Business Travel Bounce in 2025 Demands Better Expense Management and Virtual Cards

The corporate road warrior may log many a mile in 2025.

The pandemic is but a memory; the face-to-face meeting, the conventions, the trade shows and meet-ups with vendors and suppliers look to be on a sustainable rebound.

In the waning weeks of last year, the Global Business Travel Association corporate travel firms said that business travel met or exceeded expectations in 2024. More than two-thirds of firms say they are optimistic for 2025. A majority of corporates see boosting their own travel budgets for in-person meetings and conferences.

Three in five buyers of commercial travel services say their employees are attending more meetings and conferences than had been seen last year. For the companies sending those employees out, controlling costs remains paramount and has been cited by 78% of firms queried.

Corporate Cards and Reconciliation

Corporate cards and expense management systems are being linked to help streamline the efforts to monitor and reconcile costs. In one announcement, Brex and Navan said in October that they have launched a new joint offering for enterprises that streamlines travel payments into one workflow. BrexPay for Navan provides an integrated business travel and payments solution by pairing Navan’ travel services and Brex’s global corporate cards. And in May, as reported by PYMNTS, American Express teamed with travel and expense software provider Emburse.

Through the joint efforts, customers connect their card programs to Emburse Spend to issue virtual cards, a payment option that replaces a physical card number with a digital card number. The program is designed for American Express business, corporate and corporate purchasing card customers embracing a single solution for virtual card issuance, card reconciliation and expense management.

Separately, Mastercard and NatWest partnered to introduce a mobile virtual card payment tool for businesses in the United Kingdom. Approval2Buy is the first service in Europe to use Mastercard’s mobile virtual card app, per the companies’ announcements. And just weeks ago, global travel and expense management firm Mesh Payments said it was working with SoFi Bank as its sponsor bank and with Galileo Financial Technologies to integrate Mesh’s expense and card infrastructure with Galileo’s payments processing platform.

Commercial Travel Firms

Some of the same trends that are changing corporate travel — the shift to digital payments, more robust back end processes, virtual cards — are also in evidence for the commercial travel firms serving enterprise clients.

As PYMNTS Intelligence found, in its Growth Corporates Working Capital Index, commissioned by Visa, use of working capital solutions, including virtual cards, is set to grow by 25% for commercial travel firms. Business expansion is among the top reasons that corporations embrace working capital. The data show that 87% of commercial travel firms are likely to use at least one corporate travel solution in the current year — and 73% of firms surveyed in this vertical said they’d do so to use those solutions strategically.