3 Reasons why contactless payment and digital invoices gain importance for future business travel.

3 Reasons why contactless payment and digital invoices gain importance for future business travel. Given the increasing usage of contactless payment and digital invoicing, businesses are advised to start adopting digitized processes for their internal expense management. By incorporating this technology, your company is investing in its future business transactions and is meeting the needs of its employees. Contactless payments and digital invoicing provide an opportunity your business can’t afford to ignore. Businesses that fail to jump on board risk losing money due to traditional expense processing tools that are costly. In today’s business environment, it’s evident that digitalization provides a number of advantages to both businesses and employees. We will go through three vital reasons why contactless payment and digital invoicing will be an inevitable practice in the nearest future.

Reduced spread of infections.

In this time of a global pandemic, contactless payments and invoicing are considered much safer in comparison to traditional cash payments and paper invoices. The Covid-19 pandemic is expected to cause a drastic decline in cash usage due to the risk of contamination. “Over the past six to eight months, we’ve seen the use of cash decline even further, and that’s a trend I think that we’re going to see continue,” said Jodie Kelley, CEO of Electronic Transactions Association. The unprecedented surge in the demand for contactless payment has also led to outstanding performances for major companies offering cashless methods, such as Apple, Square, and PayPal. Dan Schulman, the CEO of PayPal, sees it as a sign that digital payments are shifting from “being a nice-to-have capability to a must-have essential service.”

Improved tracking on transactions for accounting and VAT reclaim.

Businesses and employees have a lot to benefit from adopting contactless payment and invoicing systems. One major advantage is that it ensures accuracy, proves compliance, and simplifies the task of preparing a quick, easy-to-understand financial report. For example, if a firm is mandated to use contactless technology, the task of compiling paper receipts on card and cash transactions is completely being avoided. If you want to take one step further by looking at cross-border VAT recovery of expenses from business travel, digital invoicing is definitely of significant help. The transaction data of contactless payment and invoicing such as your company’s preferred hotel and travel booking platform can be simply imported into Financial software systems for analysis on refundable VAT on travel expenses. Moreover, it can simultaneously be connected to other TEM (Travel and Expense Management) software for accurate and compliant processing.

Increased efficiency during travel.

E-invoicing and other digital processes in the realm of business travel are ideal for last-minute travel agents and hotel check-outs, which tend to have longer waiting times. Checking out of a hotel becomes generally more pleasurable because employees are able to avoid the stressful task of signing paper invoices since they will now be digitally processed. Overall contactless payment removes friction and offers employees a better traveling experience.

Resources: Covid pandemic accelerating the shift from cash to digital payments (cnbc.com)