Challenge

After launching a successful corporate travel management platform in 2015, Navan started to expand offerings for its existing customers – ranging from buzzy start-ups to multinational corporations – and new users. Navan recognised that having disparate travel, expense, and corporate-card solutions led to frustration for employees, finance teams, and leadership. The company created Navan Expense, an innovative and people-centric solution that manages employee spend across travel and other business-expense categories and eliminates the hassles of traditional expense reports. Navan Expense automates every step of the expense-management process, from swipe to reconciliation, while giving companies one easy place to control, manage, and track spend in real time.

Solution

Navan already used Stripe Payments for its existing corporate travel management business. To power Navan Expense, the company chose Stripe Issuing, which allows companies to create, manage, and distribute virtual and physical cards. With Stripe Issuing, Navan could apply policy controls to cards in real time to eliminate out-of-policy spending before it happens. With payment details captured at the point of sale, Navan could perform automatic reconciliation; as a result, Navan Expense entirely eliminates the need for expense reports.

Results

By partnering with Stripe, Navan was able to move quickly: The company turned its idea into a new product line in just six months. Navan has experienced an impressive 80x volume increase in 2022 in comparison to 2019, the first year of the Navan Expense product.

“By embracing next-generation fintech infrastructure, we were able to develop a product quickly,” stated Michael Sindicich, EVP and general manager of Navan Expense. “Partnering with Stripe has been instrumental in our success. Without their support, we would not have been able to move at the speed in which we did.”

After Navan Expense launched and began expanding to new markets, Navan saw an exponential increase in month-over-month (MoM) spend and active user volume, with double-digit MoM user growth.

Other benefits of Stripe Issuing were dynamic spend controls and real-time authorisation of every charge, to prevent fraud, which has saved the company valuable time and resources.

“The tedious task of employees filing expense reports and managers scrutinising each transaction is now a thing of the past,” Sindicich said. “Finance teams no longer have to spend countless hours trying to understand the context of every transaction and determining its compliance with company policies.”

Expansion into Europe

Many Navan customers have global reach, so it was important to bring Navan Expense to other regions, starting with Europe. Through Stripe Issuing, Navan customers could experience the same functionality in 20 countries across Europe, including the UK, France, Germany, and Spain.

“Partnering with Stripe has been a game changer for us. Stripe’s dedication to innovation and pushing boundaries has been a tremendous asset to our business,“ said Sindicich.

Navan Expense combined Stripe Issuing with Stripe Connect for better customer management

Navan selected Stripe Issuing in combination with Connect, Stripe’s platform solution, which Navan innovatively uses to manage its customers. With Connect, Navan Expense could onboard and verify customers, track card expenses, and aggregate and report transactions at the company and employee levels. This allowed Navan to focus more on delivering exceptional user experiences and less on the underlying technology that powers payments and compliance.