Payment Pioneer Solves For Travel And Expense Challenges Faced By Businesses

By Sonya Stinson

In today’s fast-paced business environment, managing business-to-business (B2B) expenses is more than just issuing an invoice and sending a check or booking employee travel. Behind every transaction lies the complexities of tracking and reconciling those payments across multiple departments, all while ensuring policy compliance.

According to the 2025 Global Commercial Payments Survey from 451 Research and Diners Club International^®1, 44% of businesses said centralizing expense management was a matter of high importance for their organization. And 35% said the difficulty of tracking expenses was one of their greatest expense management pain points, making it the top choice on the list.

Businesses need a system that is simple and streamlined, so they can spend less time focusing on the details and more time calibrating their big-picture strategy.

What may be surprising is that a brand well-known as a trailblazer in consumer payments was also the vanguard of the commercial payments industry. In fact, Diners Club International^®, whose famous cards consumers have been using for 75 years, counts commercial clients as a major part of its business. Recognizing the value that perks bring to consumers, Diners Club^® extends many of the same benefits to its business solutions portfolio, such as access to airport lounges and other locally offered benefits.

“We put a significant focus on the consumerization of that cardholder experience to make sure that commercial cardholders and consumer cardholders have the same experience,” says Laura Shelton, director of commercial payments product management at Diners Club International.

Legacy Of Firsts

Diners Club has built a legacy of innovation in payments that began in 1950 when it introduced the world’s first multipurpose charge card, giving birth to the global payments industry.

Diners Club followed that groundbreaking move with the payment industry’s first corporate card program in 1975 and its first multinational corporate card program in 1990, streamlining global business spending and eliminating complex expense approval processes.

And Diners Club continues to contribute to the global commercial payments industry — now processing more than $100 trillion in B2B transactions annually — by offering innovative, data-driven and flexible commercial solutions for businesses of every size.

“We have unique relationships with our network partners and work to understand the problems they are trying to solve locally and globally. As product managers, we look to address the challenges they face by developing proprietary solutions or partnering with fintechs to drive deep collaboration in the commercial space,” Shelton says. “Listening to our network partners allows us to stay on point and purposeful in those partnerships.”

Reaching All Sizes Of Businesses

Diners Club understands that businesses have distinct concerns that vary by their size.

For example, while an enterprise might prioritize the ability to collect large amounts of detailed purchasing data for its complex reporting needs, a small or mid-size business might care more about benefits like ease of use and data accessibility.

“We continue to invest in our enhanced data capture capabilities to fit the evolving needs of businesses such as level 2 and 3 data while at the same time ensuring a modernized user interface for our network partners and issuers globally,” says Marcos Gelfi, vice president of commercial products, data and cardholder services for Diners Club International.

Partnerships With Fintech

Diners Club has also collaborated with businesses in the fintech industry to develop, issue and integrate its products into the workflows of commercial clients, says Joachim Soderling, senior manager, global business development at Diners Club International.

For example, Diners Club works with fintechs to offer virtual card numbers, essentially a temporary card associated with an existing account meant to make online transactions more secure. Diners Club has also worked with fintechs to integrate its payment products into business clients’ back office and financial systems, including employee expense management platforms.

Noting that Diners Club typically collaborates with a select group of card issuers in each market, Soderling says the approach allows the business to nurture those relationships.

“We stay very close to these issuers, and we allow them to operate in a very flexible way,” Soderling says.

Solutions And Capabilities To Streamline Commercial Payment Processes

In the same survey¹, 42% of businesses said improving integration with business systems was highly important for their commercial payment processes.

Diners Club International’s payment solutions integrate transactions seamlessly into back-office platforms, giving businesses a comprehensive view of B2B expenses.

With today’s dynamic business environment and the growth of hybrid employees, managing expenses and paying suppliers using legacy payment methods—such as cash, checks and ACH—is becoming increasingly complex. Diners Club offers capabilities such as Virtual Card Numbers, which help streamline expense management, enhance spend control and offer improved security. In fact, nearly 70% of survey¹ respondents rated fraud prevention/strong security as a “very important” feature.

Diners Club commercial solutions also streamline processes like tallying home office expenses for a hybrid workforce and separating business expenses from personal ones for those who combine both on the same trip.

“At the end of the day, business travelers, as well as those navigating other expenses, just want the process to be easy,” Shelton says. “The most important thing is that it is simple for them.”

“Diners Club has always been more than just a card – it was the original payment network that helped shape modern commerce. As the landscape of commercial payments becomes more digital and data-driven, we continue to evolve our commercial solutions to meet the needs of today’s businesses – like enhanced data insights, cross border payments and virtual cards. Additionally, we’re committed to leaning into our collaborative issuer and fintech relationships to help both businesses of all sizes make more secure, smarter payments with more confidence in the future,” says Gelfi.

Learn more about Diners Club’s commercial product suite.

_{1 451 Research of S&P Global Market Intelligence, Commercial Payments Survey, commissioned by Discover Network, Q1 2025.}