One in six business travellers (17 per cent) have fallen victim to credit card fraud while on the road, according to a new survey on travel payment and expenses by BCD Travel.
The poll conducted by the TMC surveyed more than 1,300 corporate travellers around the world and found that the vast majority (79 per cent) still used a traditional corporate credit card.
The second most used payment method by travellers was personal cards (26 per cent), followed by direct payments by their organisations to travel suppliers through lodge cards or bank transfers (16 per cent).
The BCD survey also highlighted the current low usage of virtual cards by travellers, with just 1 per cent of travellers saying they used this payment method. Although just over a quarter of respondents said they were aware of virtual cards.
Ajay Singh, vice president of digital payment and expense products at BCD Travel, stressed the advantages of using virtual cards for corporate clients.
“Virtual payment automation makes it easier to centrally pay for hotel or car bookings,” said Singh. “It automatically generates a single-use virtual card number for each transaction and matches all charges to a specific booking.
“This not only makes the payment process easier for travellers, it also greatly reduces the risk of fraud.”
The survey also revealed that staying within the reimbursement policy was the biggest payment pain point for travellers (29 per cent), followed by out-of-pocket expenses (20 per cent) and needing to have cash in local currency (20 per cent).
The pain was significantly higher for travellers when it came to post-trip expenses with the time spent creating expense reports being the biggest bugbear (63 per cent). Other frustrations include having to collect paper receipts (54 per cent), collecting receipts in different formats (52 per cent) and keeping receipts after the trip is over (51 per cent).
Business travellers said that their favourite features within expenses tools all related to automation, including the ability for receipts to be automatically attached to their expense reports (76 per cent) and for card transactions to be matched to trip expenses (72 per cent).