The module will enable eMoney transactions to be integrated with all other types of spend, making it easier for staff to record all expenses, irrespective of the payment method used, ultimately affording businesses greater insight into what employees are spending.
Momentum is growing for services that enable consumers to purchase low value items by tapping their mobile phone or a pre-paid card against a reader at the checkout. Indeed, Juniper Research recently predicted that global NFC mobile contactless payment transactions will reach nearly $50 billion worldwide by 2014. However, as more employees start buying goods and services in this way, enterprises are faced with significant challenges as they attempt to incorporate digital cash into the overall picture of corporate spend.
“NFC is hugely topical at the moment, and our new eMoney module allows these transactions to be dealt with in exactly the same way as any other business expense that may traditionally have been made with credit card or cash,” said Shane Bruhns, COO of Spendvision. “Employees can simply manage transactions from their pre-paid card or device alongside other expenses on a single platform that can be accessed anywhere and anytime. This eliminates the need to manually enter details of the transaction, improving accuracy and making the process much quicker and easier for employees and finance teams.”
Spendvision’s new module is available worldwide, with the company expecting initial uptake to be most significant in Japan, where the use of NFC is more advanced.
“In Japan, eWallets and digital cash have been around for years and take up is high as a result of the integration with the travel network,” continued Bruhns. “The convenience of simply tapping a device against a reader to make a payment is ideal, which is why a third of the population use emoney and transactions account for more than 1.25 trillion yen. Payments made with digital cash are commonly expensed by employees, and we believe this will soon be the case in other areas of the world. As the only global provider of a solution capable of managing eMoney expenses across any currency, language and territory, we are well positioned to capitalise on our knowledge in managing these kinds of transactions and apply it elsewhere.”
The new eMoney module will also help businesses to manage the split between private and business spending. With the line between work and personal spend blurring, having a single mobile device or eMoney card is becoming the norm and it is vital that businesses are able to easily identify who needs to pay for what. Spendvision facilitates this by enabling employees to select which transactions are business-related on their card or device.
“As employees increasingly begin to use ‘wave and pay’ technology to pay for anything from transport fares to newspapers, from refreshments to stationary supplies, businesses will need to find a way of incorporating these payments into the expenses mix,” continued Bruhns. “With so many low value transactions to be accounted for, the key to integrating them with other types of expense is to provide employees with a simple, quick way to log and manage all their payments, including eMoney. That’s exactly what our new module does.”
The eMoney module is available as an ‘opt-in’ upgrade to the Spendvision platform, a secure Software as a Service (SaaS) application, meaning that companies do not have to invest in, install or maintain any hardware or software. The module can be configured to work with any processor of eMoney.