Zact, ITILITE Collaborate On Travel Expenses

The payments company Zact announced a partnership on Thursday (Aug. 19) with the business travel expense reimbursement platform ITILITE.

The two companies said in a news release that the partnership will allow organizations “to seamlessly issue payment cards, make travel bookings and manage employee expense reporting, all from an integrated platform,” calling it the “first fully interoperable travel booking and spend management experience.”

Based in California, Zact rolled out its payments and expense management system in November of 2020. The company says it offers a solution to the challenge of overseeing costs and payments while meeting the requirements of spending staff members and accountants.

“We saw a real problem in expense and payment management and wanted to build an end-to-end platform, versus a point solution that only cured part of the pain,” Co-founder and CEO John Thomas said at the time.

Learn more: Zact Rolls Out Linked Payments, Expense Management System

In Thursday’s announcement, Thomas said the Zact platform is ideally suited to ITILITE’s “comprehensive travel booking functionality and inventory.”

The issue, as they see it, is that many companies ask employees to use personal credit cards on business trips, which leads to a series of problems, including delays, overspending and noncompliance. In addition, finance departments are often the last to know when an employee is traveling and can’t anticipate or plan for their spending.

“With the Zact-ITILITE offering, organizations can instead issue budget-based corporate cards for specific trips, control which travel options employees use and receive the data in real time for expense reporting,” the companies said. “All expenses are automatically reconciled and sent to the accounting systems. Compliance before the spend will be the new standard.”

ITILITE CEO Mayank Kukreja called this partnership a “game-changer” for the industry: “As the world moves back toward normalcy, business travel is making a strong comeback. With Zact’s seamless payment platform, we now offer one of the quickest ways to get back on the road safely with a new level of ease.”