the existing banking infrastructure.
“We have followed the development of virtual cards closely for the last few years, and we anticipate that within the next three years, 40 per cent of all commercial cards will be virtual,” explains Cardlay CEO Jørgen Christian Juul.
“We are incredibly proud to take part in driving this movement and to see the integration live and solving real challenges for corporations is beyond amazing.”
The integration will enable a plug-and-play set-up for customers, allowing them to select their preferred financial institution, while still getting the benefits of integrated virtual card management.
Customers will be able to automate their processes around spend management and expense handling by complementing existing card programmes as an add-on.
Through the integration, businesses that use Concur Expense can request and access virtual payment cards with no additional setup. The virtual card issued can be added to a mobile wallet, which will then send the transaction data automatically to Concur Expense, allowing managers to monitor new cards and establish spend controls in real-time.
One of the first customers benefiting from the integration is Inspiring Learning, a UK-based company providing children with educational adventure programmes.
“The way we previously handled expenses at Inspiring Learning was super time-consuming, involving many people manually entering data in separate systems and without upfront control and overview of what’s being spent. With this new integration, we have already seen a cut in the admin time, which is very valuable for us,” said Emma David, management accountant at Inspiring Learning.
“It is easy to use and convenient with instant issuance of cards. The integration with Concur Expense is working well and saves us both time and money.”
Cardlay’s future strategy aims to make it easier for customers to integrate budgets, authorisation processes, payments and reconciliation into an automated flow, thus minimising errors and the risk of fraud.
Payment Cloud’s integration with Concur Expense is currently being rolled out in the UK and will be available in multiple banks and currencies within the next year.
