Comdata Automates Virtual Card Supplier Enrollment

B2B payments company Comdata wants to streamline the process by which companies can enroll suppliers onto a virtual card program and is seeking a patent for its solution.

The company announced Friday (May 19) that it rolled out its Spend Escalator technology, which enables companies to automatically manage vendors on their virtual card payment programs. According to Comdata, manually doing so can be difficult, especially for large organizations with vendor lists that change frequently.

“We are a technology company first and foremost. And when it comes to accounts payable automation, we focus our development on easy administration and vendor enrollment, because we believe those are the two biggest drivers of a successful program,” said Comdata Senior Vice President of Product and Strategy Vijay Ramnathan. “A lot of firms and banks sell virtual credit cards, but our mission is to help clients build a world-class ePayables program. Spend Escalator is our latest innovation in support of that mission.”

The company has filed for patent protection on the new solution, it said.

According to Comdata, testing of Spend Escalator led to a rate of spend volume conversion nearly double the average rate of other Comdata corporate customers. Streamlined vendor enrollment means reducing check payments and less manual work for AP professionals, leading to cost savings, the company added.

Virtual cards mean less manual data entry and other AP processes, but convincing a supplier to accept virtual cards can be difficult, especially considering the friction associated with the onboarding process.

“We know most AP shops have too much to do with not enough resources,” the firm’s Vice President of Product and Strategy Meitra Aycock said in another statement. “We already integrate our virtual credit card system to each client’s ERP or accounting system to make the payment and reconciliation process seamless. Spend Escalator expands this integration to not only automate payments, but also reduce the effort of managing and enrolling vendors to accept card payments.”