Travel and entertainment platform TripActions is collaborating with Visa to support the expansion of “digital-first payment solutions for business travel,” according to a Tuesday (April 20) announcement emailed to PYMNTS.
The partnership will bring together Visa’s offerings and TripActions’ infrastructure to support expense management for TripActions’ large business clients throughout the U.S., and will also offer new tools to process payments.
“In the last month, travel has surged in the U.S. and is now averaging 1.2 million passengers per day, a 45 percent increase since the start of the year. As economic and business recovery gains momentum, it is increasingly important for companies to have real-time visibility and transparency into their expenses,” Terry Angelos, senior vice president and global head of FinTech, Visa, said in the announcement.
TripActions’ intelligent spend management offering, TripActions Liquid, gives staffers a simple way to make payments and offers firms one platform for expense management. The system offers centralized billing, automated expensing, approval processes and tangible cards in addition to virtual cards, according to the announcement.
Via its new collaboration with Visa, TripActions will speed up the growth of its “next-generation corporate card offering” by bolstering access to flexible payment methods that come with embedded policy controls.
“We’ve seen so much growth and adoption of TripActions Liquid within the past year,” Michael Sindicich, TripActions Liquid general manager, said in the announcement. “A partnership between TripActions and Visa is a natural next step in the product’s evolution. Together, the two teams will collaborate on ways to improve the offered functionality to customers and implement tools to further reduce risk and fraud across the board.”
The news comes as TripActions announced in January that TripActions Liquid now connects with various business finance systems. To that end, TripActions Liquid now communicates with Xero, SAP, Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics and NetSuite. “An automated link with ERP systems will improve analytical capabilities and provide executives with true spending intelligence across the greater organization,” Sindicich said in an announcement about the integrations.
TripActions also announced in January that it landed $155 million in a Series E funding round at an increased valuation of $5 billion.