Midmarket-focused payment and expense management provider Center has launched an integrated travel and expense offering built on Spotnana infrastructure, the company announced.
The integration enables users to book travel within the Center tool and access such servicing capabilities as trip changes and unused ticket redemption as well as agent support. Booked travel has a “real-time reconciliation model for travel itineraries and receipts,” leveraged by the data from Center’s core card offering, Center CEO Naveen Singh said. Bookings also are run through a company’s policy controls, which speeds up the approval process, according to Center.
A group of about 25 customers has been beta-testing the solution, Singh said. Center was created around the idea of being able to capture and place controls around travel regardless of where the booking originates, and among beta customers about 60 percent to 70 percent of bookings have been directly in the tool, which Singh said was higher than expected and is attributed to the “powerful” inventory provided by Spotnana.
Center customers generally range from companies with about 50 employees to those with a few thousand. As Center’s approach is “card first”—the expense system launched in 2020, a few years after the launch of the payment product—Center remains “U.S.-focused” for now, and Singh said the approach has resonated in the market.
“The more distributed we get, what CFOs are grappling with is that it’s harder to diffuse travel policy than it ever has been,” Singh said. “Companies are seeing that a less rigid policy but with more visibility is the right approach moving forward—with less command and control but more trust and verify.”
Center and Spotnana share the DNA of Concur co-founder Steve Singh, who helped launch Center alongside Naveen Singh, his son, and also serves as Spotnana’s executive chair. A number of Center’s employees also come from Concur, and Naveen Singh said the company has “always had an eye on travel management” but wanted to launch travel management functionality in the lens of “what’s happening in the trend of consumerized buying, going to the supplier of choice and marketplace of choice.”
