Background

TMCs play a key role in managing travel bookings and payments for corporate clients. While most payments are made directly by the client, TMCs sometimes act as merchant of record and use virtual cards.

Our client had limited insight into TMCs’ experience with and attitudes towards virtual card payments as their relationships are primarily with the corporate clients. They wanted to understand TMCs’ payment processes, virtual card usage, pain points and appetite for new payment solutions to help them identify opportunities to add value.

Approach

We conducted in-depth interviews with global and regional TMCs across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Discussions explored their role in the payment process, proportion of merchant of record transactions, usage and challenges with virtual cards, and views on the future of TMC payments. We also investigated the payment providers and software platforms TMCs use to support virtual card payments.

Findings were analysed to understand common themes, regional variations, and TMCs’ key needs and opportunities for payment innovation.

Outcome

We were able to provide our client with a clear view of what TMCs want from payments providers and what the barriers to take-up for a new solution would be.

Our client can use these needs and challenges as an input to their innovation processes to help them build attractive new offerings for this customer segment.