Engine, a corporate travel startup, introduced a payment card on Tuesday for small and midsized companies, aiming to fill a market gap between travel giants and consumer-oriented players.
The Visa-branded Engine X charge card offers smaller businesses visibility into their travel spending and allows employers to set spending limits, merchant restrictions and to approve expense categories, Engine said in a Tuesday press release.
The card – when integrated into enterprise resource planning (ERP) and human resource platforms – is aimed at helping business travelers end their need to complete manual expense reports as the data have been collected, Engine said. The vast majority of companies with revenue under $10 million don’t have access to corporate payment cards, the company said in its press release.
“There is a very big gap of what the big legacy travel companies provide and the consumer platforms provide, and the wedge is somewhere in between that,” Engine’s founder and CEO, Elia Wallen, said Tuesday in an interview.
The Engine card comes as a new breed of financial technology firms wade into the travel card-issuing waters dominated by large banks such as American Express, JPMorgan Chase and Capital One Financial. Fintech startups Brex, Navan and Ramp all issue corporate travel cards tied to expense management tools, as do other large companies in the space such as Corpay, Tipalti and Bill Holdings.
Engine offers a corporate travel booking system and says it has about 33,000 companies and 1.2 million business travelers using its platform.
Denver-based Engine is trying to fill a market gap it sees between the offerings of larger travel players, such as Amex GBT and SAP Concur, and consumer-oriented companies, like Expedia Group and Booking Holdings.
A charge card was a logical step because of customer demand, he said, with many SMBs seeking cash back on their purchasing and no annual card fees. The card offers a 10% cash return on travel booked at Engine’s platform and 1.5% on other spending. Engine also issues temporary virtual cards companies can give their contractors.
“Our natural evolution is to continue to service that overlooked market with a card product,” Wallen said.
Large financial technology companies with travel cards, such as Ramp and Brex, may focus on larger companies, Wallen said.
“We haven’t been in the card business until now,” he said. “We’ve obviously polled our customers, and know there's a lot of interest in a card product. But I don’t know exactly where those guys are focusing a lot of their energy and effort.”
Engine’s customers include Traeger, the wood-pellet grill manufacturer, and Spurs Sports & Entertainment, the parent company of several professional sports teams, including the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs. Engine has raised $220 million to date and has about 1,000 employees.
The payment card is also designed to eliminate the need for out-of-pocket spending by business travelers on behalf of their companies.
Wallen said Engine will assess how the market for its card evolves and whether customers want new amenities or perks in the future, be it access to upscale destinations like airport lounges or resorts.
“We’ve got a very compelling reward and modern platform, and it’s going to evolve from here,” he said. “Customers are going to tell us what they want, what they’re looking for, and we’re going to continue to build in those directions.”
