In response to growth in global spending on meetings, incentives,
conferences and exhibitions, Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) today announced the
addition of the Visa Meetings card to its suite of commercial payment
solutions to help businesses more strategically manage this expense
category.
According to research by the Aberdeen Group, surveyed companies spent on
average nearly three percent of their annual revenues, or $17.3 million,
on meetings-related expenses during 2007, up from $15.8 million the
previous year.1 Aberdeen research also indicates
that a meetings card ranks the highest among corporate expense managers
as the most cost effective method for managing meetings and related
expenses.2 Current growth in spending in this
category is driving demand for effective expense management tools to
help businesses control costs and manage their meetings spending, which
is expected to reach $86 billion annually in the U.S. alone in 2008
according to research by PhoCusWright Inc.3
The Visa Meetings card includes the features of the existing Visa
Purchasing and Visa Corporate payment cards. This combination offers a
flexible procure-to-pay solution to help companies simplify the process
to purchase, pay, reconcile and report on meetings-related expenditures.
The new card provides corporate expense managers the ability to tailor a
card program to meet their specific company needs while helping them to
reduce costs, streamline operational and payment processes and make more
informed business decisions.
“Using payment cards for meetings expenses
helps enable companies to improve the efficiency of their spend
management processes, gain greater control and visibility over their
spending and ultimately drive increased cost savings to their bottom
line,” said Darren Parslow, Global Head of
Commercial Solutions, Visa Inc.
The Visa Meetings card builds upon a strategic alliance with ArcaneoTM,
a leading global meetings technology provider, to integrate Visa
Meetings card transaction data into Arcaneo’s
MetronTM strategic meetings management system.
This integration provides mid-size, large and multinational enterprises,
along with meeting and travel management companies with the information
they need to more efficiently manage meetings expenses.
“With an increasing focus among corporate CFOs
on strategic meetings management, the Visa Meetings card in conjunction
with MetronTM is intended to address a growing
need among businesses for an end-to-end solution to more strategically
manage their expenses” said Dale Beckles,
President and CEO of Arcaneo.
The use of the Visa Meetings card with Arcaneo’s
MetronTM system helps companies more easily
centralize internal processes for purchasing, data tracking, reporting
on meetings expenses and managing logistical aspects of planning
meetings. This integration enables businesses to increase visibility
into spending for meetings, travel, procurement and other expenses to
enable greater compliance with corporate and regulatory policies and
preferred supplier usage.
Web-based data and reporting tools available through Visa Information
Management, an integral component of the Visa Meetings card, further
improves company visibility into meetings spending. These tools provide
access to transaction details and e-folio data from hotels, airlines,
car rental agencies and other suppliers through easy-to-read reports,
expense reporting tools, cardholder statements and file extract
capabilities. These tools also enable consolidation of spending data
from Visa commercial card programs across all departments, divisions and
subsidiaries within a company to provide management with an aggregate
view of all business expenses for travel, procurement and meetings.
Notes to Editors:
About Visa Inc.: Visa Inc. operates the world’s
largest retail electronic payments network providing processing services
and payment product platforms. This includes consumer credit, debit,
prepaid and commercial payments, which are offered under the Visa, Visa
Electron, Interlink and PLUS brands. Visa enjoys unsurpassed acceptance
around the world and Visa/PLUS is one of the world’s
largest global ATM networks, offering cash access in local currency in
more than 170 countries. For more information, visit www.corporate.visa.com.
About Arcaneo: Founded in 2001, Arcaneo is a provider of
best-of-breed technology to all stakeholders in the meetings value
chain. Arcaneo's flagship product, MetronTM, is
a strategic meetings management solution that is designed for use by
mid-size and Global 2000 enterprises to more effectively plan, execute
and measure meetings. With MetronTM, meeting
planners can better manage all aspects of meetings, while enabling
management to measure the impact of meetings across their enterprise www.arcaneo.com.
1 Strategic Meetings Management: Of MICE
(Meetings, Incentives, Conferences & Exhibitions) and Spend,
Aberdeen Group, February 2008
2 Strategic Meetings Management: Pick a
Card, But Not Just Any Card, Aberdeen Group, February 2008
3 Groups and Meetings: Market Opportunity
Redefined, PhoCusWright Inc, January 2007. Estimate includes
corporate and association meetings spend.
