Spendvision, a global provider of total transaction management solutions, today announced the availability of its new eMoney module, which allows businesses to capture, manage and report on purchases made using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Spendvision has stated the module will be aimed primarily at the Japanese market in the early days of its release, due to the business management culture there. 
 
The module will enable eMoney transactions to be integrated with all other types of spend, making it easier for staff to record all expenses, irrespective of the payment method used, ultimately affording businesses greater insight into what employees are spending.
 
Juniper Research recently predicted that global NFC mobile contactless payment transactions will reach nearly $50 billion worldwide by 2014. However, as more employees start buying goods and services in this way, enterprises are faced with significant challenges as they attempt to incorporate digital cash into the overall picture of corporate spend, said Spendvision.
 
"NFC is hugely topical at the moment, and our new eMoney module allows these transactions to be dealt with in exactly the same way as any other business expense that may traditionally have been made with credit card or cash," said Shane Bruhns, COO of Spendvision. "Employees can simply manage transactions from their pre-paid card or device alongside other expenses on a single platform that can be accessed anywhere and anytime. This eliminates the need to manually enter details of the transaction, improving accuracy and making the process much quicker and easier for employees and finance teams."
 
Spendvision's new module is available worldwide, with the company expecting initial uptake to be most significant in Japan, where the use of NFC is more advanced, and where the business culture is based on bi-weekly or even daily cash advance expenses payments to employees, rather than a monthly expenses billing system as used in Europe, America and Australasia.
 
Bruhns commented: “In Japan, the culture is very different to Western culture; card usage isn’t as strong as cash, with frequent cash payments being made to people. For instance if someone had to go to the UK for three days, they would have to tell the company how much they expected it to cost and the company would provide them with that money in advance; if they weren’t given that money in advance, they would be personally liable for the trip and might not get the money back from the company at all. It’s a very archaic system, but our system provides more efficiency for the business and worker, giving them a single interface to see and manage all transactions on.”
 
"In Japan, e-wallets and digital cash have been around for years and take up is high as a result of the integration with the travel network," continued Bruhns.  "The convenience of simply tapping a device against a reader to make a payment is ideal, which is why a third of the population use electronic money; transactions account for more than 1.25 trillion yen. Payments made with digital cash are commonly expensed by employees, and we believe this will soon be the case in other areas of the world."
 
The new eMoney module will also help businesses to manage the split between private and business spending, said Bruhns. Spendvision facilitates this by enabling employees to select which transactions are business-related on their card or device. 
 
"As employees increasingly begin to use 'wave and pay' technology to pay for anything from transport fares to newspapers, from refreshments to stationary supplies, businesses will need to find a way of incorporating these payments into the expenses mix," continued Bruhns. "With so many low value transactions to be accounted for, the key to integrating them with other types of expense is to provide employees with a simple, quick way to log and manage all their payments. That's exactly what our new module does."
 
The eMoney module is available as an 'opt-in' upgrade to the Spendvision platform, a secure, Software as a Service (SaaS) application, meaning that companies do not have to invest in, install or maintain any hardware or software.