Visa has launched a purchasing card especially for meetings, following the path blazed by American Express. The new card is available initially to meeting planners in the U.S. and Canada, with launches planned for the European Union in the third quarter and Asia-Pacific in 2009.
"The solution provides not only the back-end reconciliation reporting capabilities, but also allows for meeting planners to plan at a detailed level up front," says Louis Goodson, senior business leader for Visa Commercial Solutions. He says the meetings card would combine features from Visa's existing corporate and purchasing cards.
To give its purchasing card the required meetings management tools, Visa is partnering with meetings tech company Arcaneo, whose Metron product allows users to view actual spend against a particular meeting's budget.
In teaming up with a meetings tech company, Visa was beaten to the punch last fall by American Express, which partnered with StarCite to create a Web-based service integrating StarCite's e-sourcing and planning tools with Amex's payment, reconciliation, and analysis reporting.
The partnerships between corporate card companies and meetings tech providers allow planners to further streamline the meetings process, says meetings tech consultant Corbin Ball.
"It makes it easy to post expenses to different budget centers, and to reconcile them, as well," Ball says. "It's [about] controlling spend, but it's another step toward digitizing the business process."
Originally published July 1, 2008For more ideas, tips, and tools for better meetings and events,
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