Businesses welcome new Visa product

The Visa Meetings card is being introduced to help businesses to effectively manage spending on meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions.

Latest study shows that during 2007 the surveyed companies spent 3% of their annual revenues or $17.3 million on meetings-related expenses while in 2006 such expenses made up $15.8 million. According to the study corporate expense managers find the meeting card to be a very economic tool to exercise and control meetings and other corresponding expenses. It was noted that at present time such kind of expenses increased which explains the demand in efficient management devices to optimally control costs and manage meetings expenses of the businesses.

The new card offered by Visa combines the features of the existing Visa Purchasing and Visa Corporate payment cards. With such a device companies are provided with a better solution to simplify the process to purchase, pay, reconcile and report on meetings-related expenditures. Corporate expense managers are able to adapt a card payment system to the needs of their company, improve payments processes and make business decisions more transparent and informed.

"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," states Darren Parslow, Global Head of Commercial Solutions, Visa.

A strategic alliance with Arcaneo, a leading global meetings technology provider, serves as the basis for the Visa Meetings card. The alliance is aimed to integrate Visa Meetings card transaction data into Arcaneo's Metron strategic meetings management system. Mid-size, large and multinational enterprises, along with meeting and travel management companies are taking advantage of this integration as they are provided with the necessary information to better control meetings related spending.