Buying things is pleasurable. Unless it’s for work.
Hoarding receipts for coffee and lunch; the finance team picking their way through them and making sure everything squares up at the end of the month: There are no winners when it comes to filing expense reports.
A new podcast episode of Business Travel (On the Fly) delves into the global payments landscape with Dave Holmes, VP for Payments at CWT.
He tells host Christine Kashkari about the vicious cycle many traveling employees face, “If you think about pain points, it's really three things,” he says. “One, remembering to hold onto those pesky receipts then dealing with policy exceptions. So filling out, for example, the explanations or justification sections within a specific item on an expense report. And then lastly, most importantly, it's our own procrastination. We've all been in situations where you've gone on a business trip for a week, had great meetings, but now it's Friday evening and you're on that flight home. And the only thing that you can think about is getting home to spend time with your family or starting your fun weekend. And so the last thing on your mind is that monster of an expense report. So you just put it off, right?”
But according to Dave Holmes, the cycles may be ending. The pace of transformation in the payments industry is accelerating. In the episode Dave talks about:
- The future of conversational commerce or being able to purchase through your messaging app.
- How new payments technology, such as virtual cards and mobile payments, make the process of reporting expenses more seamless for business travelers and keeps them in compliance, while enabling travel managers and companies to gain greater visibility and anticipate travel spend.
- Why China is leading the way in mobile payments usage and what we can learn.
Listen Business Travel on The Fly on Spotify, iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.