Abacus Pulls Amex Into T&E Platform

Travel and expense management platform Abacus has announced that it will automatically pull data from American Express card transactions into its portal.

Reports on Wednesday (Sept. 7) said Abacus will streamline and automate the flow of financial data from transactions made with American Express cards into the Abacus platform for spend management. Their partnership, Abacus said, heightens data quality and accuracy to help businesses automate their monthly reconciliation processes.

“We’re getting closer to the future where employee expenses will just submit themselves and the majority of review and approval will be done programmatically, with more effective controls,” said Abacus Cofounder Omar Qari in a statement. “A multitude of data sources will inform the system, but it’s clear that the relationship between companies and their banks will play a crucial role.”

The executive added that, while banks are heightening their presence in the availability of corporate spend data, the collaboration with American Express is a significant step in helping their mutual corporate clients make use of that information.

Allowing American Express transaction data to automatically enter the Abacus system means Abacus doesn’t need a third-party tool to extract and aggregate data from card transactions. This, the company added, makes the data collection process faster and more reliable.

According to reports, American Express has about 13.4 million commercial cards in circulation today from its Global Commercial Services division.

Recently, Abacus revealed other collaborations with NetSuite and Slack, also initiatives that aimed to reduce friction in the aggregation of data into its T&E portal.

“Larger organizations need more real-time data, across all reimbursement, and with the syncing up with corporate cards,” Qari told PYMNTS in an interview last year, soon after it finalized its NetSuite integration. “These are the companies that time savings and cost savings multiply exponentially.”