We often hear about commercial cards from a business or issuer perspective, but how do the business travelers who actually use those cards feel? That’s what TSYS aimed to discover through their recent white paper, “Lessons Learned from Business Travel Study: Best Practices for Getting Ahead of the Mobile Wave.” PYMNTS.com spoke with Kellie Goodwin, business development director of commercial payments at TSYS, to discuss the report’s findings.

What do business travelers think about the commercial cards they use on their travels?

It’s an aspect of the commercial card industry that is rarely explored, but one TSYS tackles in its recent white paper, “Lessons Learned from Business Travel Study: Best Practices for Getting Ahead of the Mobile Wave.”

Why did TSYS investigate this topic, and what were some of the more surprising findings they unearthed? PYMNTS.com spoke with Kellie Goodwin, business development director of commercial payments at TSYS to find out.

According to Goodwin, TSYS decided to conduct their study with Mercator after exploring how the growth in mobile “from a consumer banking perspective” would eventually intersect with commercial payments.

“We’ve been watching the growth of smartphones and other devices, the increases in consumer connectivity, and the impact of this growth to consumer payments.  What we have not seen today is any solid research on how all of this would impact commercial payments,” Goodwin explained.

“Our hypothesis was that commercial business travelers are also consumers, and that many of the issuer strategies, with some modification, could pour over into the commercial payment arena.  So we really decided to go out and really direct the study at business travelers to explore what they see and how they feel about this experience.”

Goodwin said she didn’t want to give away too much of the white paper’s results, but did admit that one particularly interesting finding demonstrated that business travelers don’t always initially consider how their commercial card experience could be improved.

“Well, on one hand, the respondents said they were satisfied with their current T&E card experience. But at the same time, the survey uncovered sort of a latent demand for better experience, enhanced by a mobile channel,” Goodwin explained.

“It seems to be a case of the end user or the consumer — and in this case, a business traveler — not knowing what their needs really are until the options are sort of provided to them. “

To hear more Goodwin on TSYS’ findings, listen to the full podcast below.

*If you have trouble with the audio player above, click here.

Kellie Goodwin

Business Development Director of Commercial Payments at TSYS

Kellie Goodwin has more than twenty years of professional experience serving universities, healthcare providers and the payments industry. In 2001, Kellie joined TSYS, a leading global payments provider, working in Corporate Strategy and Planning where she was responsible for business development, mergers and acquisitions and corporate planning efforts. In 2008, Kellie joined the Commercial Services team as Business Development Director. Kellie works across the TSYS enterprise to deliver new payment products and solutions for financial issuers supporting the small business, corporate and government sectors.

Kellie earned a bachelors of science degree in human resource management from Utah State University and a masters of business administration in finance from Auburn University.