Travel Integration Tips

Top tips to consider when integrating virtual cards into your platform

Virtual account hierarchy

Considering the account hierarchy before integration ensures you are ready to support customer requirements.
For instance, a Travel Management Company may have one virtual account that is used to pay on behalf of many corporate customers, or an individual corporate customer may have a separate virtual account for each business unit.

Add Conferma as a form of payment

Virtual cards have become the key centralised form of payment for corporates. Add Conferma as a form of payment within your booking platform to use familiar terminology as Conferma, allowing your users to easily configure the form of payment. You are welcome to use our latest logo if you wish.

Some corporates expect only virtual accounts to be used for all employees, whilst some may allow specific employees to use their own corporate cards. You should consider how access is granted.

Keep your existing shopping workflow

Virtual cards should not impact your shopping workflow, allowing your users to search and review fares/rates as they do today. Conferma are only involved at the point of checkout/payment.

State the form of payment at online checkout

Where virtual card is the only allowed form of payment for selection, clearly indicate that the booking is being paid for centrally and that the booker does not need to provide their own card details to pay for the booking.

Collect Custom Data Fields

Prompt users to enter any Custom Data Fields, such as Cost Centres or Project Codes. These data points are usually driven by the corporate who want them to be associated to their financial transaction data to help internal reconciliation of cost to department/project.

Save our Deployment ID

Store the Deployment ID - a unique ID that is generated by Conferma for every virtual card - associated to the purchase in your platform. The Deployment ID acts as a unique link between the booking platform, Conferma and reporting. You should also refer to the Deployment ID if you raise any queries with our support teams.

You don't need to store the virtual card

You can reduce exposure of the virtual card details by not storing them locally in your platform. Use the Deployment ID to update or access the virtual card.

Avoid displaying the virtual card to the user

You don't need to display the virtual card to the booker or guest in your booking platform. The best implementations don't even mention a credit card to the guest, simply that it's been paid for by their company!

Don't re-use a virtual card for another supplier

When you create a virtual card for an eCommerce payment, it is intended to be used to pay a single supplier. Do not create a virtual card to pay two suppliers, e.g. do not create a virtual card for $1000, and pay Supplier A $500, and send the same virtual card to Supplier B to pay another $500. This increases the risk to a virtual card.

You must create a new virtual card for each supplier.

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Digital Wallet virtual cards are the exception to the rule

If you are creating a virtual card that is to be added into Apple Pay or Google Pay, you can create a virtual card that allows users to pay at multiple suppliers, such as an expense card to pay for coffees or ground transfers.

Provide data to help power our value-added services

It's very important that you provide the necessary booking data when creating virtual cards as part of your integration. This helps our systems optimise the payment and reconciliation. As an example, if you provide rich information, it allows Conferma to:

• match the records to our list of suppliers to send preferred messaging to the hotelier,
• geocode the position of the supplier for geographical reporting,
• link your booking to the Conferma App user, allowing access to basic itinerary and payment data,
• group separate virtual cards into Trips, to help power total cost of trip,
• flow the data seamlessly to our banking partner reporting tools.

Remember, there's always our web portal!

For any ad-hoc updates or inquiries you need to do against a virtual card, all deployments your platform creates are accessible via the Conferma Online web portal. Here you'll be able to view the card details, update or cancel the card, access card activity (auths and declines) and review audit logs.