Visa Launches Web-based Tool to Help Drive Business Efficiencies for Government Agencies
New Visa IntelliLink Solution Analyzes Purchasing Card Spending to Enhance Cost Savings, Control and Compliance
SAN FRANCISCO, August 9, 2007
Visa USA today announced the introduction of Visa IntelliLink, an intuitive, Web-based service designed to improve business efficiencies for government agencies by organizing data from commercial purchasing card programs into valuable business intelligence.
Visa IntelliLink was developed to provide agencies with an easy-to-use tool to effectively manage and gain insight into their purchasing, travel and fleet card programs. The new service was designed to help clients find potential areas for cost savings - within and outside of existing card programs - and detect card misuse, allowing for quicker follow-up on suspicious or out-of-compliance transactions.
"Visa IntelliLink is an innovative tool that can help government agencies enhance the performance of their purchasing card programs by improving control and monitoring compliance, all while potentially reducing their costs of processing payments," said Darren Parslow, senior vice president of commercial solutions, Visa USA. "Visa IntelliLink's advanced functionality gives agencies greater transparency into their usage and spending patterns, which can enhance the value of purchasing cards and accelerate the migration of business spending from paper to electronic forms of payment."
Key Product Features
Visa IntelliLink is composed of 11 modules designed to work together or separately, and it can be customized to a particular client's needs. Key module features include:
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Reporting: Visa IntelliLink analyzes vast amounts of data, such as transaction data, accounts payable data and enhanced merchant data, and provides increased visibility into overall spending patterns. In addition, users can easily create ad-hoc reporting to conduct sophisticated analysis. Visa IntelliLink provides greater transparency for transactions, enabling organizations to easily identify and control transaction parameters such as amount spent, items purchased, merchant and merchant category, timing of purchase and more.
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Rules and Compliance: The service includes a misuse prevention tool, which allows agencies to set card usage rules specific to the program and enforce them via spend-limit and spend-type controls. The module detects card misuse (i.e., use deviating from specific rules), including out-of-policy spend. Diverse compliance mandates can be set into the system, which enables better management and oversight.
Visa IntelliLink will be introduced to government agencies later this summer in an effort to help them meet important compliance standards as part of the General Services Administration's SmartPay® 2 program requirements.
The General Services Administration (GSA) estimates $1.7 billion in administrative processing cost avoidance in FY 2006 for purchase cards alone. Electronic transaction data also facilitates superior reporting and oversight of spending.
About Visa USA
Visa USA is a leading payments brand and the nation's largest payments system, enabling banks to provide their consumer and business customers with a wide variety of payment alternatives tailored to meet their evolving needs. Visa USA is committed to increasing the choice, convenience, acceptance and security of Visa payments for all stakeholders - financial institutions, cardholders and merchants. As of March 31, 2007, in the United States, more than 521 million Visa-branded cards have been issued by more than 13,000 financial institution customers. Visa products generated $1.8 trillion in total volume in the United States during the four quarters ended March 31, 2007. Visa enjoys unsurpassed acceptance around the globe. For more information, visit www.visa.com/media
CONTACT
Jennifer Doidge
Visa USA
415.932.2350
jdoidge@visa.comMike Smith
Fleishman Hillard
612.573.3105
smithm@fleishman.comPortions © Copyright 2001-2007 Visa USA Inc.
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