Amex, Cvent Expand Payments Solutions as Corporate Events Resume

Event marketing and management platform Cvent has expanded its virtual payment capabilities with the help of American Express.

The new features offer American Express Corporate Meeting Card and vPayment clients who use the Cvent Event Marketing and Management platform streamlined onboarding and improved user experience, according to a Wednesday (Oct. 19) news release.

They also employ American Express @ Work Reconciliation® tool to simplify meeting and event expense allocation and offer more virtual funding account options with vPayment, an American Express payment solution expected to be available in the United States and United Kingdom in late 2022, the release stated.

“As large companies increasingly look to bring people back together for client events or internal gatherings, they want more simplification, efficiency and automation, and managing their budgets has become more important,” said Dean Henry, executive vice president of global business financing, payments and digital experiences at American Express, in the release.

The company pointed to its in-house research that showed a majority of corporate events planners expect to spend more on meetings and events next year and invest in automating their payments processes.

That’s in keeping with research done by PYMNTS and American Express that found that 11% of B2B firms are innovating their accounts payable (AP) systems. In addition, 31% of these companies said they will start innovating in the next six months, and 27% said they will do so in the next year, according to “ERP Solutions in B2B Payments.”

Read more: Two-Thirds of Firms Plan to Automate Routine AP Tasks in Next 12 Months

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are a crucial component of innovations around B2B payments, as they automate routine practices such as payments and invoicing, allow professionals to concentrate on more strategic work and bolster a company’s efficiency, accuracy and customer service.

“By accessing and transmitting rich data, including data from purchase orders and invoices, ERPs power the automation of payments,” American Express Vice President of B2B Products and Partnership Pavan Krishna told PYMNTS when interviewed for the report. “Companies that integrated additional accounts receivable software into their ERP system can further automate processes like payments collections, for example.”