Rewiring B2B travel payments with virtual cards in the travel sector

Charlotte Piron-Seth and Greg Toussaint of Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) elaborate on the rise of virtual cards and their role in modernising travel industry payment infrastructure.

Travel payments have significantly changed in the past few years, and this article explores the growth of virtual cards in the travel sector.

Global business travel spending reached USD 1.3 trillion in 2023 and is projected to approach USD 2.0 trillion by 2027, according to the Global Business Travel Association – GBTA. Behind this very high number lies a complex web of inter-enterprise payments connecting airlines, hotels, travel management companies (TMCs), and other intermediaries. These B2B payment flows easily exceed USD 1 trillion annually and remain among the most fragmented (and sometimes inefficient) in the global economy. Inefficiencies can include manual bank transfers (or even cheques or physical cash advance), delayed settlements, and complex reconciliation processes, therefore leaving significant room for process automation, transparency, and cost optimisation.

Virtual cards have been emerging as one of the ways to address these long-standing inefficiencies and ensure the travel industry’s financial infrastructure benefits from better financial rails. Once used mainly by online travel agencies (OTAs) to pay hotels, they now offer the travel industry a path toward process automation, transparency, and better control in supplier payments.

What makes virtual cards different

A virtual card is a digitally generated card number (VCN = virtual card number) linked to a central funding account, created for a single supplier, booking, or transaction. Each card number can be configured with unique parameters – spend limit, validity period, currency, or merchant category – and automatically matched with the corresponding invoice or booking reference.

This design makes virtual cards inherently secure, data-rich, and auditable. Unlike personal cards used by travellers or traditional corporate cards, they typically provide Level 3 data and automate reconciliation, VAT recovery, and reporting: three of the largest operational pain points for travel companies.

According to Edgar, Dunn & Company estimates, virtual cards represented 40% of OTA payments to hotels by the end of 2022^[1], reflecting strong momentum in the digitalisation of supplier payments across the travel ecosystem. A study conducted by Amadeus in 2021 among airlines, hotels, and travel agencies found that 74% of airlines identified improved cash flow from shorter settlement cycles as the main benefit of accepting virtual cards. This acceleration mirrors broader B2B payment trends: PYMNTS (2024) observed that virtual cards have moved from niche corporate use cases to mainstream B2B payment solutions, reshaping how companies handle supplier settlement and reconciliation. Meanwhile, Juniper Research (2025) projects that the B2B segment will represent 76% of the global virtual cards market by 2025, increasing to 83% by 2029.

Source: Edgar, Dunn & Company

The virtual cards value chain in travel

The travel payment ecosystem is unusually complex, involving multiple intermediaries, settlement layers, and legacy processes. Virtual cards simplify and ‘rewire’ this chain by creating a smoother link between four key actors:

1. Issuers and program managers (e.g., AirPlus, WEX/eNett, American Express, BNP Paribas, JPMC, Nium) provide the regulated funding, card schemes access, and ensure compliance.
2. Payment enablers and orchestration providers (e.g., Conferma Pay, Outpayce from Amadeus, HRS) embed virtual cards issuance directly into booking tools, global distribution systems (GDSs), and back-office systems.
3. Travel intermediaries (e.g., OTAs, TMCs, aggregators, tour operators) use virtual cards to automate payments to airlines, hotels, and other travel suppliers, with reconciliation often built into the product to alleviate specific pain points.
4. Corporates gain real-time visibility, controls, and better reporting, while suppliers receive guaranteed, faster payments.

Virtual cards are mainly issued by financial institutions like Bank of America, Barclaycard, BNP Paribas, Citi, HSBC, or JP Morgan – and also by fintechs like Adyen, AirPlus, Checkout.com, ConnexPay, Edenred, Fyorin, Nium, Outpayce, Pax2pay, Pliant, Stripe, or WEX.

There has been an increasing number of fintechs targeting travel to capture the large value of flows between travel intermediaries and travel providers. Fintechs typically differentiate by a seamless UX, integration with specific travel actors, a high number of currencies, and value-added services such as reconciliation or detailed reporting.

Traditional financial institutions are catching up and bridging the gap versus fintech. They have acknowledged the significant opportunity and may often differentiate by offering credit to travel intermediaries.

There is a wide range of virtual card products, depending on their funding (prepaid vs. debit vs. credit), different types of BINs, and various economics. Some travel providers, such as airlines or hotels, may believe they are indirectly paying incentives to travel intermediaries without any consent or transparency. This is the reason why new initiatives are being started by travel providers. In the airline segment, Discover (with its product Airline Pay) and Nium (with its product Nium Airline Payments – NAP) allow airlines to issue virtual cards directly to travel agents.

NAP illustrates how the virtual cards model is evolving in practice. Building on the same principles of control, automation, and rich data, NAP enables direct travel agency-airline settlement through a closed-loop system aligned with IATA’s Transparency in Payments (TIP), enabling transparent collaboration and sustainable benefits to both participants.  Air Europa and Air France-KLM have been among the first airlines to adopt the solution in Europe, signalling how closed-loop and account-to-account settlement systems can complement, rather than replace, virtual cards by extending their logic beyond traditional card rails to provide a seamless process within an ever-challenging ecosystem.

Why adoption is accelerating

Adoption will accelerate further due to four key trends shaping virtual cards in 2026 and beyond. Travel players are expected to scale issuance via APIs, personalise payment rules, automate reconciliation, and strengthen fraud controls according to Modulr.

Several structural forces are driving virtual card adoption across the travel value chain:

1. Cash-flow optimisation: suppliers receive funds instantly, improving liquidity.
2. Risk management: single-use numbers and tokenization sharply reduce fraud exposure.
3. Automation and data: automated reconciliation enables accurate cost allocation and VAT recovery.
4. Commercial alignment: virtual cards create mutual benefits – suppliers receive guaranteed payments and smoother reconciliation, while intermediaries may gain financial incentives.
5. Regulatory momentum: programmes like IATA’s TIP, New Distribution Capability – NDC, and evolving PSD3 requirements may be a catalyst to favour an increase in virtual cards due to transparent, traceable digital payments, as well as new flows in the travel industry.
6. API integration: booking platforms can now issue and match cards automatically within ERP or expense tools.

In practice, adoption is also evolving beyond traditional issuance models:

7. Liquidity optimisation: some travel agencies now issue virtual cards only at the moment of check-in or consumption, reducing the gap between customer payment and supplier settlement and lowering balance sheet exposure.
8. Multi-currency issuing: issuing virtual cards in the supplier’s local currency helps travel agencies reduce foreign exchange (FX) costs, avoid settlement mismatches, and improve acceptance rates, particularly for hotels and low-cost carriers where international payments are required.

Remaining barriers to scale

Despite strong momentum, virtual cards remain primarily used in hotel payments and have yet to reach widespread adoption across airlines and the broader supplier ecosystem.

Key hurdles include:

1. Fragmented acceptance policies: some airlines still restrict agent-issued virtual cards under Resolution 890 rules. This is often due to the cost of payment acceptance associated with accepting virtual cards: based on our experience, a number of airlines are increasingly migrating away from a binary accept/do not accept policy to a more customised acceptance policy (e.g., acceptance in specific geographies, or in specific channels, or in partnership with specific issuers). At Edgar, Dunn & Company, we believe it is key to have a balanced value proposition between travel intermediaries, travel providers, and issuers. Virtual cards can bring key benefits to all stakeholders in the value chain, and this needs to be discussed and negotiated as part of commercial relationships between the different stakeholders.
2. Cross-border FX complexity: costly conversions and settlement mismatches.
3. Limited education: many smaller TMCs and suppliers remain unaware of the benefits.
4. Interoperability gaps: lack of alignment between GDSs, acquirers, and issuers may slow scalability.

Edgar, Dunn & Company works with the whole travel ecosystem, and its cooperation with airlines and travel intermediaries shows that supplier onboarding and commercial alignment are some of the critical enablers for the next wave of growth.

Once these acceptance and policy barriers are addressed, the challenge is no longer one of technology availability but the ability to connect and streamline all processes end-to-end. In the US, for example, 60% of companies have not yet automated virtual cards workflows end-to-end, meaning that only a minority are fully realising the benefits of real-time issuance, matching, and reconciliation. This is where the next competitive advantage will lie: not in issuing virtual cards, but in integrating them at scale into booking flows, ERP systems, and supplier processes.

A five-step roadmap for travel players

Drawing on Edgar, Dunn & Company’s experience advising major airlines, issuers, and networks, successful virtual card strategies can follow five key stages for travel intermediaries:

1. Assess pain points: map current payment flows and identify manual or high-cost processes.
2. Define use cases: select target segments (hotels, air, ancillaries) and key value drivers.
3. Select partners wisely: evaluate issuers and enablers on FX, data, acceptance, and reporting.
4. Integrate and automate: embed issuance within booking, ERP, and expense systems.
5. Leverage data: use granular spend analytics for negotiation, forecasting, and VAT recovery/ESG insights.

Travel providers can follow a similar framework to ensure they can successfully launch their own virtual card programme.

The future of B2B travel payments

Virtual cards are moving from tactical tools to strategic infrastructure. As travel volumes continue to increase and regulation pushes for greater transparency, payment flows will increasingly become automated, tokenised, and data-driven.

Analysts forecast continued global growth in virtual cards, with the total value of transactions expected to exceed USD 5.2 trillion in 2025 and USD 17.4 trillion by 2029. A key aspect driving this growth is the need to have a balanced value proposition between travel intermediaries and travel providers – and the required negotiation between the different stakeholders.

The question is no longer whether virtual cards will become standard in travel B2B payments, but how quickly stakeholders will negotiate supplier-acceptance and workflow gaps to reach full-scale adoption. 

This article is part of The Paypers’ Travel Series, which includes contributions on topics spanning emerging trends in travel payments, fraud and security challenges, regulatory and tax impacts, risk management and forex, as well as sustainability in the travel industry. For a complete overview of all the contributions featured, click here. 

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[1] Edgar, Dunn & Company, Perspective on Airlines Payments & Virtual Cards, June 2023. Internal analysis based on OTA-hotel transaction data and industry interviews.

About the authors

Charlotte Piron-Seth is a Senior Consultant at Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) and is based in the Paris office. Before joining EDC four years ago, she gained seven years of experience in finance and strategy in France and India, working for major corporates including Deloitte, L&T Technology Services, and Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking. At EDC, Charlotte is particularly involved in the Travel Practice and has worked with several leading airlines on end-to-end payment strategies. Outside of work, Charlotte loves skiing and enjoys travelling across Asia.

 

Greg Toussaint is a Director at Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) and works in the Paris office. He has over 15 years of consulting experience with EDC in business strategy for clients in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. Greg has worked in EDC’s London, Sydney, and Paris offices, and he developed global perspectives on payments. Within EDC, Greg leads its B2B Payments Practice globally, working on strategy topics for all actors in the B2B value chain (e.g., corporates, B2B providers on both AP and AR, issuers, acquirers, and payment schemes). Outside of work, Greg plays the saxophone and loves baking cakes.

About Edgar, Dunn & Company

Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) is an independent global payments consultancy. The company is widely regarded as a trusted adviser, providing a full range of strategy consulting services, expertise, and market insights. EDC’s expertise includes M&A due diligence, legal and regulatory support across the payment ecosystem, fintech, mobile payments, digitalisation of retail and corporate payments, and financial services.