Business travel platform TripActions has raised a debt facility of up to US$500m to launch an end-to-end global corporate travel management and payments platform. The firm says that TripActions Liquid is designed to solve the hassles of global travel payments to deliver a service for road warriors, finance leaders and travel managers alike. Led by Silicon Valley Bank with participation from Goldman Sachs and Comerica Bank, the financing enables TripActions to officially launch its second product.

Traveling employees win with TripActions Liquid as they no longer have to carry the cost of work travel on their personal credit cards, including the flight, hotel, incidentals, rideshares and dining. The solution leverages partners like AppZen, an AI solution for finance teams, to provide real-time AI-driven spend approvals within policy. This should eliminate traveler angst and guesswork along with out-of-policy spend.

With a collaboration between TripActions and Visa, users of the product can know that their corporate cards are accepted everywhere Visa is accepted.

The solution lets finance and travel managers set smart policies to manage travel spend in real-time. A integration with the TripActions corporate travel platform ensures that TripActions Liquid knows when an employee is on a work trip and can be configured to auto-enable the traveler’s card for travel-related purchases. Additionally, back-end work by finance is no longer required when bookings, payments and reconciliation are done within a single platform. The firm says it also offers a competitive rebate on all spend processed through TripActions Liquid, which could result in additional savings.

“Organisations have sacrificed for too long with inferior corporate travel management platforms - from clunky booking tools to poor service, out-of-control costs and complicated travel payments processes,” said Ariel Cohen, co-founder and CEO at TripActions. “Through our customers’ success, we’ve demonstrated that our state-of-the-art technology paired with our best-in-class travel agency service is the only choice in corporate travel management. That’s because TripActions is proven to deliver a great experience for business travellers while empowering their organisations to control costs and save money.

“Just as the corporate travel management sector has seen tremendous investment to drive innovation, travel payments is the next space that needs disruption,” commented Kevin Permenter, research manager at IDC. “As a leader in the space, TripActions is well positioned, with the introduction of its enhanced payment capability, to take advantage of the huge market opportunity for travel payments. The product enhancement demonstrates that TripActions continues to work diligently to add more and more value to its users, customers, partners and the market as a whole.”