Sonya Geelon took up her role as Chief Commercial Officer of Conferma, a virtual payments platform, in June, last year. She previously worked with Mastercard covering both Ireland and the UK and has over two decades of experience in the payments industry. Here, she speaks to Seamless Xtra Editor Mark Dowdall about the rise of virtual cards along with Conferma’s own evolution.
Sonya, I’d like to begin with a report Conferma published recently called the Growth Ignition Index. One of the things I found really interesting from this was that almost nine in ten businesses are either actively using or considering using virtual cards. Of course, virtual corporate cards are something Conferma is extremley well versed in. What are some of the key things you think are driving this demand?
Conferma has been in virtual card payments for almost two decades now and we’ve obviously seen the evolution of that across the wider marketplace. As you mentioned, we recently undertook an independent piece of research across 400 senior financial decision makers and as you highlighted, 88 percent of those businesses are either actively using or intending to use virtual cards. So we’re starting to see a move where it’s becoming a ubiquitous payment method similar to what we’ve seen historically with bank to bank transfers and cheque payments.
I think the key things are that virtual cards are inherently secure. They’re a temporary card that usesrandomly generated numbers and are linked to a direct payment account. From a fraud perspective, this offers enhanced protection and mitigates some of the issues associated with physical cards such as loss or theft. You can also apply a variety of controls and restrictions, for example you can restrict the card to a particular value or even down to a certain vendor or a time limit. This could be when you want it to be used such as being distributed to employees for use on a certain day or over a specific trip.
I think the other area that we’ve been focusing in on over recent years is around the enriched data that you can get with virtual card transactions. If you think about the fact that you’re issuing a single use virtual card associated with a payment, it means you can do a one-to-one direct matching with that transaction. whether that’s a hotel payment,a travel payment transaction or a B2B procurement one.This means processes can be streamlined and made more efficient, empowering businesses across different sectors and global regions to seamlessly connect through established ecosystems like Conferma’s.
Obviously, payment technology has changed at a rapid pace over the last number of years. Sonya, where do you think the next evolution will be and how do you see the longevity of virtual cards over the next 10 years and beyond?
In terms of future virtual card innovations the fundamental infrastructure from a product offering itself is already in place. We’ve been working with the wider ecosystem over the last two decades, but I think now where virtual card use will really come into its own is in different use cases. Historically our foundations have been in the travel space but we’re now seeing an evolution into the B2B payments space, such as B2B procurement.
From a Conferma perspective, we believe that this underlying infrastructure and architecture can also be used in other areas like freight, insurance and healthcare. I think we’ll start to see a rollout of this across wider industries. Another area we expect to see become increasingly important is the end part of the payment process -reconciling back to what the card has been used for.
For example, we have a product called Snap+, which is all around invoice reconciliation in the hotel sector and being able to obtain those invoices direct from the hotels. We believe that the value add of being able to do end to end processing will be increasingly important as transactions continue to evolve.
In terms of the company itself, it would seem it has been going through its own evolution lately. In 2022, it was aqcuired by travel software and technology company Sabre and more recently, it announced a major rebranding initiaitive, changing from ‘Conferma Pay’ to ‘Conferma’. How would you describe this shift in direction?
You’re absolutely right. It’s been a really busy couple of years. There’s obviously been a lot of change in the organization and the wider opportunity across different industries hasbeen a key driver. The rebranding initiative and the work that we’ve undertaken and focused on throughout 2023 was all about enabling us to take advantage of that opportunity and look towards those broader use cases where Conferma’s technology can play a role. That’s why over the last 12 to 18 months, we’ve invested heavily in both our people and expanding the team here in Conferma, but also in the technology.
There’s a lot of investment going into enabling use cases like B2B procurement but also into our core business on the travel side, making sure that we’re continuing to grow the travel sector and partner with our key stakeholders across that. We need to continue to build on that connectivity and bringing in new ERP procurement platforms is a key part of developing this new B2B procurement ecosystem.
Finally, you are based in Manchester but it is clear that virtual cards are quick becoming a global trend. Here, in the Middle East, they are already in full swing driven by the growth of digital payments in the region. Can you explain how you are tapping into these emerging markets?
Yes, there’s been a lot of recent activity from the perspective of the Middle East and engagement with virtual cards. We are starting to see some really good penetration there with key issuers in the market. We’re doing a lot of that activity with our scheme partners Visa and MasterCard, and supporting them in the region as they look to support banks and corporates based there. It’s definitely a growing market from a Conferma perspective. We’ve also recently put new people into our APAC region and one of those roles is covering Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA), reflecting the growing opportunities there.
