Conferma has spent 20 years creating an ecosystem that connects a network of buyers that need to facilitate business-to-business (B2B) accounts payable transactions with issuer partners that provide virtual cards.

More than 630,000 virtual cards are issued every week using Conferma’s technology. The company’s platform promises visibility into all details related to a buyer’s expense and the near-real-time reconciliation of payments they make.

The Conferma customer base among buyers in B2B transactions includes several thousand companies that leverage more than 150 procurement platforms.

Customers span a variety of merchant verticals including travel, mining and engineering, media and advertising and professional and consulting services.

Those customers use their enterprise resource planning (ERP) software systems to connect with card issuers, utilizing either an existing relationship or tapping into Conferma’s list of issuer partners, which includes Barclaycard, Citi, AirPlus and American Express among more than 75.

Conferma provides the technology that card issuers need to facilitate virtual card usage by their commercial customers. Issuers create the virtual cards. Conferma then delivers them, adding custom data fields about an invoice to all payment details. Virtual cards can carry the Visa, Mastercard, American Express or UATP brands. All transactions are tokenized.

Issuers can also access Conferma’s technology through Visa and Mastercard. Conferma is the technology provider behind Visa Commercial Pay. Mastercard made an equity investment in the company in 2022.

Conferma was acquired by global travel software and technology provider Sabre in 2022.

The travel industry was the first merchant vertical to embrace virtual cards, and most of those transactions involved prepaid products. Virtual card B2B transactions have moved beyond the travel sector, and most payments are now tied to a line of credit. These days, the overall B2B opportunity for virtual cards is far larger than the travel industry.

Conferma says it can offer virtual card payments in a box to any buyer in a B2B transaction, while providing the choice of card issuer as well as ERP system and procurement technology.

INTERVIEWED FOR THIS ARTICLE David Wood is Chief Operations Officer at Conferma in Manchester, UK, davidwood@conferma.com, www.conferma.com.

Prior issues: 1260, 1249, 1209, 1175, 1149, 1128, 1121