Hotels May Have the Secret to More Virtual Card Use for Corporations

The virtual card is a growing technological prospect; a virtual card, that’s good only once and then lost to the memory hole forever, could be a great way to augment payments security. Enterprise users, however, may be less concerned about this notion, but the way to get them on board with this could be as simple as seeing hotels take up the gauntlet.

What do hotels have to do with virtual cards? A report from HRS found that virtual cards could be a big boost for both hotels and their users. Since a large portion of business travel is commonly booked from card-not-present operations—companies making bookings via online alternatives—the virtual card can therefore be a way for enterprise users to protect themselves against potential fraud in just the same way that regular users can.

This has led the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) and the Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (HEDNA) to start promoting the use of virtual cards more heavily. The GBTA has even set up a task force specifically around getting more travel providers to use virtual cards.

One major issue involved in getting such cards set up is a matter of cultural acceptance. Germany, for example, is very deeply into such cards, yet China and South America, as yet, aren’t. So trying to bring everyone in line onto one universal standard like that is likely to prove difficult. What good is it, for example, for the Beijing Hilton to accept virtual cards when almost no one else in the country does?

Some may be concerned about the issue of virtual cards, but remember, a 16-digit combination, with repeating permitted, does allow for a whole lot of combinations. At last report, a 16-digit number could produce 2.09227899e13—that’s scientific notation, which represents about 20 trillion if I figure right—total combinations of numbers. That’s before the issue of security codes gets involved, which could buy us still more leeway. And that’s without the idea of re-issuing old numbers long since deleted.

We could indeed be putting virtual cards to work more often, and not just at the business level. Everyone might well be able to profit by using a number that’s only meaningful for a few minutes before being rendered useless to anyone else. The security aspect certainly speaks well for it.