U.S. Bank head of middle market commercial card product Dan Skaggs is adding the title of head of product for TravelBank to his plate, with plans to expand rewards offerings along with integration and reporting capabilities for the expense and travel management platform.
Skaggs, alongside TravelBank co-founder and CEO Duke Chung, played a key role in the development of U.S. Bank and TravelBank’s Commercial Rewards product, launched last year, targeting companies with $10 million to $150 million in annual revenue. Response to the solution has been “tremendous” and “double what we thought we could do in this market,” he said.
“We felt really confident there was a need and white space where growing midsized companies didn’t have a solution in market, and that has been confirmed over and over again,” Skaggs said. “We’re well on a trajectory to really maintain that pace for some time.”
In the next few months, the product will expand its rewards capabilities beyond rebates to offer a points program for companies that they can redeem for gift cards, and later in a second phase, redeem for booking travel, he said. The points program also will have multipliers for spending on travel.
Skaggs said points programs are particularly popular among midmarket companies because they do not come with the spending minimums that typically come with rebates programs.
“There’s various research that we’ve done, and card networks have done, and when you talk to companies, about half of those companies want rebates, and the other half want points,” he said. “What we’ll empower our clients with is that they’ll be able to earn from dollar one of spend.”
A group of clients is already piloting the points program prior to its rollout, he said.
Besides the rewards product, TravelBank over the next six to 12 months will be working to improve virtual card capabilities and building out the depth of integrations with platforms such as accounting, HR and ERP. “We’re building out the data elements, the customization as well as the breadth, the types of providers we have,” Skaggs said.
TravelBank in that timeframe also plans to launch enhanced reporting and insights tools, which will “deliver on increased visibility and control,” he said. “We want to set up finance leaders for success, to where they can clearly see the value of their program and where they’re going, and they can optimize their spend overall.”
U.S. Bank’s parent company U.S. Bancorp acquired TravelBank in late 2021.
[email protected] (Michael B. Baker)
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