Citi Commercial Cards, CSI Team On Supplier Payments

Citi Commercial Cards and Corporate Spending Innovations (CSI) have joined forces to provide business-to-business (B2B) payment offerings to customers of Citi through a collaboration, according to a Monday (May 3) announcement.

The connection combines the online payment functionalities of Corporate Spending Innovations, which is an Edenred company, and the international network of Citi Commercial Cards, according to the announcement.

“This integration with Corporate Spending Innovations will provide new ways for our clients to make streamlined payments to eCommerce suppliers, especially in the digital media and advertising space, leveraging Corporate Spending Innovations’ critical mass with supplier access via Citi’s global network,” Gonca Latif-Schmitt, global head of Citi’s Commercial Cards, said in the announcement.

Citi Commercial Card customers will be able to integrate their virtual cards into the Corporate Spending Innovations’ system through the collaboration. Customers will be able to pay approved invoices with a Citi virtual card, check or automated clearing house (ACH) payment with the new solution. The platform will also function as the centralized tool for initiating payments and reconciling them.

The connection will initially roll out in the U.S. before rolling out to Canada and to select European markets.

“CSI is excited about partnering with Citi to redefine B2B payments solutions delivered to their commercial card customers as part of our expansion in Corporate Payments,” Marc Divay, general manager, Corporate Payments at Edenred, said in the announcement.

Corporate Spending Innovations provides payment solutions to brands through business payment offerings such as CSI Travel, CSI Paysystems and global-fleet fuel cards.

The news comes as Corporate Spending Innovations unveiled a new integration meant to lessen the pain of virtual card acceptance for businesses in the hospitality sector.

By the way of a connection with Sertifi’s eConfirmations product, Corporate Spending Innovations links hotel customers with tokenized payment data, letting hotels inside of the network safely take and enter virtual card information to process payments.