Challenge

After launching a successful corporate travel management platform in 2015, Navan looked to expand offerings for its existing customers—mostly large enterprises with travel payments needs—and new users. The company decided to create a modern alternative to manage employee spend across travel and non-travel categories and eliminate the concept of traditional expense reports. Navan Expense is a travel payments and spend management solution with real-time visibility; automated expense reconciliation and reporting; and smart physical and virtual cards with built-in controls.

Solution

Navan already uses Stripe Payments for its existing corporate travel management business. To power Navan Expense, they chose Stripe Issuing, which allows companies to create, manage, and distribute virtual and physical cards. With Stripe Issuing, Navan can apply policy rules in real time—as soon as a transaction comes through. As a result, Stripe Issuing’s API helps Navan eliminate expense reports entirely.

Results

By partnering with Stripe, Navan was able to move quickly: The company turned their idea into an entirely new product line in just six months.

“That’s the beauty of next-generation fintech infrastructure. You can move a lot faster than you could with traditional players,” said Robin Gandhi, SVP Product and Payments at Navan. “If we had to do it on our own, it would have taken us considerably more time.”

Navan also saw exponential MoM adoption rate growth for Liquid as it launched, and it expects growth rates to continue rising as travel rebounds.

Another benefit of using Stripe Issuing is having access to dynamic spending control and being able to have real-time authorisation over every charge, which has saved the company valuable time and resources.

“Employees are no longer filing expense reports, managers aren’t looking at every transaction, and finance doesn't have to figure out the context of every transaction and whether it's in policy,” Gandhi said.

Expanding into Europe

Many of Navan’s customers have global reach, so it’s important for Navan to bring their latest product to other regions, starting with Europe. Through Stripe Issuing, Navan’s customers are able to experience the same functionality and user experience in 20 countries across Europe, including France, Germany, Spain, and the UK.