"Pliant develops the card platform so we can focus on our customers.”
In conversation with Marc Will, CEO of Intertours Reisen & Events GmbH, we discuss the launch of Intertours Pay: an innovative credit card and invoicing solution for travel management. He explains how Pliant CaaS helps Intertours provide optimal support for TMCs, and how our white-label solution facilitated a successful market introduction.
Intertours supports medium-sized customers in Germany with its travel management services: digitizing and simplifying inefficient processes. In addition to its core offering, the Frankfurt-based company pursues a holistic approach with Intertours “Travel,” “Expense,” and “Pay.”
The digital travel management tool "Travel" is a personalized service that ensures intuitive bookings for business trips, while "Expense" simplifies travel expense settlement, accelerating financial processes.
New to the Intertours portfolio, "Pay" is a credit card and invoicing solution powered by Pliant CaaS.
"Pliant helped us to achieve a really great solution level. We wouldn't have been able to do that on our own."
Watch the video above to learn more about how Pliant simplified the payment process for Intertours' partners.
Challenge: Advancing digitization in travel management
Intertours aims to support customers in process optimization. In doing so, one problem identified was prepayment for business trips. They noticed that when employees have to pre-finance expenses, hidden costs arise, of which many medium-sized companies are unaware.
With a digital credit card solution, rather than a “spend and reimburse” model, companies could minimize effort and billing errors, complementing Intertours’ existing services.
"To convince our customers of credit cards as an effective payment method and to ensure payment security, we placed special emphasis on an offer with sophisticated settings at the company and card level," says Will.
Solution: White-label platform for rapid market entry
According to Will, Intertours opted for Pliant CaaS because: "Pliant's white-label solution helps us offer an innovative card solution with a wide range of functions without much development work."
Pliant configured the white-label platform to Intertours' corporate design, while Intertours was able to quickly deploy Pliant for testing.
“Pliant handled the entire development of Intertours Pay in the background, while my team and I could focus on our customers and their requirements.”
Marc Will, CEO of Intertours Reisen & Events GmbH
Pay Manager Janina Wagner explains that for the market launch, the main task was to help Marketing and Sales familiarize customers with key Pliant features: card management, card settings, merchant management, and receipt automation.
Following product launch, Pliant's Travel Purchasing Cards have been heavily utilized by the customers. These virtual cards were specifically developed for the travel industry and can be used as lodge cards in conjunction with Intertours Travel Management.
"The ability to issue cards to employees is still unfamiliar to many," says Wagner. However, she expects a growing demand for physical cards in the future as customers become more familiar with the platform and its capabilities.
Why Intertours chose Pliant as a partner:
Low development effort: Pliant handled the entire development of the white-label solution for Intertours Pay.
Continuous updates: Intertours benefits from regular updates and further developments of the platform by Pliant.
Flexibility and adaptability: The platform was customized to Intertours' individual requirements and corporate design.
Focus on customer needs: Intertours can fully focus on serving its customers.
Result: Customer-centric with CaaS at the core
The combination of Intertours' business travel management and Pliant CaaS enables customers to avoid unwanted private payments and advances and benefit from a modern payment solution.
Intertours Pay digitizes customer processes and effectively complements Intertours' service offering. With CaaS, Pliant provides a ready-to-use platform that Intertours was able to bring to market with minimal effort. Instead of focusing on developing its own card solution, Intertours has always prioritized the customer.
In the future, thanks to the modularity of Pliant CaaS, Intertours will be able to fully integrate the standalone white-label platform into its other applications.
“How our customers pay for expenses on business trips was previously a blind spot for us. With Intertours Pay and Pliant's cards, we now cover this aspect of travel management and offer a future-proof payment method for business trips. The partnership with Pliant is a key element in establishing ourselves in the market.”
